I am a big believer in balance. I believe that, ultimately, all things have balance. Whether it be the entire universe, a single cell, or my own body. Everything has the potential for balance. Up until this point, this blog has focused on trauma. I see trauma as on side of a continuum. On the trauma side are all the things that could result in an experience being traumatic and a person being traumatized. On the other side is resilience. This is the focus of today’s blog.

Resilience quite literally means the ability to withstand or recover from difficult conditions. When used in the context of trauma, resilience also refers to the ability to not just recover, but also to adapt to harsh environments. In fact, one the more popular mental health definitions of resilience is “positive adaptation despite adversity.” You will notice that all of these definitions include negative events. This is because resilience cannot be seen unless there is a reason to see it. If everything in life is optimal, there is nothing to “bounce back” from. It is only in the context of adversity that we can truly find resilience.

For years, research on resilience focused solely on the individual. Either the individual was or was not resilient. That’s all there was to it. While some still adhere to this belief, I don’t. I do not believe that anything exists out of context. Everything we do, everything we experience, everything we are, is the result of a complex, multilayered interaction of factors. When it comes to resilience these factors include individual, familial, community, and culture. All of these arenas can provide or fail to provide what are known as protective factors. Protective factors are quite literally what they sound like, factors that help protect us from the effects of trauma. Protective factors are also factors that help heal trauma.

Individual Resilience Factors

Individual resiliency factors are the ones most frequently focused on in pop psychology. They are the ones most under our control and therefore the easiest to foster. Individual factors of resilience start, though, with basic temperament, which isn’t very easy to control at all. Temperament is often thought of as innate personality. Children, from day one, have a basic temperament. Some are easy to cry, hard to soothe, and slow to warm-up. Others are more serene, quickly calmed, and easily attach to others. What exactly influences, creates, or causes this temperament is a debate I will not get into today, but the reality is this temperament effects a person’s resilience. Those individuals that are less reactive and can easily attach will often have higher resilience.

Other resilience factors that are easier to control are essentially skills. These include things like cognitive ability, self-regulation, social skills, problem focused coping, self-esteem, and a positive outlook. All of these are cognitive and behavioral skills that can be fostered, taught, and learned. All of us obviously have different capacities for learning them, but if we try, all of us, to some extent, can foster these skills. Children who are taught these skills will have greater resilience.

Familial Resilience Factors

As you can already begin to see in our discussion of individual resilience factors, even individual factors are partially dependent on the larger context. Children who have families that are capable of and willing to teach children skills are going to help build resilience. Familial resilience factors, though, go beyond simply teaching skills. In fact, studies have suggested that strongest factor in fostering resilience is the reliable presence of a sensitive, nurturing, and responsive adult.

What this means is that if there is any hope that a child will develop resilience, there needs to be an adult that is available, capable, and loving. This adult needs to have things such as healthy psychological functioning, sensitivity to a child’s emotional needs, and enough presence in the child’s life to be emotionally and physically available. A loving, present adult can help a child create a sense of safety, predictability, and control; provide the child with ways to process traumatic events; protect the child from re-traumatization; foster important skills necessary to resilience; and generally help a child heal.

This adult does not necessarily have to be the parent, and in my personal experience doesn’t always even have to be an adult. Perhaps this person is an aunt, a nanny, or even an older sibling or cousin. When the parents or primary caregivers are not capable of providing safety, another adult can be just as important in helping foster resilience in the child. And, as I said, sometimes this person is not even an adult. An adult is likely to have more control, more influence, and more experience making them the more ideal choice to foster resilience. But the world is not an ideal place. A sibling that does their best to protect another sibling can still have a huge impact on helping that child develop resilience. In some cases, these acts of protection may even help foster resilience in the individual performing them.

Community and Culture

Individuals in the community can also help a child develop resilience in the many of the same ways the family can. Their impact may not be as huge as a family member, simply because the community member simply can’t be present as frequently or as intensely. This by no means negates their impact, though. I have heard hundreds of personal stories of that one teacher who believed in me when I couldn’t even believe in myself, the pastor who helped me learn my own worth, the case worker who fought for me, or even the custodian who always listened to me. Any adult in a child’s life has the potential to make a lasting and critical impact on a child’s resilience. I personally believe that, again, this person does not have to be an adult. A caring friend or classmate can also help.

The last arena in which resilience can be learned is culture. Culture and one’s connection to it can help foster a sense of belonging. It can provide a child with role models, structure, and a sense of identity. Culture, like all arenas, though offers both protective factors and risk factors. Gender stereotypes that shame males for expressing emotions can damage a child’s already fragile sense of resilience. At the same time, though, a culture that believes you can use the adversity you experience to grow stronger can be critical in fostering resilience.

Community and culture also provide a context for behaviors, a context that can drastically alter the meaning of a specific behavior. An excellent example of this is authoritarian parenting styles . Parents that “rule with an iron fist” are typically authoritarian parents. They have high expectations, are very controlling and demanding of their children, and will punish a child severely for breaking the rules. Many studies found that this type of parenting lead to extremely poor outcomes for children. The reality was, however, that these studies were conducted on healthy individuals living in safe neighborhoods. When these studies were expanded to include people living in high crime neighborhoods who were regularly exposed to extremely risky situations, these studies found authoritarian parenting styles often lead to positive outcomes for the children. The strict rules were what helped the children quite literally survive in these harsh environments.

In a safe, low-risk neighborhood, these types of parenting tactics are overbearing and unnecessarily controlling. They are seen as undermining to the child’s autonomy. However, in high-crime, high risk neighborhoods, these strict parents were seen as loving and protective. This is because in the context of a high crime neighborhoods, the parent was acting in the best manner to protect that child. The cultural and community context of the behavior will greatly effect whether or not it is a protective factor or risk factor.

Optimal vs. Non-Optimal Resilience

This contextual view of protective factors is also beneficial in understanding resilience overall. Ultimately, resilience is about a person’s ability to cope with a situation and adapt enough to continue functioning. Much of the focus in mental health is on optimal forms of resilience. Resilience that makes people happy, productive members of society. The reality is, though, that resilience isn’t always so optimal.

Resilience can also come in negative forms, such as violence, social and emotional withdrawal, or high-risk behaviors. Many times the “symptoms” or “problem behaviors” exhibited by individuals with a traumatic history, are actually forms of resilience. Are they healthy? Probably not. But are they helping the person to survive and function? Yes.

This is not to say that overt violence or a life of prostitution if is a positive outcome. Because often these types of behaviors end up being very damaging to the individual and people around them. It’s simply important to realize that not everyone had access to someone who could teach them positive, healthy, psychological skills. It does not mean these individuals are any less resistant. They survived trauma and continued to function. But there is a reason this type of resilience is referred to as “non-optimal”. They are not the skills that will ultimately help that individual to live a healthy life and be their best.

Resilience as an On-going Process

This brings me to what I think is the best part of resilience, it is an on-going process. When you look into trauma and resilience, you often find a lot of information about protective childhood factors. But what about those children that didn’t have these protective factors? Who didn’t have someone to look out for them? Or who ended up learning non-optimal resilience? Are they just screwed? Sometimes, reading the research it would seem this way. No one was there to step in when that child needed help, now there’s nothing that can be done. That is a lie. Resilience is an on-going process. If you are alive, you still have the ability to foster resilience. It doesn’t matter if you are 2 or 20 or 80.

If you are alive, you still have the ability to foster resilience. It doesn’t matter if you are 2 or 20 or 80.

Remember those individual resilience factor skills we talked about? They are just that, skills. And skills can be learned. They are thoughts, behaviors, actions, and patterns that can be learned, developed, and fine tuned to help you live your best life. Maybe no one ever taught you how to emotionally regulate. Maybe you never learned any coping skills that really worked. Maybe you’ve never believed in yourself. All of these things are things you can learn. They will not necessarily come easy, and they will take practice, but they can still be learned.

Much of adult resilience-building, though, is focused only on these individual skills. While these are important, I feel it is equally important, if not critical, to remember the other three arenas we talked about: familial, community, and culture. After all, if you never learned to self-regulate, you are never going to magically develop this skill with no outside input. You will need to seek out others. Maybe that means books or forums or blogs, or maybe that means friends, support groups, or therapists. Seeking out new connections gives you the ability to learn these skills.

Seeking outs these new connections will also help foster optimal resilience outside of the basic skills. If your family was (and maybe still is) shit, maybe it’s time to create a new one. I am a firm believer that blood does not need to define your life or your family. You can find meaningful connections with others who support you, who love you, who are there for you when you need them. These people can become your family. You can also find less intimate support in your community. Religious services, community classes, hobby groups are just a few examples of more peripheral connections that can have an amazing impact on your resilience.

I believe that a safe connection to at least on other human being is necessary to heal from trauma. It is a necessary component of resilience. Keep in mind, this is just my opinion. To stress this opinion, though, I am going to re-iterate what I said early about familial factors that impact resilience. Only this time, I will place it in the context of adulthood for those of us that are no longer children and missed our opportunity to have a loving caregiver:

“The strongest factor in fostering resilience is the reliable presence of a sensitive, nurturing, and responsive person. What this means is that if there is any hope you will develop resilience, there needs to be someone available, capable, and loving. They need to have things such as healthy psychological functioning, sensitivity to your emotional needs, and enough presence in your life to be emotionally and physically available. A loving, present person can help you create a sense of safety, predictability, and control; provide you with ways to process traumatic events; protect you from re-traumatization; foster important skills necessary to resilience; and generally help you heal.”

Maybe this person is a therapist or case worker. Or maybe this presence is a support group you attend regularly. Or maybe the person is a lover or a friend. Whatever role they are in, I truly believe a safe relationship with another human being is critical to building resilience, no matter what age you are.

Resilience is not an innate trait that you were simply born with born without. Resilience is also not just something that is learned during childhood. Resilience is in an-going process of learning. So if you took the A.C.E questionnaire I suggested in the last blog, and your resilience score was low, don’t despair. You are the author of your story. You have the power to change your narrative. You have the ability to balance out the impact of trauma in your life by introducing the impact of resilience.

References

Resilience After Trauma in Early Development

How to Implement Trauma-informed Care to Build Resilience to Childhood Trauma

Resilience, and Evolving Concept: A review of Literature Relevant to Aboriginal Research

Parenting Styles and Their Effects

Resilience and Protective Factors

The Science of Love

The Biological Basis of Trauma: Part 3: Trauma and Adult Health