In New Zealand, identify subtle signs of dwindling client resilience. Learn missed indicators in our article on professional development courses.
How can you tell when a client's resilience is running low?
This is a harder question than it first appears, because the answer is rarely found in what a client tells you directly. Most clients don’t initially describe themselves to me as depleted. They describe themselves as busy, or tired, or "just going through a lot at the moment" - language that sounds ordinary enough to pass without much scrutiny.
Consequently, I think that resilience loss is often missed - not because it’s hidden, but because it doesn’t look like what we have been trained to expect distress to look like. There is no obvious crisis or dramatic disclosure. Often, it’s quite the opposite - the client in question may seem to be be someone who is coping well.
Last month I wrote about the gap between high-functioning clients and genuinely resilient ones: the difference between performing well and actually being well-resourced underneath that performance. This article goes a step further. If resilience can be eroding beneath a competent surface without anyone noticing, what are the specific signs worth watching for, before that erosion becomes a crisis?
In this article I’ll offer three signs worth looking out for and addressing. None of them are dramatic, which is exactly why they can be so easily missed.
1) A shift towards managing entirely alone:
Some people simply prefer to handle things themselves, so not every client who prefers independence is showing signs of a loss of resilience. However, it’s worth asking if there’s been a change from being open to asking for help from a partner, colleagues, and friends, to no longer asking for support.
This matters because resilience, properly understood, is not about self-sufficiency. It includes being able to draw on resources from within as well as beyond oneself. The U in my FUEL Your Resilience model stands for exactly this: using resources, both internal and external, rather than assuming that coping well means coping alone. Withdrawing into managing everything on one’s own can be a sign of some loss of resilience, often without the client noticing this is happening.
2) Narrowing the usual repertoire of coping strategies, even when the current ones stop working:
Clients under strain tend to reach for whatever has worked before. This is understandable, up to a point. The difficulty arises when the same coping strategy is repeated well past the point of being useful – such as working longer hours to manage overwhelm that is no longer helped by extra hours, or insisting on using familiar processes when more efficient ones are readily available.
What I listen out for is not the strategy itself, but the rigidity around it. The F in FUEL - Flexibility - in how someone thinks, feels, behaves, and even how they understand themselves is one of the clearest markers of stable resilience. When flexibility is absent, and you notice that a client is stuck, repeatedly trying the same approach to solve a challenge and growing more frustrated each time it fails, this is often a sign that their resilience is no longer as strong as it was.
3) A shrinking – or disappearing - list of things a client does to restore themselves:
Ask most clients what recharges them and they will usually be able to answer readily: time outdoors, a particular friendship, a hobby, rest itself. It’s worth asking whether the client is actually engaging in these activities, or whether they say they simply have no time for anything except work.
This links to energising, the E in FUEL - doing more of what genuinely recharges us, rather than assuming energy replenishes itself regardless of how it is spent. When the list of re-energising activities shrinks, sometimes to nothing, it’s a red flag – a likely indication that the client is, or soon will be, feeling that they are running on empty and that their resilience is low.
None of these three signs would, on their own, prompt most of us to intervene.
That is exactly why they matter. Crisis is comparatively easy to spot. What is harder, and arguably more valuable, is noticing resilience eroding while a client still looks, by every visible measure, reasonably fine. The alternative - waiting for a more obvious signal - usually means waiting until considerably more rebuilding is required than would have been necessary earlier.
The encouraging part of this picture is that resilience, once it is recognised as running low, can be deliberately rebuilt. It is not a fixed trait that some clients simply have more of than others. It can be strengthened given the right focused attention, so the client can develop effective resilience skills, a resilient mindset, and a resilient lifestyle - and benefit from them all to make a meaningful difference to how they cope and recover.
I explore this in depth, along with the full FUEL Your Resilience® model and how to apply it in practice, in my CPD-accredited talk What Really Builds Resilience? Introducing the FUEL Your Resilience® Model, available on Calabash. It is designed for counsellors, coaches, psychotherapists and psychologists looking for a practical framework to bring into their work - and it counts towards your CPD requirement.
Suggested reading:
Kashdan, T.B. and Rottenberg, J. (2010) 'Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health', Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), pp. 865–878.
Sonnentag, S. (2024) 'Leader support for recovery: a multi-level approach to employee psychological detachment from work', Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology.
Are your high-functioning clients really resilient – or simply coping?