Likely since I became a mother, is when I really found the practice of resilience so relevant and saw its for its complexity. Studying this topic informally and formally has allowed me to understand how critical it is for me as an educator and mental health practitioner to understand its composition and nuances, in order to successfully enhance it within my often vulnerable student populations. There is so much attention on its nature and find ways to better build resilience in humans.
Without much consideration, I initially looked at resiliency as a new term for an age-old topic that we could maybe even connect back to Darwinism or the Stoics. I mean is resilience not just the biological instinct of life preservation? We keep going because we’re hardwired to survive right? I realized through educational pursuits and experience how much more complex, malleable, deep seated and fragile this notion of resiliency truly is when looking within an individual or culture.
When the term resilience first appeared among professionals, consensus says it was viewed as a trait that someone either had or did not have. If you lacked resilience, you were simply ill-fated. Michael Chandler used metaphors of individuals (children) being like stainless steel or celluloid.
The stainless-steel kids would face adversity and appear to let it slide right off them, whereas the plastic kids would be bent and broken. That said, as the research into risk and resiliency continued evidence surfaced that this idea was short sighted and incomplete. Some children who initially appeared to fair well after traumatic events later demonstrated residual reactions and effects. These symptoms arising years after the trauma occurred. So it began to appear, it was not as cut and dry as “stainless steel or celluloid individuals.”
We could not predict the journey of trauma and its effects on resiliency as once thought. Resilience building is better understood as bi-directional interactions, rather than just a trait that one has or just does not. There are personal characteristics such as temperament that may affect a person’s ability to be resilient, but these qualities are only a part of the concept. Support of family, community, culture, education all play a role in the topic of resilience.
Some of my favorite work came from Emma Werner, who was ground-breaking for her time. With her empirical observations, she seriously challenged the pre-existing notion that a person from hardship should be considered damaged goods and doomed for failure i.e. steel or not (Werner, 1989). Werner’s work provided hope for individuals who were coming from these rough environments with traditionally bleak, unsuccessful outcomes.
It also affirmed that when the balance between stressful life events were met with a favorable balance of protective factors, adaptation, and thereby success was most certainly possible (Werner, 1989). Werner also affirmed that the child rearing conditions were greater determinants of outcome than just the perinatal environments (1989). This gave way to new ways of how to interact with at risk populations—especially children. One of the greatest things a practitioner could do was just connect, and care.
I suppose it is easy to assume that early infancy babies are less aware of their surroundings and therefore bulletproof to long-term effects of deprivation. Do they actually know the abuse they may be subjected to? Of course, the belief that infants were not aware was again, short sighted and uninformed i.e. not considering the biological basis of brain development. The Romanian Orphanage Study and the related adoption studies were key studies that gave way to deeper realizations into the study of resilience and its detrimental relationship to early in life environmental deprivation.
The biggest takeaway for me was that these babies often weeks and months old, felt the deprivation of their caregivers, and environment, with awareness only increasing with age. The studies showed extensive global deprivation, which meant infants and toddlers were deprived of food, resources, heat, medical care, emotional bonding, social interactions and offered jail-like, routinized care. The longitudinal studies showed that these effects were real in the babies that grew up into adults. If environment can be the risk factor, can it not support enhanced protection/ resiliency?
Neglect in early in infancy definitely left permanent and lasting effects in later development, but resilience could be reacquired if these individuals had protective factors, such as a supportive caregiver or adult in their lives (Schonert-Reichl). Walsh’s work confirmed that receiving warmth from at least one adult caregiver led to greater chances to build resiliency, and enhancement of success in adulthood (Walsh, 2002).
There in lies the dawn of more person-centered approaches to resilience building. Embracing a strengths-based approach was also vital as it shifted focus to an individual’s strength. This shifted the goal to building the actual family’s resources and assets, rather than “fixing” what may be subjectively be considered broken (Walsh, 2002). Ultimately the design was to empower individuals to be able acquire the skills and resources to help themselves (Walsh, 2002). This could permanently enhance the functioning of an entire family unit.
Okay so…
My own definition of resilience now falls somewhere between the ability to persevere and find success through adversity, to not lose faith and themes of hope. Perhaps most memorably quoted by the Danish theologian Kierkagaard who spoke of hope in the following way:
“The passion for what is possible. It is not based on reality as it is not but based on reality as It may be possible tomorrow” (May, 2001).
Returning to the idea of the stainless-steel metaphor, people are both strengthened and weakened through their environments. We are not just stuck with the traits we are born with, rather are able to develop and build resiliency traits among many others to diffuse some effects of trauma. Both the inner and outer environments affect who a person becomes.
Trauma and deprivation are risk factors, but the protective factors available to a person through education, relationships, community can rebuild their resiliency and teach coping skills. The ecosystem and environment are so vital, but only once an individual can trust that this environment is actually there for them. People must be heard, feel seen in a safe, non-judgemental space, especially by practitioners.
Why does this matter?
Each person is unique with a individualized set of circumstance. There is no cookie cutter approach, each person is coming from their own world of diversity.
This is a key factor in resiliency building efforts. Globalization has dramatically changed the structure of our world, effecting the make-up and designs of our families and communities. Our environments are diverse, multicultural and blended with subcultures within mainstreams varieties. Within all of these considerations, our vulnerable populations still need to access resources.