The word ‘resilience’ has become one of the ubiquitous buzzwords that has been favoured in fields from education, to workplace wellbeing, to psychology (in both pop and clinical forms) for quite some time. While I’m in favour of finding ways to pick ourselves back up when we’ve been knocked down – and occasionally even partial to a Kelly Clarkson karaoke moment – I find myself asking questions whenever the concept of resilience comes up. I might wonder whether it’s the most helpful word to use in the given context, and how it’s being understood. For example, I used to offer wellbeing support to a woman who had been through an extraordinary amount of adversity and trauma in her life. When I met her, she still faced some significant challenges, but the way she had turned things around and overcome massive obstacles was remarkable. Any time people heard her story, they would comment on how unusually resilient she was. There’s no denying the truth of that, but she internalised the message that she was ‘a resilient person’, and struggled to reconcile this with her experience on days when she felt overwhelmed and less able to cope.