Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulty. In our work, the term is used most often when describing the many reactions that people can have following experiencing or witnessing events that involve a life threat or a threat to bodily integrity. These types of traumatic or difficult events can include child sexual or physical abuse, rape, a car accident, fire, physical attack, combat, or many other types of experiences. Surviving such events can be physically difficult, and in addition to any physical problems, people vary in the impact these events have on them emotionally.

Roeckner and colleagues led a recent review of 20 years of research on brain mechanisms involved in resilience (Roeckner and colleagues). They concluded that individual differences in threat cue processing are related to resilience while higher-order executive functioning is less consistent and the relationship with resilience changes over time. This means that there are both stable factors in how your brain attends to threats that impact the likelihood of resilience and that there is variability over time.

The bad news is that most people will experience at least one if not many, traumas in their life. The good news is that even with high rates of exposure, most people will recover naturally with time. Most will be resilient. Some might even grow in some ways from the experience.

Based on research on resiliency and recovery following trauma, we know certain ways of coping following trauma can support or even build resiliency. These ways to build resiliency include:

In sum, resiliency is not a given for anyone. It is a skill that we can practice and improve. Moving to the other side of difficult experiences takes time and effort. If we try to speed it along, we will most likely be frustrated. Be kind to yourself and reach out for help when you need it.

Copyright Sheila A.M. Rauch, Ph.D. and Barbara O. Rothbaum, Ph.D.

References

Rauch, S. A. M., & Rothbaum, B. O. (2023). Making Meaning of Difficult Experiences: A Self-Guided Program. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/med-psych/9780197642573.001.0001

Roeckner, A. R., Oliver, K. I., Lebois, L. A. M., van Rooij, S. J. H., & Stevens, J. S. (2021). Neural contributors to trauma resilience: a review of longitudinal neuroimaging studies. Translational Psychiatry, 11(1), 508. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-021-01633-y

Rothbaum, B. O., & Rauch, S. A. M. (2020). PTSD: What everyone needs to know. Oxford University Press.