Mindful Resilience began in 2017, created by Patrick Madden and Brenda Bell, after Career Wise, a bursary management company, noticed a significant increase in distress among students on its bursary and scholarship schemes.
Origination of the Programme
From the outset, our motivation was grounded in compassion: we wanted to alleviate what suffering we could and equip students to minimize their own suffering in future. We began by asking students to tell us about their difficulties and their needs – and we quickly learned that both were widespread and intense. Most of all, students reported feeling enormous pressure from almost every quarter, including themselves. They felt isolated from their peers, overwhelmed by academic demands, anxious about the future and hobbled by self-doubt. And because they couldn’t afford to be vulnerable with people who assessed their performance (such as bursary managers) they were also unable to access real support on these issues.
We distilled the students’ feedback into five areas of focus: boundaries, overwhelm, self, groundlessness, and connection/aloneness. Then, informed by the established literature around the concept of resilience and by the compassionate practices and perspectives of Buddhist psychology (such as Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy) we set about designing workshops to train skills that would help students in any and all of these areas and at any stage of life – what we have called skills of ubiquitous relevance. The two main ones are mindfulness and journaling. We regard these as necessary because they cultivate self-awareness and emotional self regulation, which are in turn the foundations for resilience.
Goals and Challenges
Despite our focus on general skills, we did intend some specific outcomes for students. We wanted our workshops to help students to experience greater wellbeing (i.e. feel happier, calmer, more fulfilled), to be able to achieve their own goals, to improve their concentration in academic and relational contexts, to be able to work with difficult mental states such as depression, anxiety and ruminative thinking, and to cope with upheavals and periods of acute stress such as exams, breakups, and grief. We also adopted a trauma-sensitive approach to teaching mindfulness meditation, since we found that an alarming proportion of students had experienced trauma that could make it difficult to adopt an open, non-judgmental stance to their internal experience.
The most significant challenge to delivering our workshops was around scheduling. Students’ lives are hectic and their free time is precious, so attendance numbers were very unpredictable. Through trial and flexibility, we eventually arrived at a practicable solution: a two-and-a-half hour workshop on Saturday mornings, supplemented by optional individual coaching on an ongoing basis.
The arrival of COVID-19 forced a change from face-to-face workshops to online delivery, which has brought benefits as well as drawbacks: a single workshop can be of benefit to many participants from all over the country. Going online also exacerbated some of students’ burdens, particularly around feelings of isolation, overwhelm and loss of control. Rather than meeting an outdated set of needs, we adapted our workshops to meet students where they found themselves at the present time.
Student Responses
We used a very short feedback form to discover how students experienced the workshops and were delighted by the extremely positive feedback. The great majority expressed tremendous gratitude and wanted more. As of May 2022, 86% of respondents said the workshops had helped them “a large amount” or “a huge amount”. Even more gratifying have been the emails and texts expressing appreciation for the coaching we offer as a supplement to our workshops. That is what convinces us that this work is worthwhile and effective in supporting students’ wellbeing on an ongoing basis
Some of the written feedback we’ve received includes the following:
“These sessions were immensely helpful - especially for that season of my life. I learnt so much about myself from our interactions, my career decisions, communication mechanisms, thought processes too. You're a phenomenal coach and I am much obliged to you.”
“At the end of this journey, I can confidently say that I am happy with the person that I am becoming. Journaling and meditation have taught me the importance of listening to my own thoughts and feelings in a non-judgmental way, and how to express myself better to myself and others. I have learnt that in order for me to be able to function at my best in all facets of my life, I need to be okay first. For the first time in my life, I'm learning to love me. I cannot express enough how grateful I am. Your patience, openness and understanding made all of this possible.”
“I am feeling good and have been for a while now, that those challenges aren't as daunting as they were at that point. I am more mindful and it feels good. I just wanted to thank you for the sessions we had, for listening without judgement when I was in denial about being anxious to when I finally owned up. Thank you so much for the skills you've imparted in our sessions. I really appreciate how you helped me.”
“Our sessions have been absolutely amazing and have such a great impact on me. I haven't felt so light and genuinely happy in a very long time. Thank you so much for everything. I will forever be grateful for our sessions. You are definitely one of my biggest blessings of the year. I can't stop thanking God for you. I pray you continue doing the same for others and take care of yourself too.”
Why This Programme Works
We attribute the positivity of this feedback to several factors.
Perhaps the most important factor is maintaining a motivation of wanting to help rather than wanting to earn a large income. Affordable rates let us accommodate many more students. Also, we make it clear to students that our aim to help them to suffer less, not to assess their performance, and that we do not report to anyone: everything that happens in our workshops is confidential. That helps students to feel safe, which is a necessary precursor to participation and learning.
A second factor is ongoing support. The skills we teach are beneficial only to the extent they are practiced and integrated into participants’ everyday lives. A once-off workshop is of very limited value unless it is supplemented by ongoing support. To that end, we offer a second “integration workshop”, give students some digital support materials, and ongoing individual coaching for any participant who requests it.
A third factor is our relationship with Career Wise, with whose students we work. They have been receptive to feedback, respectful of our role as mental health professionals, and responsive and flexible in accommodating changes. We have run workshops for Career Wise staff, so they can experience it first-hand. Their approach has shown that they too are motivated by compassion: primarily, they want to help students. Our working relationship is characterised by trust and warmth and it is one we appreciate greatly.
Looking Forward
While we are encouraged by the way Mindful Resilience has been received over its short lifetime, the structural pressures on students remain various and acute. Huge numbers of students’ needs for support remain unacknowledged and unmet. We would like to help more students, both by running more workshops and by bringing more trained professionals on board to facilitate them. We would also like to offer our work to students in other countries, since there is no reason an online offering should be limited by geography.