What Is Resilience?

Recently, as a little personal experiment, I decided to sit down and write out all my childhood psychological wounds — the moments when I felt a sharp sense of injustice, fear, or complete helplessness.

Like the time a furious man suddenly grabbed me by the collar and, in a fit of rage, swung a huge wrench over my face. He’d mistaken me for a boy who’d been throwing rocks at passing cars from the square and had hit his. The funny part: the actual boy’s mother was right there, and when she saw how bad it had gotten, she started shouting and pointing at me — “It was him!” — to cover for her own kid. I was about eight.

Or the time I was walking my dog — a giant schnauzer I could barely manage physically as it was — and he fell into an open manhole. I pulled with everything I had while he hung there, his enormous-to-me weight dragging on the leash that had tightened around his neck, choking him. I don’t know what surge of strength and adrenaline got him out, but for a few nights afterward I was literally shaking from it. I was seven.

And what do you remember from your own childhood?

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Modern psychologists tell us that childhood traumas leave scars that can seriously shape our behaviour and our state of mind as adults.

And yet research over the past few decades shows something else: after stress or trauma, some people really do go into deep shock and take a long time to recover, while others find the strength to bounce back fairly quickly — and even come out steadier than before.

The term “resilience” is borrowed from physics, where it means a material’s ability to absorb the energy of an impact and return to its original state, keeping its properties intact.

In psychology, resilience is the ability to adapt after stressful situations, to quickly restore your inner balance and keep moving forward. And yes — resilience is a skill, one that, like a muscle, you can build.

A single post can’t cover every technique for strengthening resilience, but here are the most basic ones:

— Regular attention-focusing practices. These can be pleasant, meditative things — watching the flame of a candle or a fire — or visualizing and re-feeling the good moments that have happened to us in the past.

— Strengthening quality social ties. Having people you can tell, without embarrassment, what you’ve been through, and get honest, unconditional support in return — no criticism, no judgement, no unsolicited advice.

— Self-control. The ability to manage your impulses and emotions in critical moments.

More and more scientists are coming to agree that resilience is becoming not only our main defence in an unstable world — the thing that guards our mental health and our longevity — but also a key evolutionary strategy for humanity, essential to surviving and carrying on a healthy line.

No one is insured against stress, but anyone can learn to recover quickly and go on living a full life.

Here’s to resilience — and plenty of it! 😎