Resilience Is Not Your Aesthetic: Liam J. Wakefield on the Strength That Can’t Be Faked

For Liam J. Wakefield , resilience isn’t a glossy Instagram mantra or a medal for surviving life’s storms — it’s a muscle, forged in the quiet, unshowy work of self-awareness, emotional regulation, and human connection. In this first instalment of Hinton Magazine’s four-part series with the psychotherapist and counselling lecturer, Wakefield dismantles the myths around grit and “bouncing back”, offering instead a candid, layered vision of what it really takes to withstand — and be reshaped by — life’s inevitable fractures. With a perspective as unflinching as it is compassionate, he challenges us to trade in the performative badge of toughness for something infinitely more durable: adaptability.

Photographer: AGH Photography @aghphotographyuk

You often speak about resilience not as an inherited trait, but as something cultivated. What do you think we get wrong about the idea of resilience in modern culture?

Modern culture loves the heroic story of powering through, but it’s rarely in the way social media portrays it (im guilty of this myself). In reality, resilience is built in the slow, unglamorous work of self-reflection, regulating emotions, and developing relationships—both with others and with yourself. It’s not about being unbowed or unshaken; it’s about learning to keep moving, even if that movement is small.

It seems we’ve turned resilience into a kind of badge—one you either wear or you don’t—as though it’s an innate quality. That mindset is dangerous, because it suggests some people are “naturally tough” while others are doomed to break. As Hemingway once wrote, "The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.” There’s a beauty in that reflection: if we never allow life to break us, its impact becomes far more futile.

True resilience is less about grit and more about adaptability—the capacity to reorganise and realign yourself around what’s happening, rather than clinging to how you wish it was. Our existence is often predicated on some second-hand expectation, but really, our survival depends on our ability to adapt when life fails to meet expectations. That’s where we often get resilience wrong — in the lens through which we view it. A change in perspective can go a long way.

In a time where people are constantly bombarded by stress, comparison, and information overload, how can someone start to build a foundation of inner strength — practically and realistically?

This is something I see and hear often in my own private practice, and I’ll give you the same answer I give my patients: start by narrowing your field. Most people’s nervous systems are overstimulated not because their lives are inherently unbearable, but because of the constant, unfiltered exposure to everything. Life becomes noisy, chaotic, and messy, and without an effective way to tidy that mess, it just piles up until then it becomes unbearable.

We don’t want to be seen stopping, and we certainly don’t want to be seen falling apart, so we keep stacking more on until it overwhelms us. Instead, choose one or two things each day that truly matter, and let the rest go. Learn to pause—even for 30 seconds—before reacting to anything. That pause is where resilience begins to grow. It’s where critical thinking takes shape, and where the nervous system can start to function without triggering a threat response.

Create a daily ritual that grounds you in your body: walking without your phone, breathing slowly, or even making tea with intention. Resilience isn’t built in grand gestures; it’s the accumulation of small, deliberate acts that teach your system it can handle life without being swept away by it.

You’ve mentioned the importance of emotional regulation and self-awareness in your work. How do those play into resilience, and where does someone begin if they’ve never really examined their emotional patterns before?

You can’t respond well to life if you don’t know what’s happening inside you. Sure, you can respond ‘well enough’ to survive, but this day and age, we require a deeper understanding of self to challenged the growing rate of innate suffering. Self-awareness gives you the map; emotional regulation gives you the ability to navigate that map. Our internal landscape is both beautiful and treacherous, and I’ve seen people get lost in it in two ways: lost because they’ve never explored it, and lost because they’re endlessly wandering within it without direction.

When you have no understanding of yourself and your emotional patterns, you’re either lost or at the mercy of your impulses. If you’ve never examined your emotional patterns before, start with simple noticing: What am I feeling? Where do I feel it in my body? What does it make me want to do? At first, this can feel uncomfortable—even pointless—but over time it interrupts the cycle of reacting on autopilot.

Many people ask early in the therapeutic process if I can give them “tools and tips” to get a quick handle on this work. But life isn’t an Instagram post, and information alone doesn’t undo years of conditioning. Changing the way the brain responds to internal and external stimuli is not quick work—but every small change stacks up. Simply becoming aware of your patterns might seem like a fruitless task, yet it’s the very foundation required to create lasting change.

We often hear “bounce back” as a definition of resilience — but is that always the healthiest goal?

Sometimes “bouncing back” is the worst thing you can do. It assumes the goal is to return to how things were before — even if “before” was unsustainable or unhealthy. Freud saw the work within healing the mind as returning to a normal state of suffering. Which holds weight, because life is hard and no matter what the goal of healing is, you will always face more suffering. There are times when resilience looks like slowing down, stepping back, and letting go of certain ambitions or identities altogether. Resilience isn’t about returning unchanged; it’s about being willing to be changed by what you’ve been through, and using that change to live more deliberately. Its about Adversity-Driven Growth, utilising the pain of the current situation to become the driving force behind internalised strength. Understanding what the ‘goal’ is really matters, because we can get so caught up on expectations and destinations, that we miss the whole point of this life, and that’s the journey, even the difficult ones. 

In your work, have you noticed common blocks that stop people from developing real resilience?

Yes. The impediment to action for most people are themselves. We all wear masks, and some of the masks we wear consumed us. Masks can become the very block to our development. Its paradoxical, because we create this protective self to survive the wounds we experience, and then we mask ourselves from ever having to face it. But to overcome this, we must loosen the mask, and recognise what wound sits beneath. Three things really stand out as defensive mechanisms that act as blocks: 

• Perfectionism: The belief that you can’t fail if you’re strong, which stops people from taking the risks that build strength in the first place.

• Isolation: Thinking you have to do it alone, which robs you of one of the most reliable buffers against stress — human connection.

• Narrative traps: Clinging to a story about yourself (“I’m not the kind of person who can handle this”) instead of letting new experiences reshape that story.

How can people create personal frameworks or rituals that support resilience in everyday life?

This one is simple to say, however, it's one of the hardest things to act on. You need anchors within your life. Not the sort to hold you back or weigh you down, but ones that give you a pull to ensure you don’t slip out of alignment. Here are three I often recommend:

1. A grounding practice (something that calms your nervous system daily, such as breathwork, exercise, meditation).

2. A reflection practice (something that helps you track your emotional and mental patterns, like journaling or recording you voice dialogue).

3. A connection practice (something that keeps you meaningfully engaged with others, this one is so important, also being aware of the company you keep and if that serves you).

You have to make sure they are simple enough to stick to. Consistency is key and discipline within you own practices are paramount, because the moment you start to betray yourself, the internal negative cycle begins.

If someone is in a season where everything feels like it’s falling apart, where would you tell them to start—not just to cope, but to grow from it?

First, strip away the pressure to “be okay". So many of us walking around are not okay, but that is okay! Survival comes before growth. If you’re in deep struggle, your first job is to reduce unnecessary stressors and regulate your body. Knowing we have autonomy and agency, and that our choices remain with us is important. People quickly fall to victimhood, and the external locus of control becomes their escape from taking responsibility for their lives. 

When I see people in immediate chaos, I often just sit with them. Allow things to fall apart, until they can recognise that they are okay, they have to find the bottom so they can begin the climb. I would say to them, “Ask yourself: What has this exposed about me? what can I see now that I didn’t see before? What are my limits? My strengths? Can I express my needs?” 

The willingness to face those truths without flinching is the seed of transformation. In my practice there is a good amount of challenges. We need it, and we need to spark curiosity for the abstract pain we inflict upon ourselves, and how this can be challenged is through questioning things about our reactions. Falling apart is good, so long as we observe it and don’t bury our heads in the sand. Observation of the self-destruction means you can rebuilt through the architecture of resilience, and construct a function and structure of self that can withstand what previously it could not. 

This conversation leaves little doubt that resilience, as Wakefield sees it, is not the absence of struggle but the presence of deliberate, disciplined acts that allow us to live fully in its midst. Over the next three interviews, he’ll continue to pull back the curtain on the mechanics of emotional strength — from dismantling the masks we hide behind to finding the anchors that keep us aligned. If this opening chapter teaches us anything, it’s that resilience isn’t about returning to who we were before hardship, but about becoming someone new in its wake.