Emotional Resilience

What is emotional resilience and how does it develop? What might the consequences be for someone for whom this process is disturbed?

(3613 words)

Emotional resilience is widely regarded as one of the most important factors in the development of the personality. It is the ability to cope with extreme stress, traumatic or catastrophic events and return, through adaptive reasoning, to a point of stability. We all face a number of extremely disruptive events at some point in our lives but some have a heightened degree of sensitivity that makes them more likely to find even the smallest and most trivial events troublesome. Those who are vulnerable to such events have to adapt their ability to deal with such disruption so that the perceived catastrophic event within a personal or social context does not become so overpowering that they impact upon that individual’s ability to live. An extreme example of this would be of the 2005 terrorist attacks on London, and the process whereby the majority of the people were able to remain emotionally resilient despite the fear of further imminent attacks; in particular the emotional resilience demonstrated by the London underground commuters who continued to travel by the very method of transport targeted just days before by the terrorist suicide bombers. Though this is rather an extreme example, it does illustrate the broad qualities of emotional resilience, which are adopted on a psychosocial level, as the individuals go about their daily lives. However, it has long been recognized that some individuals are far more resilient than others, and those who struggle to find the right balance in their resilience are less likely to adapt to change and disruption, incurring psychological damage. What’s more, the process of gaining and preserving emotional resilience is itself open to disruption, David Viscott argues that “when individuals are seen to have an emotional breakdown as a result of stress, what is really happening is their emotional resilience has reached a breaking point” (Viscott, 1997, p. 30). As a result of this, managing or identifying emotional resilience and protecting this process from disruptions and disturbances is an important part of helping individuals lead a consistent and happy mental life.

The development of emotional resilience is said to begin during childhood, although Brom et al, (2008), Hand (2008) and others also recognise that there is a potential for resilience to develop and change during adulthood. There is somewhat of a disagreement however, regarding the degree to which the development of emotional resilience in children is a natural occurrence of a dormant innate tendency, and the degree to which it represents a learned behaviour.  Garmezy & Streitman (1974) argue that children at risk of psychological harm are more likely to develop emotional resilience at an early age, but also state that “there is no guarantee that such resilience will necessarily prove to be a positive influence” (Garmezy & Streitman, 1974, p. 15). There has been considerable debate over the extent to which the development of emotional resilience is behavioural and/or instinctive, with some arguing (e.g. Garmezy & Streitman) that it’s fundamentally a learned construct, and others (e.g. Bernard, 1991) suggesting that children are born with an innate degree of resilience already hard wired and this resilience manifests itself in later life but can, in turn, be altered significantly by experience and/or therapy. Garmezy & Streitman identified the process of ‘adaptive distancing’ as a key element in the development of emotional resilience in both children and adults, arguing that the process allows the individual to become less emotionally concerned with the wellbeing of others (e.g. family members) and more dependent on his or her sense of self confidence, self satisfaction and self esteem, which manifests as an inner locus of control. Garmezy & Streitmen add that “in many cases, the locus of control is addictive and the child becomes more and more determined to experience this sense of empowerment” (Garmezy & Streitman, 1974, p. 17); this effectively means that the emotional resilience develops as a means by which the individual is able to progressively come to depend on his or her own emotional responses. However, if an individuals’ development of emotional resilience is disturbed, they are much more likely to be emotionally dependent on others, leading to a decreased sense of independence and quite often, a decreased sense of confidence and self esteem. As previously noted, there is a possibility that individuals who fail to develop resilience in childhood or adolescence will go on to develop emotional resilience in adulthood, although Hand (2008), notes that “learned behaviour during childhood can make it substantially more difficult for adults to make the substantial change required to become more emotionally resilient” (Hand, 2008, p. 14). In other words, emotional resilience is almost certain to be a result of both biological determined and behavioural traits, although the emphasis on each element is different within each individual.

Emotional resilience has been widely thought of as a fluid and flexible state in which the individual unconsciously and sometimes consciously, has to make certain minor or even major adjustments to his or her approach to a given situation. Disruption of the development of emotional resilience can occur when changing cultural and social factors come into play and the individual finds that their established approach has suddenly become less effective. In some extreme cases, individuals who have an existing, accepted, resilience already set are forced to reassess all aspects of their approach and they may even have to start the whole process from scratch. Michael Hand notes that although major disruptions along these lines are rare, “when it happens, the results can be severely destabilising and in many cases lead to at least some degree of mental health problem” (Hand, 2008, p. 172). There is an argument over whether emotional resilience results in problems being cured or merely dismissed and hidden: if destabilisation does result in the resilience disappearing, it may well be also possible to argue that the problem was never resolved in the first place, but it is also possible to argue that the individual involved may simply have a natural tendency toward such issues. Either way, Hand goes on to suggest that “destabilisation of emotional resilience… can often be more traumatic than the initial absence of such resilience, and can lead to a loss of self confidence and a belief that developing such resilience in the long term is impossible” (Hand, 2008, p. 174). This loss of confidence can lead the individual into a loss of emotional resilience and perhaps a transformation of their accepted resilience into something completely different, into an often less accepted and less effective form. This type of developmental disruption has lead to the notion of negative emotional resilience, i.e. “the ability of certain forms of emotional resilience to lead to negative phenomenon such as isolation, loss of confidence and even aggression” (Luthor, Doernberger & Zigler, 1993, p. 705). Effectively, this means that it would be wrong to accept that all forms of emotional resilience are positive and there are certain circumstances whereby an individual employs resilience in order to counteract the impact of specific situations and circumstances. If emotional resilience is a fluid and changeable state, it means that positive emotional resilience can become negative emotional resilience in certain situations. Luthor, Doernberger and Zielger go onto suggest that key pointers of negative resilience include a preference for isolation and a negative reaction to society, arguing that in such cases “the individual becomes resilient to factors that are perceived to be a threat to a stable life, regardless of whether such a perception is either healthy or accurate” (Luthor, Doernberger and Zielger, 1993, p. 708). In cases like this the individual would benefit from therapy to reassess their resilience and reconstruct it into a far more helpful and beneficial form.

Emotional resilience manifests itself differently in different countries; this depends on a range of factors including cultural, social, political and economic influences. For example, Fredrickson and others have noted that there is a link between emotional resilience and education, with “individuals who have gained higher qualifications developing a greater degree of emotional resilience from those with limited educational experiences”. (Fredrickson, 2001, p. 219). This suggests that emotional resilience develops, in part, thanks to an ability to intellectually deal with and reconfigure psychological factors, as well as the way in which they lead to the development of resilience. Michael P. Hand points out that if arguments such as the patterns spotted by Fredrickson are to be taken as correct, “the assumption would have to be that people with little or no education will exhibit little or no resilience, beyond a certain common baseline, and this is clearly not the case” (Hand, 2008, p. 195). Perhaps it is more appropriate to suggest that Fredrickson is seeing it as different manifestations of emotional resilience, based on environmental and experiential factors. Fredrickson argues, “education allows an individual to understand how cultural and social factors affect his or her viewpoint” (Fredrickson, 2001, p. 222). This argument, however, is based on the understanding that it is only possible to recognise these factors through analysis with individuals who are able to freely associate and discuss their understanding of these processes; individuals who lack and extensive education are perfectly capable of understanding these processes but are less able to put it into the correct intellectual terminology. So this link between education and emotional resilience is reasonably fragile and there is certainly no firm evidence to suggest or support that an extensive high level of education leads to a stronger formation of emotional resilience.

However, it’s certainly the case that national and regional factors have an impact on how resilience develops, and also how it is recognised and measured. Furthermore, David Viscott notes that “emotional resilience is at least partly self reflective, i.e. it recognises its own strengths and attempts to reinforce what it perceived to be it’s positive attributes” (Viscott, 1996, p. 218). This would suggest that changing environmental factors are able to feedback into the developmental process. This reflects the idea, discussed earlier, that resilience is not a static or fixed occurrence but rather a dynamic one that changes continually within the framework of each unique individual. For example, in a highly traditional culture, emotional resilience can be measured in the way an individual stays true to the tradition, their responsibilities and accepted behaviour, while in a more progressive, liberal culture, the social responsibility might be measured as the complete opposite, i.e. the ability to break free from tradition and accepted normality and assert their own personal choices and beliefs etc. It is clear that the debate over emotional resilience is mainly being generated from western philosophies as the theory appears to be dominated be western text. Viscott goes on to point out that “risks establishing a hegemonic approach to emotional resilience, in which the western model is perceived as somehow being more pure” (Viscott, 1996, p. 219). However, it can also be argued that this view may well exist regardless of theoretical dialogues and that cultural differences in terms of the viewpoint of emotional resilience, maybe a key marker of different national characters. This is particularly so in the case of generational differences, e.g. many older generations viewed emotional resilience as a very private matter while today models such as psychotherapy and hypnotherapy are seen as being accepted and important in the development of emotional resilience. There is no reason why such a sense of difference could not be a factor when discussing the different national and regional approaches to the subject and surely these differences also exist at every level, e.g. local, regional, national, continental etc.

Tucker and others (2007) argue that emotional resilience can in fact be viewed as a stage of a larger, narrative psychological response to a certain situation, and this emotional resilience stage is not in any way the concluding part of the story. In their studies on psychological responses to terrorism, the authors found that “although emotional resilience is often regarded as the desired end-point in the process of dealing with traumatic events such as terrorist attacks, the point of resilience can sometimes occur at the start of the process… (and) subsequently be broken down” (Tucker et al., 2007, p.234). In other words, emotional resilience can be adopted by the individual as an initial means of avoiding facing certain facts about a certain situation, and in cases such as this, post traumatic stress disorder for example, there is often a dormant emotional reaction that can result in the individual becoming emotionally upset or distressed about what happened. Tucker et al. argue that “the point at which resilience gives way to panic, fear or some other negative reaction can be several years after the incident” (Tucker et al., 2007, p. 235); they discovered that the latest occurrence of such a delayed reaction was nine years, but this is by no means the limit of the dormant period or if a limit indeed exists. This raises the question of whether resilience at such an early stage of the process is negative in the time it takes to recover and that maybe resilience is best postponed until after the event or after the initial shock has subsided. A milder but by no means trivial example of this, on a purely personal level, was my emotional reaction to being made redundant two years ago. It was a tremendous shock and I went through all the Kubler-Ross transitional responses of, shock, anger, denial, self-doubt and mild depression. Thankfully I managed to secure another position within the same company, if only for a further year. When I was subsequently made redundant again last year, my emotional resilience to this now familiar event had been delayed and developed and rather than going through all the negative emotions again, I took stock and accepted it as a way of reaching new goals. This shows that emotional resilience is a constructed state but, however, the appearance of such a state without all the prior processes of construction and the necessary mechanisms in place could produce an illusory or negative version of emotional resilience or could even indicate an entirely separate process all together. Tucker et al. don’t really come to any real conclusion on this subject, however the notion of there being different psychological processes that may be disguised as emotional resilience, while not giving the individual the same benefits, is not particularly contentious. An example might be an individual could initially appear to be exhibiting strong signs of resilience, only to be faced with a more powerful negative reaction at a later stage. This would seem to suggest, therefore, that it’s impossible to take the manifestation of emotional resilience as the concluding point of any kind of psychological narrative.

If we look a little further into the development of emotional resilience as a reaction to terrorist related trauma, we can begin to see a great deal in the way emotional resilience works. It is also important to note that trauma caused by acts of terrorism, such as the recent terrorist activists attempts at disrupting the Iraqi national elections, often has a very strong communal element. While family or personal trauma is more highly localised, affecting only the individual and possibly a few family members, terrorism on the other hand takes place on a bigger international stage and requires an approach that can deal with both personal and communal interpretations. The individual would have to deal with both these different levels of experience separately. However, Cathie Hammond notes that “in cases where an individual has to deal with multiple simultaneous manifestations of the same psychological instigator, he or she very often find a way to combine these manifestations so as to only have focus on one response” (Hammond, 2004, p. 26), for example, in the case of terrorism related trauma, an individual will often merge the private and public responses to form a joined response, this may or may not reflect that individuals true feelings to either response, it may also not represent the best possible approach to the problem. This in turn can lead to negative manifestations with the conflicting elements of that merged approach and the attempts at rationalising those conflicts. Hammond argues that “the differences between this type of emotional resilience and the concept of emotional resilience as a destination… (are) so great that it’s possibly more appropriate to consider them as separate manifestations of the same instigating factors” (Hammond, 2004, p. 27). In other words, it’s possible to see emotional resilience not as the product of a single set of circumstances but as an manifestation that can be caused by a number of factors, the exact constituency of which impact upon both the effectiveness and stability of emotional resilience itself.

Emotional resilience can therefore be seen as a key strategy employed by the majority of individuals in order to remain functional within society, and as the process whereby disruptive events are identified, analysed and then managed. It is very important that such disruptive events be not just dismissed without being considered, and fully functioning emotional resilience is not about ignoring disruptive factors or denial, but it’s about being able to deal with them and consider them without suffering extreme and negative consequences. As Brom et al. (2008) note, “emotional resilience is sometimes confused with blocking out harmful concepts, when in fact emotional resilience is the ability to consider negative influences and learn from them without being negatively affected by the forces they represent” (Brom et al., 2008, p. 65). The key to developing a strong and functional degree of emotional resilience is maintaining a balance between an acceptance of negative events and the ability to view such events within a context of a healthy approach to managing risk and reward.

Emotional resilience can be damaged or disrupted at any point and such disruption can lead to a number of possible consequences, including an emotional breakdown or the reinforcement of negative beliefs. However, it is also clear that positive reinforcement of attitudes to disruptive events will result in a much greater level of mental well being and, in some cases, to a more constructive improvement to the reaction of such events that would leave an individual less well developed, open to significant problems. Emotional resilience develops during childhood indicating that it is a construct that is both biological and experientially determined, depending on the individuals personality the influence of each approach is different; furthermore, these approaches can interact and conflict with one another which can cause the individual further emotional problems. Emotional resilience is therefore a very complex phenomenon with many different instigating factors, and a number of possible manifestations. It has long been recognised of its impact upon the growth of the personality and is perhaps arguably one of the key indicators of an individual’s ability to maintain a good state of mental health.

References

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