THERAPY TALK: Resilience
The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process or outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioural flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.”
Wordy, right? So, let’s break it down.
First things first; how does one “successfully adapt” to difficult life circumstances? Are some people just better at this than others? Is resilience something you can learn? The answers to these questions are multi-faceted. In recent years, psychological research has started to describe three different types (or modes) of resilience.
- (1) NATURAL RESILIENCE – one’s natural or innate tendency towards optimism and buoyancy in the face of trying circumstances (this is, to some extent, predetermined by biology and genetics)
- (2) ADAPTIVE RESILIENCE – refers to resilience that is “earned” or developed in real-time while walking through – and surviving – difficult life experiences (these are your accumulated “battle scars” and ever-growing strength of character)
- (3) RESTORED RESILIENCE – also known as the “backup bank” of resiliency skills and strategies that you can add to and draw from as required (often built up in therapy, through conscious skill building and self-improvement work)
Now for the second half – “mental, cognitive and behavioural flexibility and adjustment to demands”.
It’s important to recognize that being resilient does not mean you have to be rubber to the world’s glue (as in “bounce off me and stick to you…”). Resilient individuals are not people who walk through life completely unaffected by the difficult things going on around them – they are people who are willing to be flexible and adaptive in order to keep moving forward. Even when life is painful and circumstances are not ideal. Even when “moving forward” is defined as taking one miniscule step at a time.
Resiliency exists in the survival aspect of personal struggle and change, not in the amount of pain experienced.
