A while ago I had a client who came to me for help with her anxiety and depression. I’ll call her Lynn, not her real name. When we discussed her anxious childhood, she would tell me she would worry a few days before exams as a student. And she would be anxious right up to the test. The night before she would hardly get to sleep. After she took each exam, she felt that she failed, or didn’t do well. It was at that point in our discussion that I asked, “Well, how would you do in your exams?” And here was the kicker. She said, “I always got “A”s!

Another client, whom I’ll call Bob, not his real name, was referred because he had insomnia. His constant worrying would interfere with falling asleep. He would start his day being anxious. He worried about and looked for what problems he’d encounter. What would go wrong, or what mistake might he or someone he knew, make? At the end of the day, when it ended without anything bad happening, he would breathe a sigh of relief.

These are two examples of a perspective on the common definition of resilience: the ability to bounce back.

As I considered Lynn’s response, that she always got “A”s but didn’t expect to, I scratched my head, and as if a light bulb went off, it all made sense to me. You see, we are blessed with an amazing learning process we refer to as conditioning. You remember, Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, the Russian experimental neurologist and physiologist? He was the guy who rang a bell every time he fed his pet Fido. And then he pulled a quick one on Fido. He rang the........

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