In working on a book about building resilience I’ve read more than 90 research articles. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adverse events. Researchers have identified certain abilities as “must haves” to be resilient. After reading all the research I could find, I’d say that only a few are really critical---and one is super-critical. It’s critical because if it’s not in operation it’s hard---if not impossible---to carry our other possibly needed tactics.
In their landmark research, Conner and Davidson found that resilient people have these traits: They view change as a challenge or opportunity; They have a willingness to engage the support of others and have close and secure attachments to others; They have personal and meaningful goals; They believe in their own efficacy (the power to accomplish personally-desired goals); They have a history of past successes; They have a sense of humor, and an action-oriented approach; They are patient; They tolerate negative affect; They are open to change; They are optimistic and have faith.
Before addressing the issue of which of those traits are most essential in dealing with stress, let me remind you of what happens when you perceive what you believe is a threat or a danger.
Your body launches a series of actions designed by evolution to protect you.
Your amygdala sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus. The sympathetic nervous system sends signals to the adrenal glands. Epinephrine is pumped into the bloodstream. Your heart beats faster. More blood enters your muscles and other vital organs. Blood pressure goes up. Airways in your lungs expand and send more oxygen into your brain, increasing alertness and wariness. Sight, hearing, and other senses become sharper. Epinephrine triggers the release of glucose and fats into your bloodstream increasing your overall energy-level. Your attention is hijacked to search for bad things.
You are set up to fight, flee, freeze, appease, faint, or wait-and-endure. (The most frequent immediate response is freeze.)
You may be in a semi-panic state and begin to ruminate. Your brain is trying to process the trauma and figure out what happened. You may have a lot of strong feelings and intrusive memories at this stage. Kahneman’s System 1 thinking prevails: quick and automatic thoughts that just pop-up in your mind.
To pull out of a stress reaction, you have to help your parasympathetic nervous system do what it’s supposed to do: restore homeostasis, i.e., shut down the stress reaction.
Of all the tactics suggested in the research as helpful in this regard, one is more critical than the others in that it works DIRECTLY on the main mechanism that controls your emotions: Emotional Regulation is needed. So-called Emotional Dysregulation rules. This is at the heart of a stress reaction and refers to a poor ability to manage emotional responses or to keep them within an acceptable range of typical emotional reactions. The dysregulated emotions might be sadness, anger, irritability, or extreme frustration.
What is needed is what Conner and Davidson call “tolerance of negative affect.” Many miss the importance of the word “tolerate.” You can’t consciously will a stress reaction to go away.
And that is the key: the ability to tolerate a really lousy feeling that is not under immediate conscious control is needed. The more it is tolerated, the faster the recovery. There is no “piling on” of ineffective actions. It is while you are tolerating the negative emotion, that you can EFFECTIVELY initiate a variety of other resilience-building tactics.
A major way you can tell the degree to which a child is resilient is by knowing how he or she deals with negative emotions. Are they tolerated, or do they lead to more negative thoughts and behaviors?
This whole topic came to my attention as I was recently looking at Village Publishing instruments that I did not create, and was therefore not all that familiar with
It was because I am doing a book on resilience that I noticed that the Discipline Index assessed the area most critical to the ability to recover from stress.
The DI reflects the manner in which a child is being socialized---to delay gratification of impulses and to think before acting. This is emotional regulation. Kids with poor emotional regulation do more poorly in school, have poor relationships with peers, seek out peers who also have problems, and fail to negotiate the perils of childhood and adolescence very well.
And they need help to develop the skills of resilience.
Thanks for visiting Village Publishing, Barry Bricklin, Ph.D.