Resilience

When it concerns human behavior, resilience is the capacity to endure challenging or even horrifying situations, and to emerge relatively unscathed.  Resilience depends upon personal, interpersonal, and communal factors; for example a positive, can-do sense of self, family ties, and a connection to a community or social group.  Resilience entails the willingness to process a traumatic event or situation, and the willingness to embark on a journey of finding meaning within the crucible of suffering.  Good problem-solving skills help. So does the ability to be mindful of, or even to embrace the anguish, while paradoxically not being swept away by it.  Resilience is enabled by another person who is truly present, who in effect bears witness to the trauma and to the pain and dysregulation which results.  An area of resilience which is less understood is the existence of resilient children in abusive families.  A child in an abusive household has not yet had the opportunity to develop individual coping strategies, clearly cannot rely on his family, and is generally too young to participate in a community.  Research on resilient children remains inconclusive, which leaves us free to celebrate the miracle that is personified by each such child.