Resilience: Three Essential Components
If you turn on the television, chances are you will be confronted by crisis. The current situation in Afghanistan, earthquake destruction in Haiti, fires burning whole towns, and hurricanes destroying parts of cities are all images we filter through. We hear the stories of survivors and their horrific losses. I’m often left with the question, how will they move on? And yet, I know, part of the answer in how they move on is their resilience.
Resilience has been studied since the mid 1950’s mostly in children and it continues to be a well-researched field today in children and adults. The common definition of resilience is adapting to adversity, bouncing back essentially from hardship. The widespread curiosity around resiliency is why some people seem to be more resilient than others and how can it be fostered. Research has looked at the variance in adversity and fluctuation in the impact of one trauma versus another. Analysis has also compared the risk factors, i.e. poverty or lack of education, versus the protections, i.e. strong parent bond, people have and how that might impact the development of resilience. It turns out there is not one simple answer or factor. Resiliency is a bit of an x-factor that has major impact on the ability to adapt, but not a clear pathway to developing more of it.
Through reading I have done, in addition to my own anecdotal references as a therapist, there are three elements I believe to be essential in resiliency.
Acceptance
After a traumatic event, the survivor is often left with questions like why me or how did this happen? It is natural to go through stages of denial, disbelief, and trying to figure out how a trauma unfolded. But it seems the faster we can move on to the “it is what it is” stage, the faster we will move forward. As someone whose career is based on analyzation, I also know that sometimes getting stuck in the minutia can be destructive. Sometimes no matter how much we want to understand the “why,” it will never make sense. Bad things happen to good people. How we move forward is what makes us resilient.
I want to be clear that acceptance doesn’t mean approval. If someone was sexually assaulted, there is an acceptance that it happened because it did, but there doesn’t ever have to be an approval of that heinous act. In the acceptance of the act, the victim or survivor is able to move toward taking their power back. Yes, this terrible thing happened and I am moving forward.
Adaptability
As living, breathing mammals in our most primal state, we seek homeostasis. When we meet change or variation, we naturally try to adapt and create a “new normal.” It is in our genetic make up to go toward adaption and in that self-regulation. If, though, we get stuck in some kind of rigidity or inflexibility, our need to adapt gets jammed. Being in an immovable state prolongs pain. It is absolutely key to try to move toward the change as the past is the past. The ability to adapt to change is deeply intertwined with the acceptance of a situation. When we can’t get past the acceptance of “what is,” it is hard to move toward the adjustment to “what is.”
Making Meaning
Victor Frankl, Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, holocaust survivor, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote, “We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed.” It has been proven essential in moving through grief, crisis, trauma, and survival to make meaning of the said events. By no means is this the cliché and often hurtful statement, “things happen for a reason.” Quite the opposite because making meaning of a situation is using our individual frame of reference to help us hold our own definition of an event. We as survivors get to decide if a trauma gets to define us or give us strength or catapult us into deeper understanding of self or allow us to put our heads down or produce something out of a trauma. In the process of making meaning, we as individuals get to take what has happened, incorporate it into the new fabric of our lives, and continue forth.
Trauma and crisis happen in our world as do beauty and joy. Resiliency allows us to keep going ever-seeking the moments that are not filled with sorrow.