Resiliency In Trauma

Resiliency in Relation to Traumatic Events
Jonathan Gonzalez
San Jose State University
Psy 100 w, Section 1, Spring 2015

Word Count: 2,436
Resiliency in Relation to Traumatic Events
Resiliency is an important aspect of recovery in populations that experience adversity. Many experts and professionals have similar working definitions of resilience (Astier, Almedom, & Douglas; 2007; Cowden, Kobayashi, and Mellman, 2014; Eschleman, Bowling, & Alacron, 2010; Funk, 1992; Schaubroeck, Riollo, Peng, & Spain, 2001), which highlight the complexity of the word. The ability to return to a state of well-being and face adversity as a challenge instead of an overwhelming mountain unable to be scaled because of prior trauma is a challenging
to define actionably. Because of the various ways people experience life, the coping mechanisms people utilize during stressful events are a combination of environmental and biological constructs that people use to make sense of their circumstances.
By incorporating the vast amount of research already completed about mitigating factors of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) into an ecological systems model, described by Bronfenbrenner (1979; Meyers 2008), an integrated approach to manage stress and trauma could reach affected populations better (van der Kolk, 1996). Psychological and physical disorders do not have to be present in order to feel the effects of adverse experiences (Astier et al., 2007). The way people cope with hardship depends on their ability to access meaningful help and what kinds of resources are on hand to return to a state of normalcy (van der Kolk, 1996; Weiestall, Huth, Knecht, Nandi, & Elbert, 2012). Depending on what kind of biological and environmental factors are involved, the level of care people might receive might be inadequate because of amateur diagnosis or ambivalence from care takers. Resiliency means different things to different people, what may constitute as being able to overcome adversity or difficulty is defined differently to each person based on their own
unique responses to handle adverse situations. What factors of resilience make people malleable to positive change and resist the potentially harmful effects of stress in order to become hardy individuals?
Hardiness
As psychological stress became associated with illness, a multitude of studies to identify characteristics that moderate stress were researched (Funk, 1992).
The hardiness theory proposed by Funk described resilience as being able to have the general qualities that emerge from varied childhood experiences that manifest behaviors and feelings characterized as; commitment, control, and challenge (Funk, 1992). Other researchers describe hardiness as having a general sense the environment an individual lives in is satisfying, thus can lead a person to approach situations with curiosity, enthusiasm, or commitment (Tummala-Nara, 2007; Schaubroeck et al, 2001). Funk (1992) also mentions hardy individuals as viewing stressful situations as meaningful and interesting; stressors as changeable, and change as a normal part of life. Early studies on hardiness focused on relationships with illness, cynicism, and Type A personalities (i.e. overly impatient /or competitive) based on self-report measures. The self-report method revealed neurosis to be an underlying trait that despite attempts to control for, were present in studies that link hardiness and positive self-statements. That is to say, individuals that self-report resiliency may have various ways to cope, but do not fully know how they will deal with overwhelming emotions in stressful
situations.
Apprehension about confronting stress and how challenge, control, and commitment are adapted over time, is only one aspect of an individual’s ability to cope effectively with the source of their affliction. A resilient individual is not necessarily adept in all three areas of hardiness. People surveyed over time with multiple surveys included; bankers, lawyers, law enforcement, nurses, teachers, men, women, single parents, the elderly, human service workers, and nursing mothers (Funk). When neurosis was controlled for in older and newer scales, the ability to cope with illness was negatively impacted, leading to difficult questions still left unanswered; what aspects of neurosis overlap with hardiness and if Type A personalities are more vulnerable to stress, or are disease prone (Funk). The failure to find predictable results and the significant representation of neurosis in self-reported hardy individuals create difficult results to interpret (Funk). Because hardiness is complex and means different things to various people, resilience resembles a humanistic approach to understanding the definition that resembles self-actualization (Funk,). Funk (1992) concludes, “… hardiness can be viewed as a debate over whether positive or negative characteristics have a greater influence on health” (p. 344).
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