Fostering Resilience: Anecdotes and Affirmations from a Therapist and Fellow Human

By Angie Vanderwees

In Fostering Resilience, Angie reflects back over her life to recount personal struggles, noteworthy experiences, and remarkable adventures, meanwhile embarking on a new journey to become a psychotherapist. Valuable lessons from training and practice (including quotes from various other works), along with healing strategies from her own personal therapy, are shared in this inspirational piece. The book includes eight positive affirmations which are expanded on through strategies based in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Positive Psychology. These can easily be adopted by the reader in a self-help format.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Nov 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781779411280

Angie Vanderwees

Angie is a Registered Psychotherapist living in Kingston, ON. She previously obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Queen's University, and afterwards spent several years working as an educational assistant and small business manager. Then, life experience and her own personal therapy motivated her to re-evaluate goals, and she was inspired to embark on a career in helping others.

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Fostering Resilience

Anecdotes and Affirmations from a Therapist and Fellow Human

Angie Vanderwees

Fostering Resilience

Copyright © 2023 by Angie Vanderwees

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This publication does not establish a therapist-client relationship between you and the publisher or author and is not intended as a solicitation of such. Under no circumstances shall the publisher or author be liable to you or any other person for any indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages arising from your use of this publication. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. If you are in crisis, please call 911 or contact a local crisis line.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-1-77941-127-3 (Paperback)

978-1-77941-128-0 (eBook)

Written for anyone who has ever felt hopeless or alone.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One: Soda Cap

Chapter Two: Cliff

Affirmation #1:

I am resilient. I have the strength to get through this.

Chapter Three: Charlie the Caterpillar

Affirmation #2:

I need love and connection.

Chapter Four: A Gentle Friend, A Rapid Hope

Chapter Five: Lovebird

Chapter Six: Hands of Hope

Affirmation #3:

Everyone makes mistakes. Challenges can help me to grow.

Chapter Seven: Tricolour Madness

Affirmation #4:

I will follow values over goals.

Chapter Eight: Biz Kid

Chapter Nine: Creative Kids

Chapter Ten: Tickled Pink

Chapter Eleven: Off-Road Princess

Chapter Twelve: Two-Week Wait

Affirmation #5:

I will strive to practice gratitude and embrace the good things in life.

Chapter Thirteen: Little Monkeys

Chapter Fourteen: Flourishing

Affirmation #6:

I will look for glimmers of hope in the darkness.

Chapter Fifteen: Float On

Affirmation #7:

All of my emotions are normal, and my emotions can coexist.

Affirmation #8:

I am capable of gaining power over negative thoughts.

Chapter Sixteen: Three Little Birds

Chapter Seventeen: Drum sets, Baking and Basketball

Acknowledgements

References

Introduction

I focused on breathing steadily as my new pink sneakers hit each square on the sidewalk. Freshly cut grass covered my path and the aroma of barbecue filled the air.

Tubthumping by Chumbawamba came on my mp3 player. I researched the one-hit wonder once, learning that it was primarily written as a drinking song. An Irish neighbour of one of the band members would often come home drunk, fall over, and then get up again.

As I jogged that day, my mind (as it often does) flashed to all the people who’ve knocked me down. The endorphins from my run must’ve fueled me with perseverance, as later on that warm spring evening in 2019, I sat in bed clacking away on my laptop for hours past my usual bedtime. I was on a two-week break from my master’s program, so for the first time in many months I could sit down and write something other than an essay. My fingers punched the keys without much contemplation; it began as merely therapeutic. I was filled with the tiniest thought that maybe it would become something. Do I actually have a story worth telling? I wondered.

In my twelfth-grade Writer’s Craft class, I learned how even fiction writers draw upon their own experiences. I enjoyed immersing myself in writing, yet I’d stare at the journal prompts written on the blackboard, my pencil yet to touch the page … Is my life too insignificant? I’d wonder, my inner critic reminding me I was a boring high school loser. Fifteen years later, when I sat down to write that night, it was difficult to stop. A lot had happened since high school, when I’d been crippled with fear that the pain of simply existing would never go away. While I only ever once counted out pills and considered any type of plan for ending my life, there was a constant message from both others and myself that I was worthless. It was like a sumo wrestler sat on top of me, beating me down all day long, while a vacuum sucked up any hope of life getting better.

While memories of putting myself out there only to end up shoved under a rock stick with me, I’ve also learned to recall and highlight the times I was noticed. What about all the people who’ve touched my life in some way and made me who I am today?

Sometimes I ask my clients if they know what resilience means. The definition is: the ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression dust yourself off. Resilience is dusting ourselves off from the bad days (or even the bad years). For me, that’s holding on tightly to the people and books who I’ll pay tribute to here. I’ve tied in little snippets and takeaways from my studies, training and practice in counselling—those that have had an impact on my life or that relate to the direction I take in helping others.

Chapter One

Soda Cap

The day I removed my wedding ring, I felt like a hole had been ripped through my heart. I also took off my Sweet 16 birthstone ring that had become tarnished and bent over the years. I tucked them both away in a box and closed two doors to my past. The doors to the future conveyed both uncertainty and hope.

While I was grieving and heartbroken, I also felt a sense of openness, freedom and wonder. Not knowing what would happen next was like gearing up for a roller-coaster ride, my blood was pumping with a mixture of anxiety and excitement.

I could now be whomever I wanted. I drank a lot of soda that year when I was pregnant (since I couldn’t have ciders or beer) and my sodas of choice came with little fortunes inside the cap. One day mine said: Soon you will encounter a whole new world of opportunity. I tucked that bottle cap away in a handmade bag of trinkets that sits on my desk because I knew it was significant.

Along with my separation, I was also re-evaluating my life goals and career choices. I’d been a military wife for ten years, which meant sacrificing my own career goals, and this was my moment to focus on me. After living in Nova Scotia and away from many family and friends in Ontario, I yearned to be closer to home, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I got there. My internet browser was overloaded with tabs as I researched programs and options.

I considered something in business but cringed at the course descriptions of accounting and finance; math has always been challenging for me. I was thrilled at the thought of pursuing something with my psychology degree, so I looked into related college programs like child and youth worker because I figured university would be too expensive.

A few days later, I discovered an online Master of Counselling Psychology program. This seems too good to be true, I thought, imagining myself curled up with my baby and toddler, along with a stack of books on the couch and cold coffee on the table. My smile quickly flattened when I read the tuition cost.

Later that week, my own therapist told me a colleague completed the program and she highly recommended it.

Thanks for letting me know, but there’s no way I could afford it, I informed her.

There’s always grants and student loans you know, she replied reassuringly.

She really had a knack for helping me figure things out.

I did some more research, and two weeks later, I e-mailed my therapist a copy of my letter of intent as she had offered to read it over before I sent in my admissions package. She discussed it with me at our next appointment.

Your letter is very good, but it reads a bit like a cover letter, she said. Angie, deep down, what is it that makes you want to be a therapist? She encouraged me to go home and do some soul searching.

Chapter Two

Cliff

A girl in elementary school once pushed me down onto a sharp rock, so I have a small V-shaped scar on my palm. Besides that scar, I was mostly knocked down by words. I was humiliated and rejected by almost everyone in school. I was the kid who always got picked last in gym class, and the other students avoided giving me cards on Valentine’s Day. I used to say my classmates were like sheep because when one person did something, everyone else would follow. The girl who pushed me, Margaret, shouted cruel words at me out of nowhere one day, and then the next day, all of the other girls in our class clung to her and avoided me.

When I tried to hang out with them at recess, someone would yell, Get out of here, nobody likes you! Later that day I asked a few of Margaret’s friends if they were mad at me and they replied with Sort of. When I called up Margaret and demanded to know why she hated me so much, all she said was Because I do.

Crowbar! kids would perpetually yell as they walked by me. Or Flagpole! or Tree! they’d shout because I was tall and skinny. They’d tell me I was ugly and anorexic. Sometime around