Resilience is an essential skill as it protects us from the impact of adversity and helps us get back up after a fall. Being resilient doesn't mean becoming invulnerable, but rather being able to take better hits and even use them to grow. Viktor Frankl, in fact, a psychiatrist who survived the Nazi extermination camps, was convinced that "The man who gets up is even stronger than the one who never fell".
What does "resilience" mean?
In 1992, the American psychologist Emmy Werner was on Kauai, one of the islands of the Hawaiian archipelago, when she was struck by a special ability that only some people seemed to have. He analyzed over 600 children born into poverty, a third of whom had had a particularly difficult childhood because they lived in dysfunctional families marked by violence, alcoholism and mental illness.
Unsurprisingly, after 30 years many of these children presented psychological and / or social problems, but some defied the odds against them and became people with stable relationships, good mental balance and jobs they felt comfortable in.
Werner called these children "invulnerable" because she believed adversity hadn't hit them, but then realized the point wasn't that the problems were not touching them, but that they were using them as a stepping stone to overcome. Then the concept of resilience was born.
The term resilience in psychology is borrowed from physics. In physics, resilience is the ability of some materials to regain their original shape after being subjected to deforming pressure. In psychology, resilience is the ability to face stressful and / or traumatic events, overcome them and positively reorganize one's life to continue growing looking to the future.
Therefore, the meaning of resilience implies much more than returning to the previous state of equilibrium. It does not simply imply a return to normal, but it implies a transformative change that leads to learning and growth. The resilient person finds his strength in adversity.
On the other hand, resilience also includes the ability to maintain a certain emotional balance in the midst of the storm. The resilient person is not immune to suffering, but can cope with it without breaking down emotionally, maintaining a baseline level of functioning in daily life.
Therefore, “Resilience is the natural human ability to navigate life well. It is something that every human being possesses: wisdom and common sense. It means knowing how you think, who you are spiritually, where you come from and where you are going. The key is to learn how to use the innate resilience that every human being has from birth. It's about understanding our inner spirit and finding a sense of direction ", as the psychologist Iris Heavy Runner wrote.
What is resilience for?
Resilience is not a shield against suffering and pain. Being resilient is not synonymous with immunity or invulnerability. Problems, losses, or illnesses cause deep distress to everyone.
However, resilience assures us of survival in difficult times because it strengthens our self-esteem and helps us put the broken pieces together so we can move forward. Resilience allows us to give a more constructive meaning to what happens to us, so that we can use that pain or suffering as building blocks to grow.
Resilience protects us from the devastating effects of stress because it allows us to face adversity with greater equanimity, also preventing the appearance of disorders such as generalized anxiety or depression. In fact, we can better understand the concept of resilience through the different trajectories we can follow in the face of an adverse event or trauma.
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Of course, resilience is not only important emotionally but physically as well. A study conducted at the Stanford University with people diagnosed with cancer revealed that, faced with similar initial clinical conditions, those who faced the disease with a combative and resilient attitude had a better adaptation than those who took it with desperation, helplessness and fatalism.
Other research has shown that resilience helps people recover after a spinal cord injury. People who identify as resilient have also reported feeling happier and experiencing greater spiritual connection, which helps them cope with the consequences of the disease and recover.
Therefore, resilience not only helps us cope with adversity by maintaining a certain degree of control and even equidistance to find the best solution to the problem, but it also protects our health or helps us cope better with disease.
Three inspiring examples of resilience
The examples of resilience in history are countless. They are life stories marked by adversity and of people who have found the strength to overcome all problems to grow in such unfavorable conditions that they would have won all the others.
1. Hellen Keller, the girl who had everything against
Perhaps one of the most famous examples of resilience is that of Hellen Keller, who at 19 months suffered from a disease that would have marked her throughout her life and deprived her of sight and hearing, so that she would not even learn to speak.
In 1880 that level of disability was practically a sentence. However, Hellen realized that she could discover the world with her other senses and by the age of 7 she had already invented more than 60 signals to communicate with her family.
But that intelligence turned against her because it also pointed out her limitations. Frustration soon appeared and Hellen expressed it aggressively. His parents realized he needed help and hired a private teacher, Anne Sullivan.
With her help, Hellen not only learned to read and write Braille, but was also able to read people's lips by touching them with her fingers to sense movement and vibrations.
In 1904, Hellen graduated with honors and wrote the book "The Story of My Life", the first of a long series of works. He has dedicated his life to helping other people with disabilities and has lectured in different countries inspiring books and films on resilience.
2. Beethoven, the genius whose gift was taken away
Another great example of resilience was the life of Ludovicus van Beethoven. As a child he received a very strict upbringing. His father, who was an alcoholic, woke him at midnight to play in front of his friends and prevented him from playing during the day so that he could study music. As a result, he was unable to enjoy his childhood.
The family pressure was so unbearable that at the age of 17 Beethoven left for the Austrian capital. He soon had to return to greet his mother, who died of tuberculosis. Months later, his father suffered from a deep depression, his alcoholism got worse and he ended up in jail.
Young Beethoven had to take care of his younger brothers, so he spent five years teaching piano and playing the violin in a local orchestra to financially support the family. But just as he began to shine as a composer, some time after creating his First Symphony, he began to notice the first symptoms of a terrible disease for any musician: deafness.
That problem, far from separating him from his passion, gave him new strength and he began to compose feverishly. It is said that he could do it directly on paper because he listened to the notes in his head. In fact, the composer did not have a piano in the room where he composed because he preferred not to play the piece because it would play badly.
By the end of his life, he had almost completely lost his hearing. But the more his deafness progressed, the more his music evolved, probably because he preferred the low and middle notes more as he didn't hear the highs well.
3. Frida Kahlo, the painting born of pain
Another example of resilience is the life of Frida Kahlo. Although she was born into a family of artists, during the early years she did not show a particular interest in art or painting. At the age of six he contracted polio which would have shortened his right leg, which became a source of ridicule among children.
However, this did not stop her from being a restless girl and teenager, interested in sports that kept her moving to compensate for the physical problem. At 18, everything would change due to a tragic accident.
The bus he was traveling on was hit by a tram. The consequences were severe: multiple fractures and spinal injuries. All this caused him enormous suffering throughout his life. Frida underwent 32 operations over the years, some with disastrous consequences, long convalescence and severe sequelae, and used about 25 different braces to correct posture.
It was in this period, due to the immobility to which she was subjected, that she began to paint. His famous paintings represent suffering, pain and death, but also love and passion for life. In fact, although her work is usually included in surrealist painting, Frida claimed that she did not paint her dreams, but her reality.
He had three pregnancies that ended in miscarriages and even his love / hate relationship with Diego Rivera did not help him to achieve an emotionally more peaceful life.
In recent years the pain worsened and they even had to amputate a part of his right leg, below the knee, threatened by gangrene. However, Frida found in painting a way of survival and expression. In fact, his latest work, which he titled "Viva la vita!" and signed eight days before he died, it is an allegory of his own existence.
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