Building resources and resilience: Why we should think about positive emotions when working with children, their families and their schools

Recent research in the field of positive psychology emphasises the important role positive emotions play, not only in overall human well-being, but also in the development of resilience. In this paper, we use Barbara Fredrickson’s ‘broaden and build’ theory of positive emotions (Fredrickson, 2003) to explain the importance of generating positive emotions in the therapy room in addition to attending to the problems that our clients bring. We illustrate this with some examples of school-based therapeutic group work which aims to build and cultivate resilience through an ‘upward spiral’ of positive emotions. These examples also demonstrate the importance of including the child’s community in this work: their family, peers and school.