Resilience – or ‘opioid for the people’? Many terms or diagnoses from the field of psychology are often misunderstood by the general public, and can lead to varying definitions and even stigma. Such terms are, for example: stress, burnout, depression, or the popularly used ‘resilience‘, which describes psychological durability or inner strength. A pretty young term, only having been introduced in the 1950s. Since the 1970s, resilience research has been an active and distinct scientific discipline, and has been applied in numerous fields, not just psychological ones.
Today, resilience is a part of psychoeducation in therapy and consulting in private, relational and corporate contexts; addressing individual patients and managers alike. The resulting questions include the following: Why is psychological resilience necessary? When is this necessity the most apparent? Can resilience be contraindicated or misinterpreted, and therefore turn into a boomerang for some people?
I want to examine this term more closely, and to showcase some connections and conclusions:
Resilience research is a young science
Inner strength as a survival strategy has been installed in people since birth and prehistoric times, long before resilience became the talk of the town, or the subject of specific training. Still, accessing their own psychological durability in times of crisis or trauma can be extremely difficult for some people. Additionally, the pre-installed program ‘psychological durability’ can be disrupted by the factors of one’s socialisation, or by growing up in a toxic environment.
In those cases, an external therapeutic impulse is necessary to resort back to it. This can be achieved through different behavioural therapy or consulting approaches. It is important to consider, however, that this support should not be misunderstood as some universal remedy or secret weapon against every kind of spiritual crisis or grievance.
Resilience broadens one’s active competence and sensitivity scale
Resilience, or psychological durability, is supposed to strengthen one’s flexibility, active competence, frustration tolerance, patience and to emotionally broaden one’s sensitivity scale. Which skills and mindsets create and improve high resilience?
I asked myself the following question: How is it possible that some Holocaust / Shoah survivors show stability, contentment, and even happiness in interviews? On the other hand, others react to any memory from over 70 years ago with signs of renewed trauma, deep grief and melancholy. Many will consider genetic differences responsible. Of course they can be a factor, but only one next to other central ones. Here are some excerpts from an interview with Elieser Ayalon, a Holocaust / Shoa survivor:
“Three generations born out of and growing up in the ashes of the Holocaust. Today, I am the happiest person in the world. My life, my children and grandchildren, I couldn’t be happier anywhere else. I always tell people: the fact that I survived as a decent person and faithful jew, who can laugh, love, and see the world in a cheerful way, is nothing short of marvellous.”
Holocaust survivor: “Today, I am the happiest person”
During my research on resilience, I recently came across the following fascinating topic: the dutchman Dr. Maurice Vanderpol, a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and Holocaust / Shoah survivor, who passed away in 2014 aged 92, was an outstanding personality in the field of resilience research. He spent decades researching the aforementioned causa and community. One conclusion he arrived at was that some concentration camp survivors were able to use an ‘inner survival mechanism’, which he coined ‘plastic shield’. A shield against acute threats and also a helpful tool for processing traumatic experiences. Here are some statements which, from his perspective, create and characterise resilience:
1.The ability to, even in dark episodes and suffering, see life in a humorous light. A distinct sense of humour, which can be pretty dark at times, positively affects one’s health, mood, and overall constitution.
2. The ability to create empathic connections with other humans. Being able to accept help, which includes the active asking for said help. People with high resilience are certainly not characterised by individualism and toughness.
3. The ability to create a ‘personal inner room’ as protection from others.
These abilities are supported by genetic predispositions in highly resilient people, or weakened in less resilient people. However, resilience can be learned by everyone. A Harvard study examining the lives of over 280 participants over the course of more than 70 years has shown evidence supporting this claim. One of the involved researches is the psychiatrist George Valliant, who ZEIT interviewed in 2010.
Empathic connections strengthen resilience
Valliant agrees with Vanderpol on this central idea: empathic connections to other people in general are arguably the most important factor for resilience. Remarkably, resilient people also show how childhood experiences, may they be difficult, don’t have to be relevant for a successful and happy life later on.
A slightly different approach to creating resilience was coined by Victor Frankl with ‘Logotherapy’ and ‘Existential Analysis’. Frankl was a Jewish doctor and the only survivor of his family after having spent multiple years in different concentration camps, before being ultimately freed by US-American troops. After the war, he started working with mentally ill people in a neurological clinic in Vienna.
‘Logotherapy’ and ‘Existential Analysis’ are therapy strategies he developed to help his patients find meaning in their lives, e.g. by asking specific questions. Recent research has long since proven how important and valuable finding an answer to this question of meaning is in order to heal from trauma and build strong resilience. One of these questions may be: Wherein lies the meaning of my experiences and how can I use them for good in the future?
‘Self Resilience Coaching’ with vigilance, attitude and mindset
These insights certainly catch one’s attention. They suggest one is mainly personally responsible for building and strengthening one’s own psychological resilience with the right attitude and mindset. Analysis, mindfulness, and awareness are surely reliable first catalysts within resilience coaching to learn and internalise the aforementioned abilities. Resilience training is about change, wherein the construction of a new evaluative frame creates new sensations and experiences. This also allows a distanced and changed perspective on burdensome topics.
Radical lyrics by Rio Reiser from the 70s express such a work of change, and can also be understood as a call for stronger resilience: “Macht kaputt, was euch kaputt macht” / “Destroy whatever is destroying you”. Aside from the political discourse, I don’t think you always have to break something in order to feel better. However, we can also understand it as a personal appeal to ourselves: in the sense that we can eliminate thoughts of not being in control of our own emotional constitution and of externalising our own responsibility.
Thanks to several key prerequisites, everyone in our society is free to make decisions on their own body and soul. We’re completely free in that, are we not? For this realisation alone we don’t need resilience coaching yet.
We also have the power to refrain from thoughts, circumstances, or behaviours that disturb our equilibrium. Or we can integrate something new into our outlook to reinstate our soul’s balance. However, there should be significant doubt about considering a permanent increase of resilience against professional or personal problems a reasonable path to take.
At least not whenever one’s health and quality of life suffer in the long term. Nonetheless, this too can be freely evaluated by the individual. Besides, it’s usually easier to stop doing something than it is to carry the burden of having to let go of it. In that regard, mental wounds are similar to a wound on the leg. How could you just let go of it? You are allowed treat and take care of it.
Change what can be changed, refrain from certain behaviours, or learn to accept what cannot be changed
I am convinced that something which cannot be changed or loved is, more often than not, better off left alone. Not doing something is significantly more helpful than doing it in spite of dissatisfaction, or being forced to do it! Diligently studying methods to become more resilient against unbearable circumstances, which could in fact be changed, is wrong. It’s a totally different thing to work on accepting things one cannot change, though.
Someone who, for example, only suggests ‘resistance communication’ or yoga as remedies for burnout or bullying is likely to also believe ginger crumb cake helps against smoker’s cough. Naturally, quitting smoking is the only sensible solution.
Sometimes, withdrawing from whatever is harming you is the only way! If I can’t stomach bad news, bad comedians, or blood sausage, because they poison my mind and guts, I simply don’t consume them. Is it really that simple? Yes! What would be the point in any kind of constructed resistance?
Resilience Berlin – or ‘the myth of the resistance fighter’
Many do not break through the walls of mental habits, though they are obviously suffering. Why? Because changes usually hurt, which, incidentally, is the only distinct characteristic of effective change. And what happens when resisting change in turn leads to much deeper wounds…?
Internalising ‘endurance chants’ and learning how to survive constant gunfire in the trenches means accepting such a state of war. That would be an unreasonable pressure on one’s health, especially when peace negotiations are very much possible.
A better alternative to omnipresent resistance is empowering people to speak up against problems, including those inside themselves, in order to act and increase one’s self-esteem. We have to clearly define ‘resilience’ within the context of a coaching-process.
What’s the intention here?
Coaching for more acceptance, to cope with grief, loss, illness, or separation, makes perfect sense. However, creating a perpetual ‘taker quality’, which is also not a real quality in boxing, leads to deaf and blind insensibility, which also extends to the empathic connections to other people. It would be an emotional indifference and a ‘freedom from pain’ which cannot be the goal of resilience coaching.
On the topic of bullying, defining and working on resilience depends on the phase one is currently in: from acute bullying to the processing that follows later on. Learning how to ignore psychological terror, aggressive verbal attacks, defamation, betrayal, and accusatory behaviour, simply putting up with ‘it’, is not an option when it comes to bullying. Change means, above all else, leaving the victim mindset!
Resilience Berlin – Acting is better than enduring!
‘Resilience’ being used as the new euthanising ‘opioid for the people’ does not at all nip the evil in the bud and can lead to mean damages due to stress. Additionally, resilience being taught to employees under the guise of a humanitarian cover, just to squeeze more performance out of them, is nothing short of invasive and abusive. The following quote by Ansgar Simon expresses this sentiment perfectly: A wagon which is too heavy will always come to a standstill, no matter how many oxen pull it.” soulboxer🥊🙏❤️