Resilience: Strengthening the Human Spirit

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The capacity, outcome or process of successful adaptation to threatening circumstances, challenges or frightening experiences is termed as resilience (Masten, Best and Garmezy, 1990). Resilience emanates from family relationships, communities, normative human resources in minds and brains, and everyday ordinary occurrences and not from rare and special qualities (Masten, 2001).

The origin of the resilience construct can be traced to the foundational study carried by Werner and Smith (2001) and they found that a third of the Kauai children followed from 1995 on wards were doing well despite the underlying dangers of parental mental instability, poverty and parinatal problems against the expectations. The children developed into caring, confident and competent adults (Werner, 1995). Inner assets, or personal characteristics are the characteristics of an individual which are the positive developmental outcomes that reveal that the innate capacity is engaged but do not cause resilience. They are associated with healthy development and success in life. These outcomes include; social competence, sense of purpose, autonomy and solving of problems. According to Werner and Smith (1992; 2001), these strengths and competences transcend time, geography, gender and culture, and ethnicity.

Social competence includes forgiveness, altruism, compassion, caring, empathy, communication, and responsiveness. Problem solving on the other hand involves insight, critical thinking, resourcefulness, flexibility, and planning. Autonomy includes self awareness, mindfulness, resistance, adaptive distancing, mastery, self-efficacy, initiative, internal locus of control, and positive identity. Sense of purpose involves spirituality, sense of meaning, faith, hope, optimism, imagination, creativity, special interest, educational aspirations, achievement motivation, and goal direction. These personal strengths has been said to be what resilience looks like.

Social competence which has also been termed as emotional or interpersonal intelligence helps individuals to form relationships and attachments to others. Easy temperament (responsiveness) is predictive of adult adaptation according to Werner and Smith. It defines an individual’s ability to elicit positive responses from others and is depended on by social competence.

Proper communication by asserting of oneself while avoiding violation of others helps in conflict resolution and mediation. Positive youth success and school success has been linked to the ability of youth to learn the “codes of power” and retention of their self identity and culture. This is the ability of youth of non-dominant culture to move back and forth between the dominant and their primary culture, or accommodation of the culture that is dominant without being assimilated into it. Relational development is fostered by the ability of an individual to know how another one feels (empathy). Empathy also fosters formation of compassion, care and forgiveness.

Caring has been found to diminish as youths grow, which includes loss of compassion, especially in males, has been termed as a disturbing trend. Experiences of compassion have yielded psychological and physiological health as documented by a recent mind-body research (Rein et al., 1995). According to Oliner & Oliner, (1989; Higgins, 1994), altruism, which entails assisting others as they need and not what you want to assist them with, is the highest form of social competence. Even in the absence of opportunities and environmental support, altruism has been found to be a transformative adaptive defense which turns lead into gold. A significant association between a non-verbal measure of problem-solving skills at 10 years of age and adaptation in adulthood was found among people who were at high risk but succeeded against the odds (Bonnie, 2004).

Competence in planning has predicted happier and long lasting marriages for women, while it has predicted greater occupational attainment for men. Women who led successful and healthy lives by overcoming the odds have been linked to planning for the choice of mates. One of the most named personal resources which ahs helped adults deal with challenge and stress is being flexible. It also helps people to resolve conflicts and change courses other than being stuck. People and places have had a turnaround through the strength of resourcefulness, as documented in a research that reviewed adults who were sexually abused at childhood. It also helps connect people with environmental resources to better their lives. Critical thinking helps people to devise strategies to overcome oppressive structures by others, and helps them overcome the sense of victim-hood.

Autonomy involves the ability of an individual to feel a sense of control to their environment and having the ability to acting independently. Absence of anxiety and depression and personal well-being as factors of optimal psychological functioning, has been linked by research to having a clear sense of identity.

In an effort to describe the factors contributing to resilience, there is one approach developed by Rutter (1985; cited in Luthar, 2003), among the two concepts. Rutter argued that the protective factors needed be more than the converse of risk factors. An interactive relationship between the protective factors, risk exposure and outcome was developed in a concept. The relationship was such that those who were exposed to risk factors benefited from exposure from the protective factors, unlike those who did not face exposure to risk factors. Some factors contributing to resilience may not conform to the interactive model developed by Rutter, which is a feature of protective factors and his conceptualization may prove a barrier to understanding the origins of resilience. According to the protective factors fall into the following categories (Masen & Garmezy, 1985; Werner, 1995; cited in Lam & McBride, 2007);

Personal characteristics like being optimistic, IQ, close bond with the caregiver, and temperaments eliciting positive responses
Conditions of the family like relations that are secure and warm, rules and structures in the family, competence of the parent care, and supportive siblings
Support from the community including teachers, and other role models

Mental health and educational achievement have been found to be consistent with resilience as identified by Phinney (1996). Mental health can help the individual feel confident, love, trust, hope and be able to seek solution to problems perceived as adverse experiences. Educational achievement may not promote resilience because an individual may be educated but not able to face adverse experiences except at school. Promotion of resiliency can occur in culture/ethnic settings that promote mental health and mastery outcome. Mastery is adoption to educational achievement which involves acquiring of skills, problem solving, communication and seeking solution to problems. This may be gained beyond the school setting.

The external supports of resilience of an individual involve the cultural/ethnic identity that defines the values, role models and supports. These are labeled ‘I have’. The others are ‘I am’ and ‘I can’ (Grotberg, 1995), as the sources of resilience where the two psychological outcomes-education achievement and mental health-can be placed. A culture must foster the inner strengths of an individual-(labeled ‘I am’ in the resilience paradigm) which are hope, responsibility, altruism, autonomy, empathy, self-esteem, and identity.

Interpersonal and problem-solving skills-labeled ‘I can’ in the resilience paradigm-involves mastery of mainly the skills of problem solving, behavioral management, and communication, and the extent to which the culture in which an individual lives supports them, determines his ability to end up with a good life after adverse experiences.

A study meant to explore the resilient influences of coping flexibility and personality traits which are gender related on psychological adjustment and life event stress, involving 291 Chinese young adults, found out that masculinity favored the link between interpersonal functioning and life event stress. The study also found out that the linkage between depression and life event stress was discouraged by coping flexibility. Greater resilience to recent life stress was shown among non-gender-typed than the gender-typed respondents (Lam & McBride-Chang, 2007).

There are a number of studies which have been carried out which can help in the understanding of the concept of resiliency which can help individuals facing adversity develop an inward effort, as well as stimulating their families and the community at large, into lending a hand in providing them with a conducive environment to improve their lives and conditions.

In conclusion, resiliency depicts a condition where an individual excels or proceeds to realize a better or excellent life, after advent of adversity. The factors that render a person acquire resiliency in the face of adversity include personal characteristics which involve personal traits like temperament and also IQ, family conditions like parental care among others like rules and regulations in the family, external influences like teacher effects and effects from role models. Gender and human sex have also been linked to resilience of individuals. Notably, mental health and mastery to skills may help an individual acquire resiliency, and they link resilience to cultural or ethnic factors. The culture must help individuals in promoting the positive attitudes, hope, belief in self and determination.

References

Bonnie Benard. (2004). Resiliency: What We Have Learned. WestEd
Grotberg, E., (1995) A guide to promoting resilience in children: Strengthening the human spirit. The Hague: The Bernard van Leer Foundation
Grotberg, E. Resilience and Culture/Ethnicity. Examples from Sudan, Namibia, and Armenia.
Lam Bun Chun and McBride-Chang Catherine. Resilience in Young Adulthood: The moderating Influences of Gender-related Personality Traits and Coping Flexibility. Sex Roles. 56 (3-4). 2007. Springer Netherlands
Luthar Suniya. (2003). Resilience and Vulnerability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Masten, A.S., Best, K.M., & Garmezy, N. (1990) Resilience and development: Contributions from the study of children who overcome adversity. Development and Psychopathology, 2, 425-444
Phinney, J.S., (1996). When we talk about American Ethnic groups, what do we mean? American Psychologist 51(9) 918-930

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Resilience: Strengthening the Human Spirit

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