“Resilience presents a challenge for psychologists.” Maria
Konnikova writes in her February New
Yorker article, How People Learn To
Be Resilient. “Whether you can be said to have it or not largely depends
not on any particular psychological test but on the way your life unfolds. If
you are lucky enough never to experience any adversity, we won’t know how
resilient you are. It’s only when you are faced with obstacles, stress and
other environmental threats that resilience, or the lack of it emerges: Do you
succumb or do you surmount?”
I don’t know about Konnikova, but I’ve never met anyone who
“was lucky enough never to experience any adversity.” Have you? After all, we
have all lived through childhood, the teen years, marriage, the early parenting
years, jobs, loss of every sort: the list is endless. In fact, to my way of
thinking, to be alive is to
experience both joy and adversity.
There’s no way out of it. Sometimes a pile up of “stressors,”-- as Konnikova
speaks of adversity—can feel like more than a person can bear.
Konnikova addresses
that issue. “What matters is the intensity and duration of the stressor.” That,
according to scientists, seems to be the effective way resilience can be tested.
The study that Konnikova referenced
in her article that interested me most was that of developmental psychologist, Emmy Werner. Werner, through
her painstaking documentation and many years of follow- through, discovered that
one third of the children she
followed who had grown up in seriously adverse circumstances developed into
“competent, confident and caring young adults.” The bottom line question was,
what set these kids apart from the other two thirds who ultimately became
wounded, destructive adults?
According to Werner, a child from a deprived background who
demonstrated resilience might—with luck-- have met up with a particularly
supportive adult: a teacher, a coach, a consistent mentor. But the surprising
discovery was that the psychology of
the one third of the children from deprived backgrounds who were found to be
resilient, was different.
These children “tended to meet the world on their own terms.
They were autonomous and independent, would seek out new experiences, and had a
positive social orientation. Most importantly,” Werner discovered, "these resilient
children had . . . an internal locus of control: they believed that they, and
not their circumstances, affected their achievements. They saw themselves as
orchestrators of their own fates.”
An “internal locus of
control.” “Orchestrators of their own fates.” Where did that awareness, that
confidence, come from in traumatized kids: kids who had been abused, kids who
had starved, kids who had little or no emotional support?
Genes? A gift from God? The accumulated knowledge of
lifetimes? Whatever you believe, it is awesome that these kids had that gift. We
should all be so wise! No whining, no blaming. Just getting on with it. That
doesn’t mean no setbacks; it means understanding our setbacks as opportunities to
learn, grow and to strengthen our ability to be compassionate.
“Stressors “ can knock
us for a loop. And if there are too many and the stress goes on over a
sustained period of time, we can simply fold—whatever shape that takes for us.
Still the evidence is clear that those who recover best and most quickly after a
stomach-slam of suffering are those who have, as I noted in Resilience: Do We Have It? How Can We Get
it? a “strong and unshakeable core of beliefs.”
Konnikova quotes clinical psychologist, George Bonanno. “Events
are not traumatic until we experience them as traumatic.” In other words trauma is in the mind and eye of the beholder.
Bonanno also argues that the people who deal best with acute
negative events are those who interpret them as opportunities to learn. (True, Mr Bonanno, but not until I have picked myself up off the floor.)
He goes on to say that the folks who do this best and
soonest were “far more likely to report having sources of spiritual and
religious support” than those who had no “core of beliefs.”
The good news? According to Bonanno, is that we “can make
ourselves less vulnerable by how we think
about things.” We can learn to “reframe them in positive terms.”
The power of positive thinking, (Dr. Norman Vincent Peale)
used to be understood as a quasi/religious concept we could ponder. Nowadays
study after scientific study have demonstrated its life-changing truth.
New to me are the results of Emmy Werner’s study, which
demonstrated over years of observation that one third of the children she followed who came from abusive and poverty backgrounds did not learn the power of positive thinking,
did not struggle to “reframe” their experiences. Instead, they were born with that power. Now that is something to ponder.
***
Reminder: Beware of pointing out to a suffering friend the
learning that might be gained from her experience. The friend has every right
to deck you. Do your best to remain compassionate; stay with her grief and allow her
to discover whenever and whatever she may from the trauma.
