THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RESILIENCE AND HOW TO CULTIVATE IT

We hear a lot about the psychological toll that traumatic experiences can have on people. Flashbacks, nightmares, lives ruined. Yet there is something about the personality and mindset of others that means they can endure awful adversity, somehow come through relatively unscathed, and in some cases even emerge strengthened by it.

Joh Foster is one of these people. Even before being diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer when she was 31, she’d already suffered a serious sexual assault, an abusive relationship, physical health challenges including a late diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, and various mental health issues. Yet she always bounces back. She somehow managed to complete her psychology degree while undergoing chemo and radiotherapy, and raising her son, who was aged four at the time. “Partly it makes me feel sad that I seem to unwittingly attract these kinds of experience,” she says, “but in the main I choose to believe that I am a stronger, more resilient, open, empathetic person because