An innovative workshop that equips you with the tools of resilience so that you can thrive.
CMCL is a one-of-a-kind program created by Dr. Genevieve Chandler. It blends four groundbreaking approaches: Strength focus, Empower environment, Building resilience from adversity, and Writing to thrive. Dr. Chandler developed these perspectives from her extensive research to help you grow, heal, and succeed in your personal and professional life.
1. THE STRENGTH CARE APPROACH
I was recruited as the nurse manager for a mental health unit at a renowned Boston hospital. Bringing clinical expertise from Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, I joined a team of Tufts psychologists, Simmons social workers, and Harvard psychiatrists. This was the pinnacle of mental health care.
However, I noticed that patients were repeatedly assessed for depression by different specialists, leaving them feeling even more depressed by day's end. Recognizing health promotion as a key nursing role, I decided to shift the nurse focus from illness to health.
We introduced an innovative program where nurses asked patients about what worked for them in the past, moments of health in the present, and their preferred future. Initially, patients struggled to recall their strengths, but as they heard others' stories, they began to believe in the possibility of building on their strengths.
This strength-based approach was a radical shift for both staff and patients, moving from a focus on pathology to one of potential.
2. EMPOWERED ENVIRONMENT
In the 1980s, the literature suggested that nurses, being mostly women, were naturally compliant and subservient. However, in my experience managing several units where female nurses assertively took the lead, I found this perspective limiting. The I read Kanter’s sociological study that concluded that the experience of empowerment or powerlessness stems from the position, not the person. That the person’s response is dramatically effected by their environment resonated with my experience.
If a position has access to necessary information, resources, and opportunities, the person in that position feels empowered. With this new understanding, I designed an environment to empower nurses by structuring relationships that provided the right information, resources, and opportunities. This led me to pursue a doctorate to study the effects of an empowered environment on work behavior. As expected, nurses in an environment that provided the right relationships with physicians, management and peers became empowered decision-makers.
My study demonstrated that empowerment or powerlessness results from the interaction between individuals and their environment. Thus, to empower an employee, student or friend, provide them with the right relationship to access resources, information, and opportunities.
3. FROM ADVERSITY TO RESILIENCE
As a professor at UMASS Amherst, I supervised students on mental health units, where we pioneered the shift from controlling patient behavior to collaborating with patients. By collecting data on patients' trauma histories, we discovered that responses to current stress—like anger, threats, or isolation—often stemmed from past adversity. This insight led us to create new tools to provide information, activate resources, and identify opportunities that increased self-awareness and resilience for both staff and patients.
Developing care that was 'stress aware' or 'trauma informed' became essential for the health of both patients and staff. My guiding question was, "Why wait for stress and struggle?" My goal was to disrupt the trajectory from stress to illness by building resilience to prepare for life’s adversities.
4. WRITING FOR RESILIENCE
I designed a study to learn about resilience in adolescence by using an expressive writing method to collect stories at a homeless shelter and in an inner city high school. At the time resilient adolescents were described as having a high GPA, invested in their studies and involved in school activities. The students I was working with had low GPAs, did not appear to be invested in school work and due to having a job after school or having to babysit they were not in extracurricular activities. However, they wrote strong stories of resilience: Living in a car and going to school, having a baby and going to school, having a job and going to school. The more we wrote together the more involved and invested students became in class. Thus, serendipitously, the data collection method of expressive writing, sharing their story and receiving positive feedback, changed their behavior and increased resilience.
CHANGING MINDS, CHANGING LIVES
ISÂ BORN
Combining the results of the research on strength, the environment for empowerment and writing in a group, I developed the Changing Minds, Changing Lives course to build resilience.