What is the Enemy of Resilience?
Last week I wrote a superficial look at what resilience ‘means.’ That article was a cursory look at what most of us would find after a dedicated Google search…
but there’s so much more to it than that.
And this is where the scientists come in. I came across a paper on the National Center for Biotechnology Information when I began my search for a more scientific and holistic understanding of ‘resilience.’ It’s a synopsis of a panel from a 2013 meeting of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
The panel was organized into four areas of discussion:
(1) how do we define resilience?
(2) what are the most important determinants of resilience?
(3) how are new technologies informing the science of resilience?
(4) what are the most effective ways to enhance resilience?
When I first started reading this, I realized that the antagonist of resilience is stress. Stress effects us all and in different ways across cultures, ages, socioeconomic status and more.
Stress is the force that can lead us to break. But resilience is the capability to just bend instead.
That singular moment between bending and breaking is liminal. It’s critical. And like last week’s article, even among scientists there isn’t just one definition for ‘resilience.’ Some even wonder whether creating one all-encompassing definition would be helpful.
Resilience Exists on a Continuum
A clinical psychologist, a child development scientist, an anthropologist, and a psychiatrist all walk into a room and are asked to define resilience. What do you think each of them would have to say?
“Resilience more than likely exists on a continuum.”
Dr. George Bonanno, the clinical psychologist: “we define resilience very simply as a stable trajectory of healthy functioning after a highly adverse event.”
Dr. Rachel Yehuda, the psychiatrist and neuroscientist: she views resilience “as a process of moving forward and not returning back…resilience involves an active decision, like sobriety, that must be frequently reconfirmed. That decision is to keep moving forward.”
Dr. Ann Masten, the child development psychologist: “resilience refers to the capacity of a dynamic system to adapt successfully to disturbances that threaten the viability, the function, or the development of that system.”
Dr. Catherine Panter-Brick, the anthropologist: resilience is “a process to harness resources in order to sustain well-being.”
Notice a common theme? Nature vs. nurture.
When the Internal Meets the External
Each of their definitions describes a moment where a human meets an external force. And that force threatens the human in some way. Some people may already have coping mechanisms in place that protect them from a threatening environment. Others may not.
Additionally, some people’s environments are more threatening than others. This is why resilience makes a lot of sense when we look at it on a continuum.
Of course, I’m a little biased in leaning towards what Dr. Panter-Brick shared regarding cultural resilience:
“What matters to individuals facing adversity is a sense of ‘meaning-making’ - and what matters to resilience is a sense of hope that life does indeed make sense, despite chaos, brutality, stress, worry, or despair.”
I couldn’t help but think of Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, who - funnily enough - was mentioned on the very next page:
“This is in line with the philosophy of Viktor Frankl, who believed that it was best to focus on what is left rather than what is lost whenever possible.”
It’s easier to endure suffering when we know that there’s meaning behind it. Better yet, when we know there’s an end in sight. And oftentimes, that’s why we break instead of bend. Because we’re unsure.
That doubt creeps in and becomes captain of the ship. But instead of navigating us to safe harbors, it crashes us into the shoals.
Enhancing Resilience: Their Recommendations
We’ve looked at their definitions but what would they say when it comes to building resilience? Because, again, resilience is not something you either have or don’t have. You can cultivate it.
Dr. Bonanno refers to ‘regulatory flexibility’ which means (1) being sensitive to the context of the situation we’re in, (2) employing a ‘repertoire of behaviors,’ and (3) the ability to regroup using corrective feedback.
Dr. Panter-Brick suggests that “resilience is about achieving a ‘good enough life’ - there is a normative dimension to realizing your own goals that is very important” She closes by saying that short-term interventions to “boost” wellness may not be enough.
Dr. Masten sees the importance of timing. “[O]ur species has great potential for adaptive capacity if we provide a healthy context for development.” To do that, better resources and environments conducive to healthy development will increase societal and individual resilience.
Dr. Yehuda suggests increasing resilience before you need it: “Ideally, we want to enhance resilience before trauma occurs by practicing how we would respond to a trauma. We don’t do that in our culture. We like to live our lives with the idea that nothing bad will happen and everything is going to be all right.” But we all know that everyone at some point in their life will experience trauma.
To a layperson like me, these feel overwhelming to read at first. How do I practice regulatory flexibility? What is a good enough life? How do we create more healthy contexts for development? And how in the world do I practice my trauma response before trauma happens (without becoming cynical)?
This is why I write this newsletter. To dive into these areas. Next week we’ll take a deeper dive into one or all of these recommendations to see how we can apply them to our own lives.
Takeaways
The enemy of resilience is stress; the force that can break you if you let it.
Resilience exists on a continuum. And everyone is at a different point along that continuum.
Systems and resources are really important for cultivating resilience.
It seems that cultivating resilience requires a certain level of self-awareness of one’s environment as well as one’s goals. But those don’t exist in a vacuum - we exist within larger systems that may or may not have the resources we need to thrive.
A quick note:
This paper - which was really fun to read - discusses further potential determinants of resilience, which of course spans biology to systems to culture, along with other aspects of resilience. I don’t want to understate that discussion so if you’re interested in reading that, I’ve provided the link to the paper here: