What is Resilience?
There seem to be many ways to conceptualize the idea of resilience to not only make it understandable and unique but also to make it relatable enough such that an individual can use it as a target to focus on and cultivate. After all, the cultivation and expression of resilience in each of our lives is so different; of course, the way we would define it tends to have some variation. And before we jump into it, I want to couch everything I say here with the word “relative”. We all have different situations, so having an attitude of optimizing our situation is better than trying to be the best at it. Start where you are, and work outwards.
Funnily enough, I already wrote this article last week. And upon saving and publishing, my computer crashed, and with that, 4 days worth of writing vanished. So I’ll try my best to resurrect what sat here previously. I can’t help but laugh though, how ironic it would be for someone to be spouting off advice and opinion on resilience, only to throw a big fit after having all that hard work vanish without a trace. I can proudly say that I genuinely laughed (all the while feeling the temptation of anger and utter disappointment these situations tend to bring up) and just began writing again. Although losing some writing sits very close to 0 on the spectrum of crappy things to have to happen, I can’t help but see that my attitude towards resilience played a role in how I handled this. Not long ago would this have absolutely demolished me!
I recall my initial plan for this piece was to leave you with some very practical definitions and examples in hopes of first realizing my own conceptualization of resilience, and secondly, to contrast your understanding of resilience to mine to see how it holds up. As I said before, there are so many ways to understand and live a resilient life that I would love to hear how what you read here contrasts with your own experience.
Resilience is most simply conceptualized as first, a system’s ability to weather negative, or difficult experiences without requiring much time or cost for subsequent repair. And secondly, or more specifically, a systems ability to weather negative or difficult experiences and to use those experiences in a way that actually bolsters and strengthens that system, such that future interactions with similar experiences are less difficult, damaging, and are better handled.
Amongst the mainstream research that I went through before writing this piece, I recognized 2 types of resilience that each deserves their own section. Those types can be understood as psychological resilience and physiological resilience.
Psychological Resilience
Psychological resilience can be understood as the resilience of the mind or inner life. If one has high psychological resilience, they are able to go through negative or difficult experiences without being so knocked off balance that they require high amounts of repair or time off their typical routine (or if they are knocked off balance, they are able to address it in an optimal way), and might actually be able to extract life lessons or growth from that experience. Those with high psychological resilience tend to have a higher quality of life and better outcomes across most domains due to their ability to integrate difficult experiences and extract beneficial lessons that can be applied in future situations.
Alternatively, if one has low psychological resilience, they tend to require significant amounts of time and resources to recover from negative experiences, while also typically demonstrating a lowered ability to integrate and extract valuable lessons. Instead of being able to integrate and extract meaning and lessons out of difficult experiences, they perceive difficult experiences as threatening and tend to respond reactively (pulling away, shutting down, acting out, or other maladaptive coping responses). Those with low psychological resilience tend to have a lowered quality of life and poorer outcomes due to their impacted ability to continue performing day-to-day tasks.
These might strike you as painfully dry and basic definitions and I couldn’t agree more. Although useful, they are just definitions that are relatively vacant of any personal or relatable content that incentivizes any behavioural or psychological changes.
Some practical examples of psychological resilience can be:
The ability to mediate and control emotional responses
The ability to demonstrate responsiveness (conscious) over reactiveness (subconscious)
The ability to consider opinions and perspectives that differ from our own
The ability to perform under different kinds of pressure or stress
The ability to recognize one’s reduced ability to perform to their standard
The ability to address one’s reduced ability to perform to their standard
The ability to suspend one’s internal dialogue to attend to the outside world
The ability to connect, understand, and aid in another person’s struggle
The ability to look after oneself in an optimal way
And some ways psychological resilience can be objectively measured are:
Adult Resilience Scales
Child and Adolescent Resilience Scales
Executive Functioning Tests
Emotion Regulation Tests
Physiological Resilience
Physiological resilience can be understood as the resilience of the body. If psychological resilience is how the mind functions, physiological resilience is how the brain and body function. If one has high physiological resilience, they are able to maintain homeostasis during taxing situations or are able to quickly return to homeostasis after being knocked out of homeostasis. They are also able to recover and adapt to difficult stimuli such that future interactions with similar stimuli typically results in a lower physiological cost and/or better performance. Those with high physiological resilience tend to have a higher quality of life and better outcomes as the body is better equipped and sophisticated to handle taxing stimuli, and can actually use the taxing stimuli as a way to strengthen the system.
Some practical examples of physiological resilience:
The ability to exercise without requiring days or weeks of recovery
The ability to notice and address arising negative sensations in the body
The ability to endure injury with reduced recovery periods (or prevent injury altogether)
The ability to respond to signals like pain, or discomfort before they become more problematic
The ability to use oxygen efficiently
The ability to carry oneself in an optimal way (posture wise)
The ability to recover from bouts of physical demand with optimal recovery rates
The ability to moderate sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal effectively
And some ways physiological resilience can be measured are:
Heart Rate Variability (HRV)
Oxygen Efficiency/ CO2 Tolerance (BOLT Score)
Insulin Sensitivity (Continuous Glucose Monitor)
Exercise capacity
VO2 Max
Resting Heart Rate
Immune Function
Blood/Urine Tests
Gut Health Tests
If one has low physiological resilience, they have a difficult time maintaining homeostasis during taxing situations and also have a difficult time returning to homeostasis, requiring more time and resources to get back to neutral. They also have an impacted ability to integrate and adapt to taxing stimuli, which renders difficult things still difficult, or even harder than before. Those with low physiological resilience tend to have a lower quality of life and poorer outcomes due to their reduced ability to adapt to life stressors, keeping them stuck, or worse. In these instances, I think the analogy of “paying your phone bill with your credit card” works quite well. Low physiological arousal is like accruing physiological debt, making it even more difficult to pay back.
The Two Way Street
As you might already understand, psychological and physiological resilience play into each other. For example, if you notice that perhaps a familiar workout seemed harder than usual (physiologically, you noticed your recovery between bouts wasn’t what it usually was), it takes a considerable amount of awareness and psychological resilience to be in a place where you are going to respond to that in an ideal way; rest. It requires psychological resilience to take rest because almost everywhere you look, there are signs that say if you are resting, you are losing, or you’re falling behind. It takes resilience to be able to venture off and follow your own intuitions in the face of counterpoints, especially when there is a moralistic component that makes other people “work until you drop or face criticism”, instead of listening to the signs their body is giving them. Another example of this interplay is how psychological stressors can have a significant impact on your physiology. There are countless examples of this: relationship problems creating heart problems, financial problems causing stress-induced gut problems etc.
The downside to this interplay is that what one lacks in one section, one needs more of the other to make up for it. If you lack physiological resilience, you rely on and require more psychological resilience to prevent further breakdown. Alternatively, what one lacks in psychological resilience, requires a higher amount of psychological resilience. The unfortunate reality of this is that it becomes difficult to maintain the resilience that is keeping you afloat. If your physiological resilience is low, thus placing more emphasis and demand on your psychological arousal, it isn’t crazy to think that without proper supports and behaviours, your psychological arousal will also begin to crumble and vice versa.
And that’s where my efforts here at Our Blue Sky Minds comes in.
With research-backed practices, it is entirely within your grasp to begin working with these systems to improve your functioning. Of course, there are many avenues to approach the goal of improving life quality, and improving resilience is but one in a sea of approaches. I believe it is a useful approach because by including both psychological and physiological approaches, it becomes a holistic endeavour leaving no stone unturned. This not only lets one start where they need it, but it also lets one start where they can.
We can’t all afford top-notch psychotherapy, or gym memberships, or have access to a cold river to dunk in, so that’s why having an attitude of “start where you are, and work outwards” is so tightly tied to the cultivation of resilience. By starting where you are is to begin your cultivation of resilience; the mere decision to first become aware of “life can be better” is your first, and most important step in your journey of resilience.
Have a great week everyone. See you next week.
