Workplace resilience is often seen as simply the ability to recover after stress or setbacks. But at Eyes Up Training, we draw on the latest psychological research to provide a more nuanced perspective.
What is workplace resilience?
Recent literature (Hollaar, Kemmere, & Denktaş, 2025) highlights three main ways resilience is understood:
- Trait-Focused: Viewing resilience as a fixed personality trait, focused on “bouncing back.”
- Resilience as an Adaptive Outcome: Defining it as maintaining or restoring mental health after adversity, measured by outcomes such as personal growth and well-being.
- Resilience as a Dynamic Process: Seeing it as an ongoing, adaptive use of both internal and external resources to manage difficulties.
Our Perspective on Workplace Resilience
We define workplace resilience as a process of adaptation and a dynamic interplay between:
- Internal resources: Emotion skills, self-awareness, communication abilities
- External resources: Team and supervisor support, social connections
This approach prioritises practices that help people sustain or regain their mental health and emotional capacity after challenges, individually and collectively. It firmly rejects the notion that resilience depends solely on the individual’s abilities, willpower, or toughness without reliance on external resources.
The Eyes Up Resilience Equations
Following extensive research, we’ve created two core guiding equations:
1. Professional Perspective: Resilience = Preparedness to Do the Job + General Health + Life Satisfaction
2. Individual Perspective: Personal Resilience = Physical Resilience + Mental Resilience + Social Resilience
Research shows that both personal and contextual factors—work-related and non-work-related—contribute to the quality of resilience. For instance, a study of Australian paramedics found that Life Satisfaction predicts resilience more strongly than general health (Gayton & Lovell, 2012).
Not all resilience-building practices are healthy, though.
Muratbekova-Touron et al. (2025) caution against the ‘dark practices’ of resilience, including enduring without processing, withdrawing from social interaction, or consuming as a coping mechanism. Other studies emphasise that venting anger or going for a run are counterproductive anger-management strategies that increase, rather than decrease, arousal and aggressive behaviour (Kjærvik & Bushman, 2024). Additionally, Muratbekova-Touron et al. (2025) and Maté & Maté (2022) link these behaviours to negative physical, psychological, and social outcomes, including illness, depression, and isolation. Such trends directly undermine both individual and organisational resilience, impacting retention and effective service delivery.
Building Resilient Teams Through Emotional Logic
We design learning experiences that build both individual and collective resilience, especially for professions exposed to secondary trauma. Our approach is anchored in the evidence-based Emotional Logic method, which is practical and psychologically safe.
Sven Lauch, director of Eyes Up Training, has adapted the Emotional Logic method to address the unique needs of teams regularly exposed to secondary trauma and high-stress environments. Our approach retains the scientific core of the method while making it:
- Relevant to both individuals and entire organisations
- Sensitive to workplace realities, especially secondary trauma
- Practical for developing psychological safety and social connection in organisational settings
Benefits of our adapted method include:
- Psychological preparation strategies for facing difficult workplace situations
- Safe, hands-on practice with adaptive responses
- Skill-building focused on both individual well-being and team resilience
Thus, our training invests in personal and collective workplace resilience through:
- Stronger communication and mutual awareness
- Enhanced psychological safety
- Effective navigation of operational change, secondary trauma, or conflict
Research-backed impact of Emotional Logic
The Emotional Logic approach is underpinned by robust research, including a significant 2020 study in the European Journal of Integrative Medicine (Turton et al., 2020). Key findings include:
- Strong Impact on Mental Health: Emotional Logic significantly improved resilience and mental health, with large effect sizes among people with anxiety, depression, and personality disorders (Cohen’s d = 1.13 for anxiety/depression; 0.91 for personality disorders)
- Strengthening Relationships: Approximately 38% of Emotional Logic Development Profile (ELDP) statements pertain directly to building relationship skills
- Ripple Effects: 85% of respondents shared what they learned with others, creating a broader impact
- Long-Term Benefits: 55% self-reported lasting positive changes 4–6 years after engaging with the approach
- Safety and Accessibility: The Emotional Logic method was shown to be safe, with no negative outcomes, and is compatible with schools, families, and workplaces
- A Tool for Life: Emotional Logic is psychoeducational rather than therapy, empowering people with lifelong self-care and values-based decision-making skills
Transformative Psychological Insights
The following insights show how Emotional Logic doesn’t just improve mental health; it also reshapes how we relate to our emotions and each other:
- Validating All Emotions: Emotional Logic reframes so-called “negative” emotions as valuable signals, helping people clarify their values and enact constructive change
- Transdiagnostic Application: It targets emotional and relational skills in broad populations, not just those with specific diagnoses
- Prevention Focus: Practical tools help people manage emotions and relationships before challenges escalate, reducing the need for professional intervention
- Building Emotional Intelligence: Directly supports social connection and mental health
Emotional Logic challenges the notion that unpleasant emotions are purely negative. Instead, it teaches us to view these emotions as signposts, guiding values-based decisions and constructive change. The method is broad, practical, and, most importantly, prevents issues before they demand professional intervention.
Influence of Lived Experience to Our Approach
Sven Lauch’s journey to founding Eyes Up Training is deeply personal. Having faced significant emotional trauma earlier in life, Sven sought a path not just to recover, but to understand and transform his experience into a force for good. Learning and practising the Emotional Logic method was a turning point, equipping him with tools to validate his emotions, rebuild connections, and discover renewed purpose.
The research on workplace resilience and Sven’s lived experience and years of coaching professionals who encounter secondary trauma highlight the need to move from survival to growth through evidence-based, compassionate practices and from individual to collective interventions.
Let’s talk and explore how we can help you build a workplace culture that nurtures individual and collective resilience. Alternatively, check out our Workplace Resilience Training page.
References
Gayton, S. D., & Lovell, G. P. (2012). Resilience in ambulance service paramedics and its relationships with well-being and general health. Traumatology, 18(1), 58–64. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534765610396727
Hollaar, M. H., Kemmere, B. K., & Denktaş, S. (2025). Resilience-based interventions in the public sector workplace: a systematic review. BMC Public Health, 25(1), 1-32. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-21177-2
Kjærvik, S. L., & Bushman, B. J. (2024). A meta-analytic review of anger management activities that increase or decrease arousal: What fuels or douses rage? Clinical Psychology Review, 109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2024.102414
Maté, G., & Maté, D. (2022). The myth of normal: Trauma, illness, & healing in a toxic culture. Avery.
Muratbekova-Touron, M., Amory, T. D., Quevedo, D. G., Glaser, A., Guilhon, M., Lespérance, C., & Geneste, S. (2025). When Bouncing Back Is Harmful: Exploring the Dark Side of Resilience in Phd Management Students. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 24(2), 175–196. https://doi.org/10.5465/amle.2023.0523
Turton, A., Langsford, M., Di Lorenzo, D., Zahra, D., Henshelwood, J., & Griffiths, T. (2020). An audit of emotional logic for mental health self-care improving social connection. European Journal of Integrative Medicine, 37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eujim.2020.101167
