‘Mindset’ and ‘Resilience’ Mean Different Things to Different People

By Nick Halmasy

We’re surrounded by books and articles about “mindset.” I look at this with a particularly critical lens, both as a firefighter and as a psychotherapist working in moderate to severe mental health. 

“Mindset” seems like a simple way to dismiss significant issues with daily functioning. It sounds to me a lot like: 

• Don’t think about it.
• What do you have to be sad about?
• Look around you, what’s so bad about your life that you feel that way?

Recently, I saw a post about a resilience-style course. It highlighted the typical things we’ve grown to tolerate, like surface-level entries into breathing, exercise, and drilling (pending any actual evidence of their effectiveness). 

The research would support that resilience isn’t that. 

This mindset approach creeps deeper still. How do you get a group of people who’d never broach the subject of mental wellness together? With “mental wellness,” disguised under the moniker of resilience, and sandwiched between slices of “grit” (whatever that means) and athleticism? 

Give it the good ol’ mindset angle, and my brothers and sisters can tolerate a little weird breathing. This is as long as the room is doing it, and there are going to be hard tasks after to round out the day. 

What Research Says

Critically, I’m not sure where the research would begin here. It’s such a melting pot of approaches. If we were to look at one approach, the biggest confounding factor is togetherness in a group with a goal. Group therapy, I suppose, but for those we’d unlikely find sitting in a formal group talking about the hard things they see. 

Most of these are devoid of the evidence-based work we know makes a difference. Take talking about emotions out of it, despite the extensive neuropsychological evidence that this is such a crucial component to wellness (and overall longevity). 

Take the frustrating and difficult work of identifying cognitive distortions in thinking that interfere with a person’s view of the world, and effective coping strategies that are not also avoidance skills in wolf’s clothing. 

These approaches are thousands of years old, and the most well-researched and validated tools we have. Rarely do I find they even make it into the meat-and-potatoes of these trainings. At the best, a slide glides over a topic or two, so it doesn’t rattle the audience too much.

It’s somehow destigmatizing to call myself “yellow” and for you to interpret whatever that might mean, versus identifying that I’m struggling with depressive symptoms, or crippling anxiety, or marital issues, loss of control, or feelings of inadequacy. We don’t, it seems, have time for that. 

But we certainly have time for push-ups and marathon runs for 24 hours straight. 

Mindset at Work

Yet, of course, mindset has something to do with it. It’s one of these difficult and slippery conversations. It’s sort of like the same line of thinking we find in, “depression is a chemical imbalance.” The problem here is we blame chemicals and then place an emphasis on chemicals to fix it – here, behavior be damned. It’s not something “I” can control, because it’s my brain. 

Of course, if we were to measure the chemicals – or look at brain-firing images between someone living with depression and someone who isn’t – we’d have two different pictures. The point is, rather, which was first? And, more importantly, what has more impact? Behavioral activation, creating a behavioral plan to tackle depression, requires a mindset. I have to commit to engaging in my plan despite my mood. This certainly takes grit (whatever that is). 

How do you choose? 

We’re faced with a growing number of programs that all propose the same thing. You just have to pay the low, low cost of … If you’re lucky, it won’t be too much, or covered by your union or organization. 

To be a career firefighter is to join a minority group of well-funded organizations. Most of us won’t have deep pockets to draw from, regardless of the attitude of the organization towards mental health and wellness. Often it’s up to the individual to choose between a growing amount of programs, using a dwindling amount of resources.

So, am I “green” enough to find value in nausea-inducing ultra-marathons that I think would bolster my mental health versus tanking it? Or, am I a bit too “Red” and need to seek professional support? What’s the difference between Resilience Course A and Resilience Course B, aside from the belief system of whoever created it? 

Much Ado About Resilience

I’ve picked up books with the word resilience in the title and found a varying amount of what I’d consider actual resilience discussed inside: Books that are more character focused (therefore, inherently, you’re flawed if you don’t fall in line) rather than focusing on developing resilience; or an entire textbook that should have been titled “mindfulness” rather than resilience – though they seem to have found a happy home together and get along quite well. 

Resilience, unfortunately, means too many things to too many people. And I’d like to be careful to hold our idol-like view of the “salty firefighter” at arm’s length – there are many great characteristics about this stance, but it has its own armful of unhealthy and unhelpful approaches to wellness. 

In many ways, the approach has been to be avoidant. When images or nightmares became impossible to ignore, we simply drank them away. How many of us remember beer fridges in the halls? How many of us may still have one?

Maybe it’s a continuum thing. At some point, all this mindset work mostly benefits those who don’t require deep cognitive work. The folks who want to be just 1 per cent better than they were yesterday. This is valid, and it makes no sense to get in the way of that process. 

Do What Works For You

There’s value in finding purpose in what keeps us bettering ourselves. Take the cold shower, restrict the eating, get the sunlight, read the book. These are all individual choices that, backed by research or not, makes some of us feel like we really are doing the best we can. So do it. Let’s just not call it resilience training.

At the end of the day, I guess it comes down to making the choice. It’s our responsibility to be informed about what we are signing up for. 

I’ve found that almost no one doing this type of work is malevolent. No one I’ve met so far wants suffering or distress among our brothers and sisters. I think most people who create these programs do it from their hearts, with the knowledge they have. 

I say as often as possible: As firefighters, we’re expected to be chemists, biologists, mechanics, carpenters, engineers, and medics. Likewise, I don’t expect anyone to add “therapist” or “researcher” to the list, unless they’re a nerd like me. This position does give me an unfortunate viewpoint, though. And that is, despite our best intentions, we need to be careful how we describe the programs we sell to people. 

Size up these programs and decide: Is this truthfully going to help my mental health? Or, is this going to be a good challenge that I’m wanting to engage in for the sake of itself? To make this choice, though, you must know yourself and where you’re at.