Resilience
Maintaining or returning to healthy functioning after adversity; more an outcome built from relationships, resources and skills than a fixed personal trait.
What drives it
Explains why most people exposed to hardship do not develop lasting problems and points to what protects them: supportive relationships, a sense of control, flexible coping and meaning.
How it shows
Work
After a setback the person is shaken for a short time, then refocuses, asks for help, learns from it, and keeps relationships intact. They talk about the difficulty openly rather than pretending it didn't hurt.
Relationships
Turns to others for support in a crisis; shows warmth even under pressure; recovers from fights; can describe hard times without being overwhelmed.
Self
You feel the impact but have a sense that you will find a way; you use different coping tools depending on the situation; you know whom to call.
What tells it apart
Expressive suppression: Resilient people feel and often show the distress and then recover; a suppressor keeps a calm face that hides unprocessed distress, which surfaces later in health, sleep or relationships.
Post-traumatic growth: Resilience returns to the previous level of functioning; growth reports being changed. Many resilient people do not claim growth and do not need to.
Grit: Grit is persistence toward long-term goals; resilience is recovery after adversity. A gritty person can push on while not actually coping.
A test
Look at how the person functioned in the months after a real setback, including sleep, relationships and work, rather than at how tough they say they are.
Questions to carry
- In the months after a real setback, how did their sleep, relationships and work hold up?
- Who and what helped me come back the last time life knocked me down?
How strong the research is
moderate. Resilient outcomes after adversity are the most common trajectory, which is well replicated, but resilience is defined inconsistently (trait, process or outcome), and trait measures predict poorly.
Where it comes from
Emmy Werner, 1970s to 1990s (Kauai study); Ann Masten, 2001; George Bonanno, 2004
Sources
- Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (... trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen) (1946)