What is resilience?

Resilience literally means to rebound. The American Psychological Association defines it as “the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.” Resilience is about being able to adapt in a positive way to one’s circumstances or environment despite adversity.

What does the research say?

  • Resilience contributes to living longer. *1
  • Resilience contributes to improved immune system functioning. *2
  • Resilience can be boosted by experiencing moderate adversity. *3
  • Resilience protects against depression. *4
  • Resilience increases life satisfaction. *5

So not only are resilient people living longer, healthier lives, but they are less depressed and more satisfied with the lives that they are living. That sounds like a pretty valuable quality, no?

How can humans develop or increase resilience?

Resilience has a lot to do with how we think, how we act, and how we treat ourselves in the face of adversity. While there are a number of ways that we can increase resilience through adjusting our cognitions, behaviors, and self-treatment, four specific skills tap into all of these facets of building resilience. These skills are: positive thinking, solving problems, accepting failure, and self-compassion.

Through positive thinking, we shift our brains from over-focusing on the negative aspects of an adverse situation to noticing the whole picture, including the positive aspects, of a given situation. This shift allows us to adjust any distorted thoughts that form as a result of a negative focus to map more accurately onto reality with all of the goods, bads, and neutrals.

Through solving problems, we move from over-focusing on a problem to finding a solution. By moving onto solutions, we acknowledge that solutions are possible and available and this primes our brains to move past the problem at hand to how we’re going to solve it. Feeling competent at solving problems allows us to take chances and risks, and increases our confidence in our ability to cope.

Through accepting failure, we lean into the emotional experience of failing and allow ourselves to feel disappointment, anger, frustration, and upset. This allows us to put failure into perspective and realize that failing is part of being human. In fact, failing is a signal that we stretched ourselves to try something new or difficult, which is brave. Once failure does not feel intolerable, we can learn and grow from all of our failures.

Through self-compassion, we respond to ourselves with kindness and caring rather than criticism, making the tough stuff of life less unpleasant. When we can nurture and soothe ourselves in the face of painful experiences, we can handle these experiences and move past them.

Want to learn more?

I’ve started a five module parenting program called Be Amazing! Raising Resilient Children. I ran a pilot of the program at the beginning of the year, and participants were overwhelmingly positive in their feedback and the reported value of the program to them and their families. I am beginning to sign participants up for future groups. The groups run for five consecutive weeks (unless broken up by a federal holiday) on Mondays. The format is a webinar conducted via Zoom. If you or someone you know is interested in learning more, please go to drdanielaowen.com for information.

 

  1. Zeng, Y., & Shen, K. (2010). Resilience significantly contributes to exceptional longevity. Current gerontology and geriatrics research, 2010, 525693. https://doi.org/10.1155/2010/525693
  2. Siebert, A. (2005). The resiliency advantage: master change, thrive under pressure, and bounce back from setbacks. San Francisco, Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
  3. Seery, M. D., Holman, E. A., & Silver, R. C. (2010). Whatever does not kill us: Cumulative lifetime adversity, vulnerability, and resilience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(6), 1025–1041. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021344
  4. Wingo, A. P., Wrenn, G., Pelletier, T., Gutman, A. R., Bradley, B., & Ressler, K. J. (2010). Moderating effects of resilience on depression in individuals with a history of childhood abuse or trauma exposure. Journal of affective disorders, 126(3), 411–414. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2010.04.009
  5. Cohn, M. A., Fredrickson, B. L., Brown, S. L., Mikels, J. A., & Conway, A. M. (2009). Happiness unpacked: positive emotions increase life satisfaction by building resilience. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 9(3), 361–368. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015952