There’s lots of talk about resilience these days and just as many questions about what it is, the characteristics of resilient individuals and whether and to what extent it can be learned.   

The experience of “stressful” or “traumatic” events doesn’t predict how individuals will react in the long run. Living through adversity, whether it is chronic to your environment or a single catastrophic event, doesn’t necessarily doom you to a life of suffering going forward. What matters is whether that adversity becomes traumatizing. Negative thinking, rumination and worst case explanations of our life experiences can make us vulnerable to being traumatized. The good news is skills that increase resilience can be learned. In other words, we can make ourselves less vulnerable to suffering by how we think about and make sense of our life experiences.

What is Resilience?

No consensus exists on how to define “resilience.”

My favorite definition is, “the human capacity to face, overcome, and even be strengthened by experiences of adversity” (Grothberg, 1997). It is not a fixed personality characteristic; rather it is a process that we practice day-to-day and draw on in times of high stress.

Debunking six myths about what resilience is helps make sense of what resilience is (and isn’t).

Myth #1: Resilience is about bouncing back. This implies almost a yo-yo effect between trauma and recovery. Resilience is more like weathering the day-to-day ups and downs unperturbed so that when/if trauma occurs you have the skills to come through the storm relatively unscathed, perhaps even growing in the process.

Myth #2: Resilience is a fixed personality trait. This implies you either have it or you don’t. As with most opposites, it’s a continuum. Over our lifetime, we move up and down the continuum in response to the external environment and our internal capacity at a moment in time. People can reach a breaking point where their resilience decreases. They can learn skills that increase their resilience. The more we practice resilience the more our resilience increases.

Myth #3: Resilience is only needed when in times of trauma. Nothing could be further from the truth. You have ups and downs every day. Someone says something that hurts. A driver cuts us off in traffic. Your teen says he hates you. Depending on your resilience in those moments, you may stew for days or let it go almost immediately or somewhere in between. As importantly, resilience is not available to you in times of trauma if you don’t practice it day-to-day.

Myth #4: Resilience is rare. This simply is not true. If it were true, all people would be plagued by racing worry thoughts and thoughts rehashing the past. Resilience is what gets through not only the big “T” traumas but also the little “t” traumas of day to day experience – invalidation, disrespect, meanness as well as the little traumas we inflict on ourselves internally as well – self-judgment, debilitating core beliefs and secondary emotions, like excessive guilt and shame.

Myth #5: Resilience is the equivalent of stuffing your emotions. Not so! Resilience involves noticing, acknowledging and letting go of your emotions, both “good” and “bad,” as they come up and maybe learning from them. When we let stuffed emotions accumulate, eventually they come out, most often as depression, chronic anger or bursts of rage.

Myth #6: Resilience is a form of self-discipline or willpower. Untrue. Willpower only gets you so far and eventually it runs out and you have to replace it with some kind of automatic or near automatic thoughts and behavior, which requires mindful self-awareness, learning skills to replace habitual patterns and practice, practice, practice.

Characteristics of Resilient Adults

What protects individuals from becoming overwhelmed with stress and what skills are used to regulate stress are important factors in resilience. While these factors are closely inter-related, researchers explain them with different frameworks from different perspectives.

Instead of sharing one coherent framework, I’ve decided to share characteristics of resilient adults from several academic perspectives. While the perspectives overlap, no single perspective seems to capture the big picture. Clearly, the research is a work in progress (isn’t it always?).

Acceptance and Change Skills: Resilient individuals possess a set of learnable skills, starting with mindful awareness of thoughts, emotions and behaviors followed by distress tolerance, emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness.

Personal attributes also contribute to resilience, such as internal locus of control, pro-social behavior, empathy, positive self-image, optimism and the ability to organize daily responsibilities. Resilient individuals also are more adaptable to change than vulnerable people.

Support network: Supportive relationships with family and friends are critically important in all of the approaches.

Sense of coherence, yet another perspective, says three factors contribute to resilience: (1) a sense of purpose or meaning, which makes coping desirable; (2) manageability, a sense that the individual can access the resources needed to cope; and (3) comprehensibility, the perception that the world makes sense at least at some level.

Narratives of people who have not only survived but also thrived also increase resilience. These are stories of people like Victor Frankl or Nelson Mandela as well as the lesser-known stories of friends, family and neighbors.

Cognitive Processes: A person’s explanatory style shapes the meaning they give to adversity. The habit of negative thinking – worry thoughts and rehashing of past experiences, negative core beliefs, self-judgment and so on – create a lens through which individuals interpret adversity. Conversely, positive thinking contributes to resilience.

Five Broad Strategies

More recently, a group of researchers distilled wide-ranging factors into five broad strategies aimed at developing and maintaining resilience. These include:

(1) Building positive, supportive relationships 

(2) Maintaining positivity through laughter, optimism, and positive emotions 

(3) Developing emotional insight to understand one’s own risk and protective factors (e.g., the need for self-care) 

(4) Using life balance and spirituality to give meaning and coherence 

(5) Becoming more mindfully aware of thoughts, emotions and behaviors and self-reflective about them. 

Resilience Can Be Learned (to a point)

Taken together, these skills, attributes and other protective factors are both within and outside the control of the individual. Acceptance and change skills are learned in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT). Some personal attributes can be cultivated and adapted, even something as seemingly unchangeable as optimism can be cultivated using a combination of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Positive Psychology.

Negative thinking can be changed, more positive explanatory styles learned and narratives transformed. Together, these therapies enable individuals to develop a comprehensive set of skills that support them through challenging times so that they not only survive but even evolve and grow.

As teaching resilience has increased in popularity, there are growing concerns about whether the growing focus may increase victim-blaming. While resilience can be learned to a degree, some characteristics of resilience are beyond the control of the individual. This means that individuals may be constrained in how resilient they can become.

It is a false dichotomy to say that individuals are resilient or not resilient; rather, they can learn to be more resilient. Sensitivity is required to accept individuals where they are and challenge them to improve without expecting too much.

How Resilient Are You?

To get a sense of how resilient you are, take this quiz, adapted from Al Siebert’s book The Resiliency Advantage and found in The Five Best Ways to Build Resilience. The late Al Siebert, PhD, was founder of the Al Siebert Resiliency Center in Portland, Oregon.

Rate yourself from 1 to 5 (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree): 

• I’m usually optimistic. I see difficulties as temporary and expect to overcome them. 

• Feelings of anger, loss and discouragement don’t last long. 

• I can tolerate high levels of ambiguity and uncertainty about situations. 

• I adapt quickly to new developments. I’m curious. I ask questions. 

• I’m playful. I find the humor in rough situations, and can laugh at myself. 

• I learn valuable lessons from my experiences and from the experiences of others. 

• I’m good at solving problems. I’m good at making things work well. 

• I’m strong and durable. I hold up well during tough times. 

• I’ve converted misfortune into good luck and found benefits in bad experiences. 

Less than 20: Low Resilience — You may have trouble handling pressure or setbacks, and may feel deeply hurt by any criticism. When things don’t go well, you may feel helpless and without hope. Consider seeking some professional therapy to help develop your resiliency skills. Connect with others who share your developmental goals through a skills group. Call St Louis DBT at 314-932-7415 or email info@stldbt.com to talk to a therapist about how we can help. 

20–30: Some Resilience — You have some valuable pro-resiliency skills, but also plenty of room for improvement. Strive to strengthen the characteristics you already have and to cultivate the characteristics you lack. You may also wish to seek therapy to help you develop your skills. 

30–35: Adequate Resilience — You are a self-motivated learner who recovers well from most challenges. Learning more about resilience, and consciously building your resiliency skills, will empower you to find more joy in life, even in the face of adversity. 

35–45: Highly Resilient — You bounce back well from life’s setbacks and can thrive even under pressure. You could be of service to others who are trying to cope better with adversity. 

Sandra Miller, MSW, LCSW and sometimes blogger, promotes Mindfulness and well-being. She is currently running the Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy courses at St. Louis DBT, and leads the Mindfulness Based Cognitive therapy Couples courses also.