Beyond Bouncing Back: A New Perspective on Resilience

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The Oxford Dictionary defines resilience as the quality of being able to recover quickly or easily or resist being affected by a misfortune. Researchers suggest that resilience is the ability of a system to return to a previous state following disturbance. When these definitions are applied to human resilience, they may create unhealthy expectations for recovery. Resilience is not about bouncing back; it is about growth.

Let’s examine some of the problems with these definitions. They both assume some type of external event created a disturbance. But what is a disturbance or misfortune? For some, experiencing an armed robbery would be traumatic, but for others that same event might be an annoyance. It depends on the person and their mindset.

Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) provides a clearer definition of an event. Events are the situations to which a person responds. Events can be something that happens outside of us, like a gun being pointed at us, or internal mental experiences, such as imagining someone might point a gun at us when we go to a store.

Another difficulty with the standard definitions of resilience is that they imply that external events cause a person to be disturbed—something happens in the outside world, and it upsets us. While this might be how we explain our experiences to ourselves, it is helpful and empowering to recognize that when we are disturbed, it is because of how we think about the event that occurred, not because of the event itself. If this principle is correct, we can change how we feel and behave when facing certain events.

The standard definitions of resilience also assume that getting back to the state we were in before is desirable, as if we were healthy from the start. It may be closer to the truth to say that we are often distressed and overwhelmed because we were not completely healthy and well-balanced before the event even happened. And getting back to that original state should not be the goal of recovery.

The idea of bouncing back is also questionable. Could you imagine a situation where struggling, grieving, and even suffering may be a normal and healthy expression of resilience? Absolutely. If you lose your 5-year-old to a rare heart condition, emotional pain will be a part of your recovery.

If you did lose a child, would resilience mean that you should be able to return to being the person you were before your child passed away? No. Many of our experiences mark us for life. When we are resilient, we learn lessons, change our beliefs, and realign our priorities. We do not return to the people we were. We grow, change, and become someone we were not before.

Standard definitions of resilience also overlook the reality that we are not superhuman, always flexible, healthy individuals who can always bend and not break under pressure. Some days, we are resilient, hopeful, grounded, and rational—some days not. We get overwhelmed with our grief one day and find ways to embrace it the next. And then we forget everything we learned and fall back into misery.

Real resilience is messy because each of us must rely on a mixture of helpful and unhelpful thoughts, emotions, and behaviors to cope.

An Improved Understanding of Resilience

Here are some of the key elements of resilience that provide both a clarification of terms and realistic expectations we can have as we move toward growth and face the pressures of life.

1. The ABC model of cognitive behavior therapy provides a simple framework that can be helpful when considering what it means to face the pressures of life and move forward. As Epictetus (55-135 AD) so nicely stated, “We are not disturbed by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens to us.” In the ABC model, A is the activating event, B is our beliefs about the event, and C is the emotional and behavioral consequence of the beliefs. To change how we feel and behave, we need to change how we think.
2. The absence of an emotional response does not mark resilience; instead, resilience includes healthy negative emotions appropriate to the situation. According to Albert Ellis, Ph.D., we have two types of negative emotions: helpful and unhelpful. Unhelpful negative emotions result from unhelpful beliefs and include feelings of anxiety, fear, depression, guilt, and unhelpful anger. When we have realistic, flexible beliefs about events, we typically experience concern, alarm, sadness, remorse, and healthy anger. Resilience includes a host of healthy, negative emotions, not the absence of them.
3. Resilience leads to helpful actions. When we have helpful negative emotions, we take action that is focused on the problems we are facing. We turn toward the issues that need to be addressed. When we have unhelpful negative emotions, our behavior is focused on making ourselves feel less bad; we attempt to reduce our distress in ways that make things worse, not better, and do not help us face the problems of reality.
4. The core of resilience is a flexible set of beliefs that help us face the uncertainties and unfairness of life. We would like always to perform well and have others appreciate the outcome of our actions. We want to be approved and accepted. We want life to be fair and in line with our desires and expectations. When we have healthy beliefs, these are only desires, not demands or rights. We make ourselves miserable when we demand we perform well, get approved and accepted by others, and expect life to treat us a certain way.
5. Resilience is about moving forward, not bouncing back. When we go through difficult experiences, we can grow and change or get stuck in life. There is no going back; growth means moving on. Who we become can be better, kinder, and wiser.

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No rule says we get only so many problems and not more. Having flexible, helpful beliefs can help you embrace the pain you experience without trying to push it away. As hard as it is to believe, the day will come when you will say that nothing that happened in your life was wasted. You will look back and realize that you made something of everything that life has thrown at you, both for yourself and the countless people who came across your life and struggled just like you.