Adversity Builds Resiience

New research suggests that resilience may have at least as much to do with how often people have faced adversity in past as it does with who they are — their personality, their genes, for example — or what they’re facing now. That is, the number of life blows a person has taken may affect his or her mental toughness more than any other factor.

“Frequency makes a difference: that is the message,” said Roxane Cohen Silver, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine. “Each negative event a person faces leads to an attempt to cope, which forces people to learn about their own capabilities, about their support networks — to learn who their real friends are. That kind of learning, we think, is extremely valuable for subsequent coping,” up to a point....

It was those in the middle, those reporting two to six stressful events, who scored highest on several measures of well-being, and who showed the most resilience in response to recent hits.

In short, the findings suggest that mental toughness is something like the physical strength: It cannot develop without exercise, and it breaks down when overworked. Some people in the study reported having had more than a dozen stressful events, and it showed.

It has seems to me for a long time that resilience is like a muscle that needs to be exercised. Glad to see some research supporting this.

I also find it interested that both ends of the spectrum...those with no stressful experiences and those with lots...have the hardest time coping. The ones in the middle with 2-6 events, showed the greatest level of well being and the greatest capacity to cope well with new stressors.

This last certainly jives with my personal observations. For the newly bereaved without any prior experience with grief have a hard time making sense of how crazy and unpredictable normal grief can be. These folks need lots of support and education. On the other hand, people who have experienced multiple losses at once or in close succession are at risk for a more complicated and prolonged bereavement. It's the difference between a heavy snow storm and an avalanche. Too much, too fast can bury the best of us.

Read the whole article about these research findings On Road to Recovery, Past Adversity Provides a Map