Understanding Personal Resilience: A Guide to Posttraumatic Growth and Development

by Susan Sanders

First responders, police officers, firefighters, EMT personnel, and other front-line crisis response and management professionals often witness terrible atrocities, suffering, and destruction. In Understanding Personal Resilience , Susy Sanders provides a guide for traumatologists and crisis counselors who help these first responders develop the personal resilience to persevere in the difficult and trying circumstances they face every day. Sanders utilizes the idea of crisis energy – a storehouse of positive energy reserves – from which the emergency responder can draw in the midst of the disaster, to be later recharged in a cycle that enhances resiliency throughout. The approach guiding this volume is an ecological model for promoting resilience, allowing the practitioner to evaluate and shape post-crisis environments and counseling strategies to further promote resilience. At the same time, the book also guides the traumatologist through a similar process, to foster resiliency against possible secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue and burnout.

288 pages, Hardcover

Published April 1, 2008