IIC 20: Ten Factors of Resilience

Dr. Peter Malinoski reviews how secular psychology defines resilience and discusses the ten factors that make up resilience.

[00:00:12] Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis Carpe Diem, where you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond resiliency to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and spiritual realms even healthier than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski, your host and guide with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me today. This is episode 20 and we are just starting, I’m really excited about this, because we are just starting a multi-episode deep dive into resilience. We’re going to discuss ten elements today that constitute resilience, as defined by the general literature out there on resilience. We’re going to define resilience. We’re going to cover those ten primary resilience factors from a secular perspective. From a secular perspective. We want to understand what’s going on out there, what the literature says in general. This is episode 20. It’s entitled Resilience: Ten Factors. It’s released on June 15th, 2020. And in the next episode, we are going to get into a Catholic understanding of resilience that incorporates what we know to be true by the faith. So we’re starting today with what the general literature says, the secular literature says about resilience. And then we’re going to baptize it, and we’re going to get it grounded in a Catholic worldview in the next episode. We want a solid conceptual base.

[00:01:59] We’re being catholic with a small “c” here, meaning universal. I’m drawing from many sources when I bring this together, but there’s really one book that stands out to me, one book that I’m using in particular for this episode, because of how it’s based in research, because of its simple, effective organization, because of its insights into neuroscience. And it also has great illustrative stories. These are good storytellers, these authors. So it’s more than readable. It’s engaging. The book is called Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges, and it’s by Steven Southwick and Dennis Charney. It’s in its second edition now. I like their structure. I like their emphasis on research-based evidence. I like how they’re not just drawing from their personal experience and telling their own story, but they’re drawing from literally dozens, hundreds of examples. So it’s really accessible. What does secular psychology mean by resilience? Let’s define resilience. Let’s really get in there and understand what resilience is. So it’s definition time. The American Psychological Association defines resilience as, “The process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors. It means bouncing back from difficult experiences.” That’s actually a pretty good definition. Let’s break it down. So according to the APA, the American Psychological Association, resilience is about adapting yourself to life’s demands. It’s about handling the challenges, handling the curveballs that life throws at you, handling those curveballs with poise.

[00:04:07] It’s about recovering to previous levels of functioning. It’s about getting up as many times as you’re knocked down by dangers, by misfortunes. It’s about journeying under the load of troubles, under the load of difficulties that life brings us. It’s about refusing to succumb to failure. It’s about not collapsing under stress. It’s about not getting destabilized by hardships, by tough situations. And you can actually see that in the derivation of the word from the Latin. The word resilience derives from the Latin verb resilience, meaning to jump back or to recoil. And the concept of psychological resilience draws from physics. So in physics, resilience is the ability of an elastic material, such as rubber, to absorb energy when it is deformed by some agent, and then to release that energy as it springs back to its original shape. All right, well, let’s get that into English. What does that really mean? All right. So imagine a racket ball flying back toward the racket ball player who strikes the ball with the racket. The racket squeezes the ball. It flattens the rubber. The ball absorbs the energy of the swing. And then in its resilience, that ball launches off the racket. It’s discharging all the energy that it got from the swing as it flies away, back toward the wall. That’s what resilience is. It’s about being able to absorb a blow, being able to absorb an impact, keep the energy, and then release that energy.

[00:05:56] That’s what resilience is in physics. Let’s talk a little bit about, though, what resilience is not. These are the misconceptions people have about resilience. Being resilient does not mean that you’re not going to struggle. It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to suffer. It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to experience adversity. Being resilient also doesn’t mean that hardships and challenges won’t affect you. You know that you’re some sort of rock or some sort of island, according to Paul Simon’s song, right? That it’s not stoicism, it’s not being non-reactive, it’s not being numb. It’s also not about not having needs. People who are resilient have needs. It’s not that they’re self-sufficient. So resilience is adapting well. It’s about regaining your shape when you’ve been knocked hard, just like that racket ball. Just like that racket ball springing back into shape. And resilience is not a fixed trait. It’s something that can be learned. It’s something that can be practiced. It’s something that can be improved. And that’s what this podcast series on resilience is all about. It’s all about helping you to become more resilient in the face of this coronavirus crisis so that you can be loved and that you can love God and others better. All right, so let’s get into it now, Southwick and Charney, they’re are ten factors of resilience. We’re going to list them, and then we’ll go into more depth on each one.

[00:07:40] Now remember I’m using their language here and I’m keeping their focus, which is toward a general audience. They wrote their book for a general audience. This isn’t a Christian book per se. It’s not a spiritual book per se or anything like that. They’re writing for a general audience. In the next episode, we’re going to ground the concepts of resilience in a Catholic worldview, and we’re really going to adjust these, tweak these, and understand them from a Catholic perspective. You’re also going to find all these notes in the show notes on the website soulsandhearts.com. So you don’t have to like, frantically take notes. It’s all pretty much written down for you if you want that. All right. I also promise you that in future episodes, stay with me here. In future episodes, we’re going to get into how do we develop resilience? And I’m going to give you some practical tips and guidelines to be able to do that. Right now, what we’re doing in this episode is we are pursuing understanding. We’re really trying to understand first, get the conceptual groundwork laid. Okay. Ten factors of resilience. And I’m just going to list them off. These are from Southwick and Charney. Number one, optimism. Number two, facing fear. Number three, having a moral compass, ethics, and altruism. Number four, religion and spirituality. Number five, social support. Number six, role models. Number seven, physical fitness and strengthening. Number eight, brain fitness. Number nine, cognitive and emotional flexibility.

[00:09:26] Number ten, meaning, purpose, and growth. These are the factors, the ten factors that Southwick and Charney identify as critical for resilience. And now we’re going to go into them in a little bit more detail. Optimism. All right. So they say that optimism is the belief in a brighter future, the belief that things will turn out well. The idea that with enough hard work, I will succeed. Now, they don’t want this optimism to be blind. They don’t want it to be naive. It’s not something that disconnects from the reality of the situations you find yourself in. It’s about dwelling on the positive, though. It’s about seeing the glass as half full rather than half empty. That’s optimism from Southwick and Charney in a nutshell. Number two, facing fear. They really emphasize not avoiding fear. They’re talking about not giving into fear. And they discuss how courage is not the absence of fear. It’s overcoming fear. It’s not letting fear master you. But they go beyond, just like the development of virtue. There are tested techniques that help people overcome fear. We’re going to get into those techniques, as we continue with this series. We’re going to bring in the neuroscience of fear. We’re going to learn how to work with our bodies so that biologically-based fear responses don’t overwhelm us. And we’re also going to talk about how to face fear with the support of colleagues, friends, and also with spiritual support. Southwick and Charney get into all of that in this chapter of their book. The third, a moral compass, ethics, altruism. They really emphasize that resilient people do what is right.

[00:11:19] They don’t have much patience for moral relativism. They advise having a moral compass and consulting it. They talk about getting outside yourself, not being self-absorbed. They focus in on courage here again, having a backbone, and they discuss how the choices sometimes are really extremely difficult. Number four, religion and spirituality. Here is where they draw on faith, which I just found fascinating for a book on resilience geared towards a general audience. They talk about the importance of religious religion and spirituality, and they give a lot of examples about how that has helped people be resilient in extremely difficult situations. They especially emphasize how drawing on faith is helpful when you have to face death, that death is not necessarily the end of your existence. Number five, social support. Very adamant about not being isolated, not being alone. We need to reach out. Social support protects us against physical and mental illness. It buffers us from stress. And this is all grounded in social neuroscience. There’s a whole field of social neuroscience that emphasizes the importance of social connectedness, and they summarize that research in the book in a way that other books don’t even address or mention. Number six, role models. Southwick and Charney talk about how we need role models. We can’t raise ourselves. We need mentors.

[00:13:04] We need guides. We need others to help us find our way. Parents, other relatives, teachers, coaches, friends, colleagues. And interestingly enough, and I just thought this was great. It was brilliant. They mentioned about how we need children too. Our own children, or others, often can teach and guide us in really surprising ways. Our role models are the ones that help us see our way, that help show us the way. They also discuss how we need to break out from the effects of negative role models, not just imitating our parents or others close to us in their negative aspects. And finally, they emphasize the importance of becoming a resilient role model. We, in our culture especially, need role models that can show us resilience, that can show us what it’s like to live a resilient life. Number seven, physical fitness training and strengthening. Okay, so here they bring in the body again. And it’s really critical that we focus on the body. They talk about the benefits of physical training. They talk about how we need to work with our bodies, not against them if we’re going to be resilient. And they are very practical about physical limitations. This isn’t just about you can be resilient if you have perfect physical health or a young body. They are realists when it comes to physical limitations, and I like that about their book. Number eight, brain fitness. This is about challenging your mind and heart.

[00:14:51] And here again, they get heavily into the neuroscience. They get into brain plasticity. They get into how our internal and external behaviors can rewire our brains. This is incredibly important because so much of what I have seen in the Catholic world around resiliency has to do with will training. It has to do with growing in virtue. And that is really important. But it’s not everything. We have to understand that we are embodied beings and that so much of our behavior is influenced by brain chemistry. It’s influenced by the electrochemical processes in the brain. And there are things that go on in those electrical chemical processes that we can positively impact. And it’s not directly about just growing in virtue. That’s a very limited way to look at things. We need to appreciate our embodied existence and not operate as though our body was just some sort of appendage. So I’m glad that they’re bringing that in. And we’re going to talk a lot about that because as a therapist, I’ve spent a lot more time in the last few years working with people in body-based approaches. Number nine, cognitive and emotional flexibility. Southwick and Charney start by just discussing how we need to accept reality. And that just warms my heart when I hear other authors talking about that, because I often am banging that particular drum. We need to accept what is real. And as human beings, we have all kinds of defenses, all kinds of ways that we avoid reality.

[00:16:40] We need to see things as they are. We need to appraise things accurately, and we need to respond to things as they really are. In this section, the authors also talk about gratitude and the importance of gratitude. They talk about reevaluating and reframing failure, and they also have an interesting section on seeing humor in difficult situations. Number ten, meaning, purpose and growth. Here they’re talking about making meaning out of difficult situations, making meaning out of adversity. This is directly counter to stoicism. They talk about the importance of making small differences. They talk about growing through trauma. They talk about growing after trauma. Meaning, purpose, growth. So they get into the philosophical and existential aspects of resilience. It’s not just about grinding through. It’s about making meaning. And that was really an important aspect, when we talked about grief in the previous series on grief, we talked about how making meaning out of the experience was the sixth stage of working through grief. That was added to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s original five. So that’s a summary of the concepts provided by the best of the resilience literature. We have optimism, facing fear, having a moral compass, religion and spirituality, social support, role models, physical fitness, brain fitness, cognitive and emotional flexibility, meaning, purpose and growth. So in the next episode, we’re going to get into some more examples of resilience. We’re going to be grounding these factors of resilience in a Catholic worldview.

[00:18:41] We’re going to baptize these factors and bring in the beauty, the truth, the power of our faith in a very direct and immediate way. We’re going to be asking and answering the question of, what is a Catholic resilience fully informed by our faith? What does it mean to be resilient as a Catholic? How does it look different than resilience targeted towards a general audience to even what Southwick and Charney would be advising? We’re going to look at also the common misconceptions, the false ideas, and the traps that Catholics fall into when they think about resilience from a Catholic perspective. This is something I have dealt with for decades as a Catholic therapist, so stay tuned for that. Action item time. There is no better time for you to register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community at Souls and Hearts. We just posted two one hour exclusive RCCD content videos in our community space. You can now have access to our workshop on unacknowledged grief, where we do some experiential exercises to tap into grief that you might not realize that you have, but that continues to drive your behavior in ways you recognize but you don’t understand. You can also have access to our workshop on stress management, where I teach community members breathing exercises and progressive muscle relaxation, but grounded in a Catholic worldview. So those those videos are available for you on demand in the RCCD Catholic community pages.

[00:20:31] We’re also planning more workshops. We’re focusing now on increasing resilience as a complement to these podcast episodes. We are in the process of also scheduling a meeting to discuss what our RCCD members need and want. Actually, I’m inviting you all into the planning of where this community is going in terms of what you specifically need the community. Subscription is free for the first 30 days, so there’s no risk to try it out and to see the solid, helpful resources that we have for you. And after that, it’s only $25 a month, which is really an incredible deal for the kinds of experiential learning that you’re going to get by being in the community. This community is the number one place in the whole virtual world for people like you, people who really want to grow in resilience, who want to grow in resilience psychologically, but also spiritually, who want to shut off psychological barriers to loving God and neighbor. And it’s not just so that we can feel better, but also, and more importantly, so that we can be better instruments in the hand of our Lord. So come join forces with us. Let’s get active in our conversation. Join our community, check us out at soulsandhearts.com. The Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community. I would love to see you there. All right, so that’s a wrap for today. Let’s go ahead and invoke our patroness and our patron. Our Mother Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.