How to Learn Resilience and Limit Trauma Response
Have you ever wondered why some people seem to effortlessly “make it” in the face of adversity while others seem to struggle endlessly? Resilience may have something to do with that but, what exactly is resilience? It seems to be a word we all know in theory, but applying it is not quite as simple.
Resilience is defined as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; or “toughness”. From a psychological standpoint, the American Psychological Association (also known as the APA) defines being resilient as adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors. What really struck me when researching resilience, is that the APA has to say about resilience they made it pretty clear; resilience is not something you’re born with but instead it must be learned and developed. It also does not mean if you have developed your resilience that you will no longer be stressed or face adversity. Much like strengthening your muscles, resilience takes time, practice, and intentionality. Those who have developed strong resilience tend to be the ones who have faced the most adversity, stressors, and relationship problems.
What about resilience as it relates to those of us with different brains? Are the neurodivergent at a disadvantage when faced with adversity? According to a study using the “Majority Function Task”, which was designed to measure cognitive flexibility, researchers found that autistic people are consistently less efficient relating to flexible thinking. While flexible thinking is only one aspect of cognitive control, it’s an important factor due to the importance of flexibility related to the ability to develop and maintain goals and modify one’s responses in order to meet those goals. Since neurodivergent people may generally struggle with cognitive flexibility at a higher rate than neurotypicals, it would seem that without learned coping skills to help improve these deficits, neurodivergent adults experience a disadvantage in the face of adversity.
Further research has also found that autistic girls showed clinically significant problems with planning, working (short-term) memory, impulse control, and cognitive flexibility — the ability to switch from one activity to another and an important factor for developing or improving resilience. Boys in the same study showed clinically significant problems with only cognitive flexibility. This study may show that neurodivergent girls and women may be at an even greater disadvantage when faced with adversity.
Much like happiness, resilience is not something that happens to us, instead, it is a planned coping strategy and process that we choose. While some may be genetically predisposed to higher resilience than others, we all have the capacity to learn the strategies and behaviors that create resilience and the argument can be made that if you are neurodivergent or have a neurodivergent child, you may want to make a greater effort to learn these skills yourself or teach them to your child. Learned resilience is a fundamental skill needed to cope with adult life and the challenges that come with facing the many hurdles the average adult faces. I will say my lack of resilience lead me astray many times and triggered my intense fight or flight responses (mostly flight for me) and caused me to burn many unnecessary bridges related to work and creative opportunities.
Add on the layers of trauma the average person faces and the average neurodivergent adult faces, it’s no secret that both traumatic events presented in childhood and ongoing trauma can lead to a greater possibility of developing unhealthy coping strategies. Essentially, trauma has the potential to turn some into “Pessimists” while others may instead develop resilience. It is very possible that being neurodivergent and not being taught healthy coping skills and strategies boosts the likelihood of developing negative self-talk as opposed to resilience when faced with traumatic events and not being taught healthy coping skills, especially when you are one of the many adults who found out about Autism or ADHD in adulthood.
Mindset Matters
Martin Seligman wrote a book titled Learned Optimism which covers how to stop automatically assuming guilt, how to get out of the habit of seeing the direst possible implications in every setback, and essentially, how to be optimistic. Assuming guilt and seeing situations as unreasonably negative may also be types of trauma responses. Since we all have positive and negative experiences and we are all faced with some form of success and adversity at different times, we can’t always control what happens but we absolutely can control our responses to those situations, and this is one important way we can begin to learn resilience and build a positive mindset.
I’m sure you’ve heard the saying that optimists have the ‘glass half full’ outlook and pessimists have the ‘glass half empty’ outlook, but this been proven to be an inaccurate portrayal and an oversimplification of either side. Emotions are deeper than a level in a glass and most people feel multiple emotions at a time and in complex ways. In “Learned Optimism”, Seligman studied the way people analyze positive and negative events and identified which three key areas of self-talk that influences whether a person takes the resilient (optimistic) or less-helpful (pessimistic) approach.
Seligman calls key areas the three P’s: Permanence, Pervasiveness and Personalization:
Permanence
When an event happens, we have a choice between believing that our current situation is permanent or temporary, and further, that the causes of the event are permanent or temporary.
What are optimists more like to do? Optimists tend to believe that the good events and their causes are permanent but when faced with a negative event, optimists tend to see the event as temporary and only causing temporary issues. This enables optimists to bounce back more quickly when faced with adversity.
What are pessimists more likely to do? Pessimists view the good events and their causes to be temporary and the negative events and cause to be more permanent.
Pervasiveness
Pervasive means far-stretching or permeating. An example is whether a situation applies everywhere or just the current event or situation.
What are optimists more like to do? Much like you see with permanence, optimists will apply pervasiveness to the positives and not apply it to the negatives.
What are pessimists more likely to do? It may not surprise you that pessimists are more like to do the opposite and they are more likely to apply the pervasiveness to the negatives. They tell themselves things like, “I did that well — for once”, or “I made a mistake on that task. I always make lots of stupid mistakes.”
Personalization
Personalization has a “personal responsibility” component. With personalization, you ask yourself, “Am I personally responsible for this?”
What are optimists more like to do? They give themselves credit for the positives and don’t blame themselves for adverse events.
What are pessimists more likely to do? You guessed it. Pessimists do the opposite and take personal blame for the bad in situations and put the positives on the external.
So, we established how our self-talk and mindset affects how we perceive our situations and ultimately affects our outcomes, but how exactly can someone improve negative or pessimistic self-talk (trauma responses) in the face of adversity?
Seligman outlines a self-coaching process to re-direct pessimistic self-talk, called the ABCDE model:
A for Adversity — negative event
B for Belief, or your interpretation of the event (the 3 Ps)
C for Consequence — your feelings and behavior, or how you respond to the event (choosing your mindset and emotional regulation)
D for Disputation — find evidence that disputes your belief (the optimist version of the 3 Ps)
E for Energization — or tapping into the positive energy created by the successful disputation and celebrate that achievement to build your optimistic approach.
Putting the model into practice, or turning Pessimism (trauma response) into Optimism, is not something that happens quickly or overnight, especially for those struggling with executive dysfunction. It requires a massive amount of work to change unhealthy coping skills and form positive habits in their absence, but it absolutely can be done. For some (me), it will require Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. For others who have already developed healthy executive functioning strategies, learning optimism that will lead to improved resilience requires changing the unhealthy coping mechanisms into healthy habits.
Essentially everything we want to do begins with our thoughts, first. Once we master our mindset, we can then improve upon everything else.
