Building Resilience Through Connection: Dr Lyn Worsley’s Insights at the 12 Months On Conference

As we look back on another year at the Pro Patria Centre, our mission to foster wellbeing in the veteran community has never been clearer. At this year’s “12 Months On” Conference, we were privileged to hear from Dr Lyn Worsley, Clinical Psychologist and founder of the Resilience Centre, whose work has transformed how we think about resilience, connection, and recovery.

Dr Worsley opened her presentation with a sense of gratitude, saying, “Thank you for having me. It is such a privilege to be here, and a very exciting part to be able to play here.” She shared that the Resilience Centre is a team of professionals “really experimenting with good, innovative research, but also therapy,” with a key focus on “how we can shorten the number of sessions that we see people for so that they're better quicker.”

Defining Real Resilience

Dr Worsley has spent years researching resilience, starting as a registered nurse and later as a youth worker. She explained, “We seem to be treating them with a medical model. What about we treat them with the resilience model? At the time, I was a bit ahead of my time.” This proactive approach shaped her philosophy: “Therapy was never about talking about what's going wrong. Therapy was more about, how high have you done your skateboard jump? What are you able to do in the surf? Let’s go motorbike riding. Let’s do some things that we can do. So coming into psychology was always with a, I guess, a proactive ‘what are we doing well?’ How can we build what's going well?”

Dr Worsley challenged us to see resilience as more than a buzzword. “We’re looking at resilience proper, not just the popular psychology term resilience, but really looking at what is resilience.”

She defined resilience as having “three aspects… It's an interactive aspect. So it's like you're developing your personal and social competence. It's not about intelligence. If you're socially competent, you're going to do better than the intelligent person who doesn't have the social skills. So resilience is about personal and social competence that's developing throughout our lifetime, but at the same time, by or through navigating and negotiating with resources, at the same time as going through adversity.”

She put it simply: “It's the interaction of three things, competence, resources and adversities. If you don't have adversities, you might have all the competence in the world, and you might have all the resources in the world, but it's a bit like going to the gym and not having any weights on your lifting machines.”

The Power of Ordinary, Everyday Magic

Quoting renowned researcher Ann Masten, Dr Worsley reminded us, “Resilience does not come from rare qualities. It comes from the ordinary, everyday magic of normal human resources in the minds, brains and the bodies of children, in their families and the relationships and in their communities.” She added, “We’re trying to overthink things a lot when we're researching, we need to look at the ordinary everyday magic that occurs.”

For Dr Worsley, social prescribing is central to building resilience. “Social prescribing is essentially where we collide. It's a holistic, patient-centred approach that leverages community resources, improves health outcomes and enhances overall wellbeing.”

She explained, “Social prescribing basically addresses all the social determinants of health.” These can be as simple as “meeting up with friends so we haven't seen for a while… learning about things… spending time in community in a community setting, all of those social determinants will make us have a huge boost of dopamine coming through our brain, which will make us more motivated to be healthier.”

Tailoring Support for Veterans

Dr Worsley highlighted the unique challenges faced by veterans: “Fifty percent of defence vets experience mental decline on leaving… There’s many that are medically discharged, many with PTSD and insomnia health conditions… all of those things we see our factors removed.”

She praised Pro Patria’s approach: “What they were doing was right from the very groundwork, putting in place all of the factors that would enable people to engage. They’re putting in social prescribing activities without knowing that they were putting in social prescribed activities. They were putting in the ordinary, everyday moments that enable people to connect.”

Finding the Right Fit

Social prescribing, Dr Worsley warned, is not a “one size fits all” approach: “It’s not just something to do to make your time go by… What we’re looking here is much more than that. We’re looking at how do you find the three things that are actually going to tip you or turn you into a stronger sense of yourself?”

She summarised: “Social prescribing uses strongest resource resilient factors. You link three factors together in an activity. It links back to the person's core belief. It enhances belonging and significance, and it changes over time.”

Measuring Impact

Dr Worsley shared results from the Resilience Centre’s work: “Everybody that comes through the resilience centre gets to do the resilience report at the very beginning… They get their own report back. It’s then they can see themselves, where their strengths are.” She noted, “Anxiety seems to decrease… the more factors that you have that are strong… depression will be down the more factors that you have that are strong. However, we’re a little bit surprised… stress is increased the more factors that you have in the doughnut. If you’ve got a busy life, yeah, no time for depression or anxiety. You just got to do the next thing. But you’re so totally stressed and you’re spinning plates.”

Dr Worsley’s message was clear: “What we do at the resilience work is always being on guard… looking out for where are the factors that are actually working for this particular person. There’s no one size fits all. It’s just, what are the factors that are working for this person.”

As we continue our work at the Pro Patria Centre, Dr Worsley’s insights inspire us to look for “the ordinary, everyday magic” in our community, and to build resilience by connecting, supporting, and understanding every individual’s unique journey.

Pro Patria Centre, 12 Months On Conference Team