1 Resilience is Relational By Jane Gilgun Resilience is an important concept in social work, education, psychology, nursing, medicine and other helping professions. In this article, I show that resilience is linked to attachment relationships, to trauma and other adversities, and to beliefs and expectations. Resilience is a term that stands for coping with, adapting to, and overcoming adversities and other stressors. Resilience is a positive response to adversities that develops when others are sensitively responsive and dependable. esilience is a relational process. How well individuals handle adversities and everyday stress depends the quality of their relationships from the beginning of their lives to the present. The quality of relationships shapes beliefs and expectations about the self, others, and how the world works. These beliefs and expectations are called inner working models (IWS) or schemas and are embedded in brain circuits. Resilience is defined as capacities for coping with, adapting to, or overcoming adversities or other major stressors. We know who we are through our interactions with others. When we have secure attachment relationships, we have a sense of ourselves as good and worthy of respect, and we also view others as good and worthy of respect and the world as benevolent until we have reasons to believe otherwise. By the time we are mature, we know how to handle the paradoxes and contradictions. Nothing appears to be perfect. Even the ocean, which can be beautiful to behold, can turn into a tsunami. Securely attached persons also recognize injustice, whether against others or themselves and have over time developed skills for dealing with unjust situations. People who as infants and over their life courses have had secure attachments have predominantly positive IWMs. This means they have positive beliefs and expectations about themselves, others, and how the world works. When they have setbacks, they typically can handle them. They respond in pro‐social ways and seek to solve problems constructively, often through consultation with pro‐social others. R