Today an online course started that dealt with a subject I have decidedly mixed but intense feelings about, and that is the subject of resilience. Resilience, for those who are not aware, in the context of developmental psychology, is based on the two factors of risk and adaptation. It means that despite hardships including trauma, war, poverty, and other difficult problems a young person or adult is basically doing alright in life–has high achievements, good physical, mental, and emotional well-being, and is able to fulfill the tasks that are expected in life (social skills, reading and writing and other educational achievements, forming close relationships, as well as rites of passage and religious commitments like baptism and learning religious texts and the like). Those who know anything about my own personal life are aware that this subject is very fraught with a lot of very deep and complicated feelings.

Resilience is not only an aspect of individual life, but it also involves larger systems. Even the resilience of a person often involves larger networks or contexts. For example, a person doing well after trauma or disaster (like war or hurricanes) will often involve the resilience of family, community, churches, businesses, and even nations as a whole. People can cope better with difficulty if they have a better social and familial network from which they can draw resources and encouragement and support. On the contrary, when larger systems break down and prove themselves not to be resilient–when families split up, when communities fail, when churches split, greater stress is placed on individuals, which makes life more difficult on people, greatly testing their resilience and making it more difficult to cope with the burdens and stresses of life, of which there are many. Yet there are some people who show themselves to be admirably resilient despite having lived harrowing lives of immense difficulty, thanks be to God.

Resilience can involve one of two different measurements. The first way that someone can be resilient is to bear well despite immense trauma. This would be someone who has lived a difficult life and who has still gotten good grades, is still a service-minded and productive member of society who has a good job, has married and has a family, has a strong faith and religious practice, and has basically been successful despite being handed a poor situation in life to deal with. Alternatively, someone can be resilient in the sense that things go poorly at first and then turnaround later on. I suppose that there could be mixed cases, where some aspects of life went well throughout and others were subject to a turnaround. That is, after all, what I hope for in my own life, that the relatively consistent areas of life will be blessed by areas that turnaround. It could happen, after all.

When I think of the protective factors that have helped me, the following are fairly prominent:

Relationships with friends, neighbors, others)
Mentor or teacher
Intelligence; good cognitive skills; smart, wise
Motivation, determination Hope, optimism
Self-control skills, self-discipline
Religion, faith, spirituality, religious practices
Talent (such as musical, athletic, artistic)

This is not to say that such areas have not caused difficulty at times (my musical and writing talents have certainly been implicated in traumas and difficulties in my life, but rather that such areas are coping mechanisms that have helped to make life possible to endure, and even at times and in some ways to thrive. Obviously, much more could be said about this, but I suppose, given the delicacy of the matter, I must leave it implied as to why this is an area of interest to me. Nor do I think I am alone in that strong interest.