We’ve been sold the idea of being resilient as this superpower of resurrecting from adversity. Often used interchangeably with “grit”, neuroscientist Bruce McEwen metaphorically explains resilience as “the ability to turn lemons into lemonade”.
A more technical definition as per the American Psychological Association (APA) Dictionary of Psychology would be:
The process and outcome of successfully adapting to challenging life experiences. Especially through mental, emotional, and behavioural flexibility. And change to external and internal demands.
The APA also listed down three factors that influence our ability to be resilient:
- Our perception towards difficult life events
- The availability and quality of our social resources
- Our coping strategies to manage stressful events
Building resilience is like making lemonade
Let’s connect McEwen’s lemonade analogy to APA’s three factors of resilience.
We can see that the ability to be resilient – to turn life’s lemons into lemonade, depends on whether:
1) you know that lemons can be turned into lemonade
2) you have the needed tools and resources
3) you know how to use those tools and resources
Furthermore, resilience studies in the past five decades found that these three factors boil down to one key determinant:
Resilience is largely determined by the quality of our early life relationships and stress-coping methods
Basically, our early caregivers stress-coping methods largely influences our ability to adapt to later challenges.
The significance of our early attachments on resilience
I’ve been reading a couple of books about trauma to understand why each person copes with stress differently. One of which was ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ by Boston University Professor of Psychiatry Bessel van der Kolk. Two interesting points I thought applied to our discussion of resilience:
- the quality and amount of love you receive in the first 20-years of your life is a great predictor of how you manage all kinds of difficult situations later in life.
- the brain is a use-dependent organ, how you were taught to cope with stressful situations in your developing years impacts your perception, interpretation, and expectations later on.
Based on these findings, resilience becomes ableist propaganda. Especially, when we romanticize it among the academic and professional realm without understanding its underlying mechanisms.
When we think about people who had gone through childhood abuse and violent wars. And more sadly so if they didn’t receive the resources and support to heal. Can we say that they are not resilient? Adversity does indeed create resilient humans. But unfortunately, not everyone has the privilege to refine their heuristics towards stressful situations.
In a nutshell, not everyone knows how to turn adversity into opportunity. In fact, many of us only know to surrender to life’s lemons. That the sourness is bad hence we should avoid lemons altogether. Not everyone knows how to turn lemons into lemonade. And not everyone has the tools to do so.
Four steps to cultivate true resilience
We may differ in how our past life experiences influenced our later emotional resilience. However, this does not mean we are completely at the mercy of external life events. Reality is, none of us are born resilient, but we are born malleable. It is possible to learn the art of lemonade-making later in life.
So, here are a few ways we can learn true resilience:
1) Understanding
Understand that we probably didn’t know that we could even turn adversity into opportunity to begin with. Perhaps we only knew how to react to life’s lemons destructively because of our upbringing. With this understanding, we claim a sense of agency as an adult.
2) Self-forgiveness
Many things in life are out of our control. We don’t get to pick our battles, as well as their resulting pain. Rather than forcing endurance and discipline, sometimes it’s helpful to forgive ourselves for not meeting our “resilience expectations”.
Upon understanding why we react the way we do, and how we can equip ourselves to better weather our future battles. Perhaps, we don’t always bounce back from adversity, and that’s okay. Rather than enforcing a military approach to resilience, allowing ourselves grace puts us in a better position to get back up and try again.
3) Connectedness
Relational poverty – a lack of social connectedness, is a huge impedance to cultivating resilience. Inaccessibility to social support during chaos can amplify the experience in the echo chambers of one’s own head. As we’ve seen, the lack of early quality relationships equals lesser opportunities to learn resilience. Therefore, a healthy community, even if it’s later in your life, is extremely beneficial for later resilience-building.
A healthy community is a healing community, and a healing community instills hope because it has seen its own people weather, survive and thrive.
Oprah Winfrey, American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist.
4) Exposure and practice
A core component of cultivating resilience is gradual exposure to difficult but manageable experiences. Exposure to uncomfortable experiences expands the frame of reference in terms of our emotional abilities.
While no two difficulties are ever the same, the emotions involved are remarkably similar. For example, rage, grief, fear and frustration are the core human emotions during adversity. Knowing that we’ve gotten through similar feelings reduces helplessness. Ultimately, we become more resilient people.
Concluding thoughts…
People don’t fail because they lack resilience. Rather, painful circumstances and a lack of support have set them up for helplessness. Fortunately, with the right tools, guidance, and practice, building resilience (and making lemonade) can happen at any point in life. Some of us may need more time and support. But the beauty of the human mind, body, and soul is that they all can transform and evolve.
