Developing Resilience: You Recover, Even If It Takes More Than You'd Like

Developing resilience: recovering, with more effort than you’d like

Developing resilience describes a middle point, not an extreme: you recover from difficulties, but the process demands more time and effort than you’d like.

It’s neither low resilience nor fully established high resilience: it’s a point where many people find themselves at many moments.

You can find out where you stand with our resilience test.

The recovery trajectory: slower, same destination

George Bonanno’s studies of how people respond to losses and serious events distinguish several trajectories. One of them fits this result: recovery. People who follow it go through a period of marked distress, with more fatigue, worry or difficulty concentrating, and return gradually, over months, to their usual level.

In the meta-analysis by Galatzer-Levy, Huang and Bonanno (2018), covering 54 studies, about one in five people followed this pattern. It isn’t a failure of resilience, but another of its forms: the destination is the same, even if the path is longer.

Psychologist Ann Masten (2001) explained it with an idea that helps in reading this result: resilience is “ordinary magic,” the product of ordinary adaptive systems (close bonds, emotional regulation, a sense of control) that work better or worse depending on how loaded they are at any given moment.

What makes a difficulty harder to get through

Recovery takes longer mainly for three reasons that research documents well:

• Accumulated load. Several difficulties in a row draw on the same resources, and each one is faced with less margin than the last.
• The resources available at that moment: social support, rest, financial stability and free time aren’t constant.
• Rigid coping. Bonanno and Burton (2013) showed that the key isn’t using the “right” strategy, but matching the strategy to the situation. Insisting on solving what has no solution, or accepting what could in fact be changed, drags the process out.

One finding qualifies the idea that all adversity weakens us: in a study of 2,398 people followed over several years, Seery, Holman and Silver (2010) found a U-shaped relationship. Those who had lived through some difficulties over their lifetime showed better well-being and less impact from recent events than those who had lived through none or a great many. The authors caution that the data are correlational, but they suggest that getting through moderate difficulties can leave useful resources for the next ones.

How it shows up day to day

• Real but slow recovery: you pull through, even if the process takes longer than you’d like.
• Conscious effort: adapting isn’t automatic and sometimes calls for outside support.
• Fluctuation with context: there are periods when you feel more capable than others, depending on the accumulated load.
• Awareness of your own process: you usually notice when it’s hard for you, which is already a useful starting point.

An example: after moving to another city for work, someone with this profile spends the first few months feeling uprooted, sleeping worse and missing their routine. Around the third or fourth month, with no specific moment to mark it, they realize they already have a couple of places of their own, someone to meet up with, and a week that feels normal again.

What strengthens it, according to research

The variables the literature associates with a better course are well known:

• A social support network that is actually used, not one that merely exists.
• The search for meaning or learning in hard experiences, without forcing it.
• Active coping wherever action is possible.
• The flexibility to switch strategies when the first one doesn’t work.

None of them is built overnight. Connor and Davidson’s CD-RISC scale (2003), which inspired the test on this site, showed in its validation that resilience scores rose in patients who improved with treatment, one of the first signs that it isn’t a fixed trait.

Building resilience without demanding a fixed maximum of yourself

There’s a common mistake when reading this result: measuring today’s recovery against the most resilient version of yourself you remember from another time, instead of against what you have available today. It’s an almost sure way to feel you aren’t making progress, even when you are.

In popular self-help, Miguel Ruiz puts it in The Four Agreements (1997) as always doing your best, knowing that your best changes from day to day. Research on flexibility points in the same direction: the best effort available varies, and adjusting to that variation is part of the process rather than a sign it’s failing.

This article is for informational purposes and does not replace an evaluation by a mental health professional.

Sources

• Bonanno, G. A. (2004). Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? American Psychologist, 59(1), 20-28.
• Galatzer-Levy, I. R., Huang, S. H., and Bonanno, G. A. (2018). Trajectories of resilience and dysfunction following potential trauma: A review and statistical evaluation. Clinical Psychology Review, 63, 41-55.
• Masten, A. S. (2001). Ordinary magic: Resilience processes in development. American Psychologist, 56(3), 227-238.
• Bonanno, G. A., and Burton, C. L. (2013). Regulatory flexibility: An individual differences perspective on coping and emotion regulation. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(6), 591-612.
• Seery, M. D., Holman, E. A., and Silver, R. C. (2010). Whatever does not kill us: Cumulative lifetime adversity, vulnerability, and resilience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(6), 1025-1041. doi:10.1037/a0021344
• Connor, K. M., and Davidson, J. R. T. (2003). Development of a new resilience scale: The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Depression and Anxiety, 18(2), 76-82.
• Ruiz, M. (1997). The Four Agreements. Amber-Allen Publishing.