The coping insights involved in strengthening resilience: the self-reflection and coping insight framework

Background: Recent theoretical work suggests that self-reflection on daily stressors and the efficacy of coping strategies and resources is beneficial for the enhancement of resilient capacities. However, coping insights emerging from self-reflection, and their relationship to resilient capacities, is an existing gap in our understanding. 

Objectives: Given that insights come in many forms, the objective of this paper is to delineate exemplar coping insights that strengthen the capacity for resilience. 

Methods: After providing an overview of self-reflection and insight, we extend the Systematic Self-Reflection model of resilience strengthening by introducing the Self-Reflection and Coping Insight Framework to articulate how the emergence of coping insights may mediate the relationship between five self-reflective practices and the enhancement of resilient capacities. 

Results: We explore the potential for coping insights to convey complex ideas about the self in the context of stressor exposure, an awareness of response patterns to stressors, and principles about the nature of stress and coping across time and contexts. 

Conclusions: This framework adds to existing scholarship by providing a characterization of how coping insight may strengthen resilient capacities, allowing for a guided exploration of coping insight during future research.