“She is a very strong person. She’s been through some scary situations and she keeps going.” I am sure that more than once you have heard or made a similar comment to this one, or perhaps it was made to you after some traumatic experience. That unassailable and unchangeable strength that some people have to face extreme situations and even find opportunities for growth in them is called resilience.
In this sense, we understand extreme situations as the loss of a loved one or a catastrophe; a terminal illness and other experiences that cause one to give up and surrender. Resilience comes in the form of opportunity, in the form of an awareness that this powerful event may be the beginning of another stage.
What is resilience
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, resilience is a way of enduring the unfortunate event and finding in it a way to rebuild oneself. In positive psychology, the literature refers to post-traumatic growth as a development of the person who seeks, in the midst of chaos, a way to rebuild him or herself.
In reality, the most common is that someone who has gone through a negative experience is considered a victim who will soon (and certainly) develop a pathology. That is to say, he or she may suffer from stress or depression as a result of such a situation.
However, this is not always the case and you would be surprised at how many people become resilient and leave the victim outfit hanging on the rack. They become detached from the victim role and do not go through the period of post traumatic dysfunction in which physical and mental abilities can be impaired. On the contrary, they never stop performing and bear the resilience as a banner.
Many times, we tend to victimize people and presume that this trauma will manifest itself on a psychosomatic level sooner or later. We think that, when faced with the loss of a loved one, people go through a “protocol”. In other words, there are steps to be followed like a pain that numbs, a depression that keeps you down, and a denial that does not stop. However, this is not always the case, as demonstrated in one of the first studies in this area.
In 1989, Wortman and Silver found out that this “protocol” is not so much the case and that there are people who react differently. They suffer and elaborate on their grief, but do not develop disorders or pathologies as a result of trauma. What’s more, they encountered this post-traumatic growth that we talked about earlier.
How do we react to a traumatic experience?
The ways in which a traumatic situation can impact us are many. We will discuss only three of them.
Post-traumatic stress
One of these is the development of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), (Paton et al., 2000). It has been shown that the number of people who suffer from it is tiny and that it heals itself soon after. After the experience in question, they may develop some ‘pathology’ that will heal naturally.
For example, in the case of the explosion of the Twin Towers in New York on that fateful September 11, research confirmed these studies. One month after the attack, the PTSD of New Yorkers was 7.5%, while six months later, it had dropped to 0.6%. (Galea, Vlahovm, Ahern, Susser, Gold, Bucuvalas and Kilpatrick, 2003.) These results reveal that recovery after the traumatic event can be very quick.
At this point I would like to clarify that resilience does not imply coldness. It does not mean the absence of pain and memories and it does not mean that one cannot have nightmares or suffer from insomnia. It is simply a constructive way of dealing with pain and seeing this experience as a way of growing.
Resilience
Resistance or resilience to adversity in such a way that the ability to function in all areas of life is not lost. Moving forward in spite of pain.
Post-traumatic growth
The reality of scientific research reveals that a traumatic event can be an opportunity for a person to find new paths of personal growth. This capacity for resilience that some people have is often underestimated.
Positive emotions, the allies of resilience
Positive emotions experienced in post-traumatic times are subject to social stigma. “How can she be so well after what happened to her?” In reality, these positive emotions coexist with those negative feelings that are typical of the unfortunate situation.
However, it is these positive emotions that contribute to reducing stress and the adverse effects of such experiences. (Fredrickson, 1998). Some of these positive emotions may be gratitude, love, interest in others, etc.
The importance of feeling good when the outlook is more than discouraging lies in what benefits a person receives. Positive emotions attract positive situations and decrease the risk of depression (Fredrickson & Tugade, 2003).
Understand resilience simultaneously as the ability to come out unscathed from an adverse experience, learn from it, and improve.
Beatriz Vera Poseck, Begoña Carbelo Baquero and María Luisa Vecina Jiménez
Resilience makes us more positive, joyful, optimistic and energetic in facing the life we have been given. In this sense, humor and positive emotions are decisive factors when choosing which side we are on: victims or resilient.
Remember that pain is also necessary because new horizons emerge from it. Tears cleanse and wash the pain away. Resilience will help us see the light in the midst of so much darkness and discover the way out when there seems to be none.
In the midst of difficulty lies opportunity. -Albert Einstein.
Source: http://www.cop.es/papeles
Leave a Reply