When a person makes the decision to create awareness of their physiological function and increase their resilience, courage is required. Our team at The Resilient Mind project would like to thank those who have allowed their testimonies to be shared–it provides encouragement to those who are beginning or continuing this journey.

To Whom It May Concern:
We would like to thank The Resilient Mind organization for partnering with KidsPlay Foundation to hold The Resilient Mind event on January 11th, 2020! Our team was very happy with the results of the event and was educated on resiliency through the many fun ways it was taught. We had a great response from everyone who attended The Resilient Mind event. Over 150 youth and families got an opportunity to learn skills and techniques to strengthen their mental health. We were very happy with the results and hope to hold more events like this in the future!

Respectfully,
The Kids Play Foundation Team

As former Manitoba Minister of Health, transferring from 9 years in public service to private health care consulting was a challenging transition. Most of my career, I focused on developing my IQ, but through The Resilient Mind executive program, I have developed my EQ (emotional quotient). The trickle-down effect on my executive capabilities has been like a secret weapon in reducing my stress and increasing engagement with people. I would like to thank the team at The Resilient Mind project and highly recommend it.

The Resilient Mind executive training gave me the same feeling you get when you’ve come home for the holidays to your parents’ place. What we have here is an honest-to-goodness experience in an environment one goes to reflect on whatever it is their dodging in life. My experience helped me create more awareness of my psychological functions in order to optimize them to reduce stress and increase quality of life.

I began working with the team at The Resilient Mind project at a time when everything in my life was unraveling. Marriage, family, and career were all in broken pieces around me. It was mentoring that cut through pain and confusion, providing some light to the path ahead. My mentor Vic, has a tremendous ability to really listen, to understand the uniqueness of a situation, to embrace the complexity, and boil things down to the simple core truths, that become anchors and navigation in the storm of confusion and turmoil.

His mentoring is characterized by humility, intelligence, “real-life” experience, authority, and deep care for the individual he’s working with. He is well-read and knowledgeable in the academic side of counseling, business and human behavior, he applies it – and yet it’s always customized to the individual, practical and “down to earth”. I would highly recommend the team at The Resilient Mind project – I have personally benefited from it and I continue to rely on it.

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I completed the The Resilient Mind program to help me overcome chronic stress, that was beginning to turn into mental health struggles. I worked with Vic for mentoring during this time and found his skills, combined with his dedication to my health, to be the impetus that allowed me to not only regain a strong state of mental health, but have recently gained strong leadership competencies with employee in a new phase of leadership training, pertaining to my work as a business owner.

Currently, my partner and I retain the team at The Resilient Mind mentoring to continue building resilience. I want to thank the team at The Resilient Mind for their dedication and the support they have provided.

I first started working with the team at The Resilient Mind project to help my husband, both in his personal and work life. My intent was to be there for support. My husband was dealing with a lot of stress, so our marriage was suffering in every area and his business was about to go under.

I felt that if my husband received the help, everything he needed would work out. I had done a lot of work on myself in the past years and thought that I was fine in dealing with all the stress around me. Well, I was so wrong. It didn’t take long for the team at The Resilient Mind to see that I was shut down, I was angry and blaming my husband for the situation we were in, I was also gaining a lot of weight and not taking care of myself, I was surviving but not by much. Looking back, I can see now that I had given up on being in a loving nurturing relationship with my husband. I was settling, this was affecting my relationships with my children, my friends and my co-workers.

The mentor started working with us one on one and as a couple, looking at what was important to each of us in our relationship and as individuals. He put a strategy together providing me with tools that helped to regulate the anger and deal with the stress, taught us to check in with each other when things aren’t going right or if one of us is having a bad day. In the past we would be upset and take it out on each other because we did not understand how to communicate what was really going on to one another.

Working with my mentor at The Resilient Mind project helped me realize that I needed to be committed to changing the way I lived my life, otherwise nothing was going to change.

The team at The Resilient Mind Project has given my marriage the love and tenderness it was missing, I enjoy being with my husband, we communicate, we have more intimacy, life is fun again. I was held accountable in a positive nurturing way, providing me with examples of ways to deal with my stress, it taught me how to communicate with my husband so that he would understand me. I continue to work with the team at The Resilient Mind because I want to be the best that I can be.

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I was introduced to the team at The Resilient Mind Project when I showed up at a group session Vic was conducting-which in essence was a group of men who mostly attended to regain mental well-being or restore relationship fractures. I felt so worthless and undeserving of anyone’s attention and love because I was filled with shame and self-loathing, but Vic began pursuing a relationship with me.

Words like “why is he spending time with me, or does he not know how worthless I am?” filled my mind. Yet, he continued to pursue me and sharing his personal struggles and failures to bring equalization in the relationship. If he could make it, so could I.

I had a hard time relating to this Demi-God. I was a victim and he was a victor.

On the Christmas holidays, I went to the theatre to watch Avatar. As I was coming out, I ran into Vic again. He asked how I was doing. Very depressed, I replied. He offered to take me out for coffee. I was surprised that he would give up going to the movies to spend time with me. John Gottman from the book ‘ The Science of Trust’ describes this as a sliding door moment.

When you are willing to sacrifice your desires for another, this creates huge trust bonds, as Gottman says. Over coffee and a meal which he generously paid for (as usual), I shared my story and my pain.

I asked if he knew anyone who would be willing to mentor me. I never conceived of him offering to do it, because of my victim mentality and self-loathing. He agreed to mentor me as long as I got signed up for the full program to deal with some of the core drivers causing my struggles. I would have done anything! I was so desperate for change.

For a few years Vic was like a father to me. My dad rarely spent time with me, and I was starving for validation. We would meet once a week and stay connected with me via email and text. Vic weekly sessions occurred while we hiked, but little did I realize the importance cardio played in my recovery.

Had the team at The Resilient Mind not poured their life into me and kept believing in me, I would not be a man who replaced mental health struggles with confidence, peace, contentment and most of all the skills to have healthy relationships. The team at The Resilient Mind helped me realize even in this state – I still have worth. I learned how to love myself by realizing I am not defined by my last worst behavior. I am no longer a depressed alcoholic with no purpose to my life. I am now a beloved father and friend to many and recently mentor to others.

Over the past 3 years I have received great benefit from the wisdom and guidance The Resilient Mind provided for me. As the President and CEO of Unlimited Contracting Inc., I have come to see the close relationship between my personal growth and development and the success of my business and team. Vic’s mentoring has anchored me with practical results-driven advice that is suited to my needs and built on his experience in the corporate world and behavioral health.

The strong personal connection that the team at The Resilient Mind has established with me personally, as well as our team is the driving factor for the continued success in our working relationship. My trust in the team at The Resilient Mind and his professionalism, has been built in the trenches of growing our company through a tough recession. The mentoring and guidance that the team at The Resilient Mind has shared has helped us double our corporate revenue for the past 3 consecutive years!

I am thankful to have met the team at The Resilient Mind project, who has helped me evolve as a person and a leader. I would not be the leader I am today apart from Vic’s guidance – and I can also say, that neither would my relationship skills be where they are without his mentoring.

Without hesitation I recommend the team at The Resilient Mind as a high-value asset, personally and for my professional life.

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My husband and I began The Resilient Mind project to make improvements in our business and to deal with our stress. The first thing that occurred was for me to realize that I struggled to assert myself. The first thing I learned was to increase my confidence and as I did, the respect from my husband and employees increased. It was a powerful experience to see my self-confidence and emotional intelligence increase. Thanks to all of you at The Resilient Mind for your support.

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I began The Resilient Mind program back in 2010 because I believed my business and my marriage were on the rocks, and somehow the whole thing was connected. Vic my mentor, taught me how to handle my stress so that I could focus my mind to the difficulties in front of me, and find solutions and not wallow in despair. Since then, I have right-sided my business and we are moving forward with a much better plan for the future, and much happier employees. My wife and I are also moving in a much more cohesive and loving way. By regulating my emotions, I communicate much deeper with my wife and clearer with my employees.

The experience working with the team at The Resilient Mind, I believe, has saved my company and my marriage. The team at The Resilient Mind was nurturing as I discovered my pain, and direct in letting me know when it was time to take action.

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I have completed The Resilient Mind in-house and after-care program. It was an amazing experience. I feel extremely confident that now as I continue the after-care program each week, I will be able to continue my progress. The team at The Resilient Mind has a way of making certain feeling surface in me that I obviously need to look at.

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When I began The Resilient Mind program, I was not really sure what to expect – but I knew I needed to make changes in my life and take action but was not sure how to start or where to get support. Very early into the program, I was challenged to observe my thought and emotional process as to how I perceived myself and my circumstances around me. The fact that the challenge was given in empathy and gentleness allowed me for the first time in my life to receive this brutally candid feedback… I was enlightened. I was then left with the decision to stay in this place or move on. Working with the team at The Resilient Mind and my mentor has been a powerful experience for me as an Immigrant, lower social-economic, 35 year old woman. I am in my third month of aftercare and a summary statement to share my experience would be: my self confidence has been significantly increased and I don’t fall into the hole of discouragement as often, but when I do – I have the strength, skills and support from the team at The Resilient Mind to climb out. My next step is starting my own book keeping business, which is a new wall for me to climb- but being I have climbed so many other walls in the last 3 months, I am confident I can climb this one. Thanks to all the staff at The Resilient Mind for my new lease on life.

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I am a Manager at a Downtown Eastside non-profit, and was invited by senior management to attend a seven-week resilient training course created by The Resilient Mind project. I was profoundly impacted by this course as it was a catalyst for personal and professional life transforming change. Through the course, I was given exercises that helped me to develop tools to de-escalate when faced with emotional challenges. I, for the very first time reached out and asked for help while escalated. I was always aware of my escalation but had no idea how to de-escalate. Because of this course, I had a profound shift in thinking. I began to acknowledge my needs instead of handling toxic emotions all on my own.

I didn’t have to fear my emotions anymore because I had a plan of action to move through them. I created a mantra that changed the way I viewed myself. “I am an emotionally wise woman. When I become escalated, I will choose to employ a healthy tool from my toolbox to bring me back to a place of wellbeing. Once I am regulated, I can move forward from a healthy place.” My experience at the Alive Wellness Centre was just as fruitful. During my stay, I became aware of a pattern of distrust with others that caused me to isolate from others. This exasperated my ability to create healthy relationships. I have suffered in the past from persistent depressive disorder. I believe the tools and breakthroughs I received from these two programs contributed to my remission from this disorder.

Resiliency at Work, East End Vancouver

My partner and I celebrated our 1-year anniversary… It’s been so nice and peaceful. I am doing much better these days. I saw Judy in a van a couple of weeks ago and she is doing better too. That’s always encouraging to see.

I’m keeping myself busy with lots of fun summer activities planned. When I start to feel down, I find that I am a lot more aware of it and try to understand the root of it, and if I can’t make myself feel better, to just go with it.

I started taking an online class through Yorkville University: Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology. I have always been fascinated by psychology, and to turn a negative into a positive, I have learned so much through my mental health struggles, especially with PTSD and The Resilient Mind program. So, thanks for all your support along the way. It makes a big difference! I have been focusing on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for depression and finding this is the most powerful approach for me (depression wise). My PTSD symptoms have decreased so drastically that instead of PTSD taking control over my life, I have taken control over it. Sure, symptoms arise here and there, but I am much more aware of it, and am usually able to de-escalate quickly. It’s pretty amazing. I am definitely on the healing path, but damn I wish it wouldn’t be so slow! I can see the little glimpses of hope that I have now that I didn’t — and making more solid plans for Participant in The Resilient Mind PTS recovery program.

Participant of the PTSD recovery program

I started my counseling practicum and have been seeing clients now and OMG I am so happy and loving it! I have had such positive feedback and my clients are all so thankful for me – it’s such an amazing feeling! I never knew I could be so happy ever and feel like a different person. I have an amazing relationship and life is so good! Thought I would share my happiness with you and success story. Vic you played a major role in my recovery and you will forever hold a special place in my heart 💗.