Resiliency: What Keeps Us Going During Hardship
I-95 in Philadelphia can be an interesting place. Sometimes, I’m on my way and see someone driving a severely beat-up car. The bumper is missing or falling off (candidly, the bumper on my own vehicle is currently hanging a tad loose). Or, the car’s body is scraped, dented, rusted, or filled with holes. Every once in a while, I see duct tape and cardboard covering up a hole where there used to be a window. Nonetheless, most of these cars drive perfectly fine. I usually take a second look at these beat-up cars and think, “What keeps it driving so smoothly if it looks like that?”
Similarly, there are people in our lives who have been through severe hardship. We might look at them and wonder, “How are they able to keep going after all that?” This is called resiliency.
Resiliency has become a popular topic in recent years. Studies on resiliency look at what contributes to people’s ability to cope and thrive in the midst of hardship. This is an important topic to research, given the presence of hardship all around the world. Indeed, this is the focus of our lives as Christians: finding joy in suffering, strength in seasons of hardship, and hope in the midst of hopelessness.
What Is Resiliency?
A singular definition of resilience is tough to nail down as it has evolved and is the subject of intense study. Nonetheless, there are a few points of agreement. [1]
Resiliency is:
The ability to “bend, not break, bounce back, and perhaps even grow in the face of adverse experiences”
A “stable trajectory of healthy functioning after a highly adverse event”
“A process of moving forward and not returning back”
The “capacity of a dynamic system to adapt successfully to disturbances that threaten the viability, the function, or the development of that system”
The “process to harness resources to sustain well-being”
But that’s all sort of technical, so what are we talking about? Resiliency is a person’s ability to look at the difficulties of life and continue moving forward toward health.
Given the unpredictability of life that we all experience, we are bound to encounter situations where we don’t know what to do. With that uncertainty come fear, despondency, anger, and other emotions that signal that something is wrong. Life is not going the way we thought it would or the way we wanted it to. In moments like these, our resiliency is revealed. And in this revealing, there is an opportunity to adapt—which often involves grief. If we are going to adapt, there is a “letting go” of what we desire our life to be and an embracing that we will have to build something new.
What Contributes To Resiliency?
There are a few key factors that contribute to resiliency:
Strong support systems
Better opportunities
Close relationships that provide emotional security
Protective and supportive caregivers
A sense of hope and purpose
A sense of agency
While these factors certainly don’t guarantee that we won’t encounter suffering, they do provide a very steady foundation from which we can wrestle with these issues without losing hope or resigning to defeat. In fact, with this foundation, troubles can even help move us into a place of greater emotional and spiritual maturity.
Psychiatrist Dr. Rachel Yehuda wrote, “A culture that expects to deal with adversity will deal with it better.” [1] Unfortunately, western culture’s value of comfort and convenience does not prepare us well to be resilient. We expect to get what we want when we want it and with the least amount of effort possible. While comfort and convenience are not inherently bad, relying on them excessively is actually counterproductive in building resiliency. They can take us away from more stable and healthy forms of resiliency.
What Does It Mean To Be A Resilient Christian?
For Christian readers, the primary question is this: How does resiliency apply to our lives as disciples of Jesus? A few of the qualities that enhance resiliency that were discussed above are crucial to our lives as Christians as well. These are:
Our attachment to God
Being a part of a community of believers
Fostering strong, healthy relationships with friends and family
Practicing hope that provides meaning and strength during suffering
These are primarily emotional and spiritual resources we have that contribute to resiliency. If there is anything that is going to increase resiliency, it’s the presence of deep and intimate relationships. That is one of the reasons that CCCRD has a long acronym; the “RD” or “relationship development” piece of therapy is vital. We want to provide you with short-term tools for symptom reduction, but what we find even more important is heart change that gives you the ability to have a healthy, steadfast dependence on God and the relationships around you.
One of the most significant aspects of being disciples of Jesus that is exclusive to us is that our ability to be resilient does not depend on our own strength. Instead, we have the hope and faith of Jesus’ victory over death and sin: “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” If we can internalize this truth, we are set up to be resilient in the face of the world’s troubles.
[1] Southwick, S. M., Bonanno, G. A., Masten, A. S., Panter-Brick, C., & Yehuda, R. (2014). Resilience definitions, theory, and challenges: interdisciplinary perspectives. European journal of psychotraumatology, 5, 10.3402/ejpt.v5.25338. https://doi.org/10.3402/ejpt.v5.25338