Resilience in Psychology

 

Resilience is the term for the complex intrapersonal process of successfully coping with difficult experiences or challenges that have required considerable adaptation. (Sutton, 2024)

 

The complex intrapersonal processes place demands on oneself and include cognitive, emotional, and behavioral adaptations, which are moderated by one’s physiological status within a social context. (See the SCOPES model of functioning.)

Successful coping is evident when a person has returned to a level of functioning that is as good as or better than their functioning before the challenges or adverse experiences began.

When a person has overcome a traumatic experience and they function better than before the experience, the new status represents post-traumatic growth, which is different from resilience. See post-traumatic growth.

Community groups, including faith-based groups, can help strengthen resilience.

Resilience research notes

A review and meta-analysis found a moderate positive effect of resilience interventions (Joyce et al., 2018). The study suggests that resilience interventions based on a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness techniques appear to have a positive impact on individual resilience.

Improvements in resilience in humans have been reported as a result of psychological and cognitive therapies, such as child caregiver advocacy resilience (Li et al., 2017), a life skills education-based program (Sarkar et al., 2017), the iNEAR programme (Tunariu et al., 2017), intensive mindfulness meditation training (Hwang et al., 2018) and stress inoculation training (Horn et al., 2016). Although all the above achieved good outcomes, the same method may have different therapeutic effects in different individuals. (Liu et al., 2018)

Factors associated with childhood resilience were summarized in The Science of Resilience (2015).

Research has identified a set of factors that help children achieve positive outcomes in the face of significant adversity. Individuals who demonstrate resilience in response to one form of adversity may not necessarily do so in response to another. Yet when communities and families strengthen these factors, they optimize resilience across multiple contexts. Factors include:

providing supportive adult-child relationships;

scaffolding learning so the child builds a sense of self-efficacy and control;

helping strengthen adaptive skills and self-regulatory capacities; and

using faith and cultural traditions as a foundation for hope and stability.

 Cite this post

Sutton, G. W. (2024, January 3). Resilience in psychology. Psychology Concepts and Theories. Retrieved from https://suttonpsychology.blogspot.com/2024/01/resilience-in-psychology.html

References

Center on the Developing Child (2015). The Science of Resilience (InBrief). Retrieved from www.developingchild.harvard.edu.

Joyce, S., Shand, F., Tighe, J., et al. (2018). Road to resilience: a systematic review and meta-analysis of resilience training programmes and interventions. BMJ Open, 8:e017858. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2017-017858

Liu, H., Zhang, C., Ji, Y., & Yang, L. (2018). Biological and Psychological Perspectives of Resilience: Is It Possible to Improve Stress Resistance?. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 12, 326. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00326

Sutton, G. W. (2024, January 3). Resilience in psychology. Psychology Concepts and Theories. Retrieved from https://suttonpsychology.blogspot.com/2024/01/resilience-in-psychology.html

Geoffrey W. Sutton, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Psychology. He retired from a clinical practice and was credentialed in clinical neuropsychology and psychopharmacology. His website is  www.suttong.com

 

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Psychology of "triggers"

In psychology, triggers are events that elicit a response. Clinicians often focus on helping people recognize triggers or events that appear to produce a distressing response as if they had stepped on a mine that triggered an explosion.

People, places, films, songs, smells, words, and many other stimuli can trigger a response or a chain of responses. Some trigger-response pairs are innate like cringing in response to loud noises. But the relatively benign triggers may come to elicit extreme responses following traumatic experiences. For example, my mother was trapped under the stairs when a bomb exploded near our house. She remained hyper-reactive to fireworks, thunder, and gun shots throughout her life.

Although the concept of triggers is often associated with recognizing and coping with events that are upsetting. A different perspective would be to view triggers as those stimuli that routinely elicit a response or chain of responses. In high school, a few of us knew what questions to ask to get a particular teacher off topic, which we often did just to make class more interesting.

A variety of events can elicit pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant reactions. And, the same event may affect different people in different ways. A beach scene with ocean waves may trigger pleasant memories, a smile, and good feelings in some, but remind others of some horrible event. In fact, depending on context, the same stimulus may be perceived as pleasant in one context but obnoxious in another. Certain words are accepted as pleasant teasing from a friend but may trigger anger when coming from a stranger.

Powerful triggers can affect many aspects of our core self. Using the SCOPES model, we can think of a hypothetical response set of a person who survived a mass shooting in church.

Potential triggers could be someone who looked like the shooter, the sounds of gun shots, people who look like those who did not survive, news stories or movies of similar events, and churches.

SCOPES	Hypothetical responses to a trigger of surviving a mass shooting in church
Spiritual	Cry for help. Anger with God.
Cognition	Recurrent images of the horrid event
Overt Behavior	Tensing muscles, closing eyes as if to avoid the image
Physical	Increased heart rate
Emotion	Fear, anger
Social context	Response worsens in church setting

Psychotherapists have helped people recognize triggers of distressing responses and reduce the impact.

Developing life enhancing characteristics may help "trigger" positive rather than negative responses.

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