*** Please consult your physician before proceeding with any lifestyle changes. If you have a history of trauma, know that you are always in choice. Nothing here is obligatory. Follow your own pacing and if you become overwhelmed, seek additional supports or contact a therapist.***
Dear Fellow Human,
When I think of resilience, I like to think of the image of a a tree bending but not breaking under the stress of the wind. There is much we can understand about resilience from watching the rhythms and patterns of nature. Becoming resilient is about learning how to be flexible, like our friend the tree.
Resilience is our capacity to respond to stress
and understanding stress has a lot to do with the human nervous system. Much like the tree, our nervous systems have a place where we are optimally flexible, and also “breaking” or stress points. (4) Understanding and working with this idea is a core part of learning how to become more resilient. (1)
Our nervous systems are an important physical location in our bodies connected to stress, much like our stomachs are connected to digestion. And since resilience is our capacity to respond to stress, it’s important to know that none of us experience stress exactly the same way. This is because like a set of fingerprints, no two nervous systems are the same… they are each tuned differently. This means that every person has a unique set of bend and stress points. (4)
While you have some choice as to how to deal with the stressful challenges that come your way, those challenges are not distributed equally among humans. There are social, cultural, economic, psychological, and biological factors that are not equal. These biopsychosocial factors influence how each individuals baseline nervous system operates, and additionally influences whether a person has access to supportive resources or not. These factors have tremendous impacts on our fight or flight system, which is part of our nervous system. (3)
Depending upon these influencing factors…
like whether you are a person experiencing racism on a daily basis, or whether you are living in a location under the threat of war, or whether you are financially secure or worried about if you’ll have access to your next meal, or whether you are born into health or not… all of these factors and countless others imprint our brains and nervous systems. (3) Over time, this imprint creates a uniquely individual formula of what is considered a threat (stressful) or what is safe. Then when we are moving through our daily lives, our nervous systems respond in the way they are designed to… to protect us from the specific perceived threats we face. (2)
It’s a good thing that our nervous systems work so automatically to protect us from threat
For example, if you had to think before jumping out of the way of a car coming at you, your life would be in jeopardy. While this automation has a benefit in a lot of physically life threatening situations, this system is not always advantageous in all situations, despite the fact that it’s always working. Whether you’re filing papers at the office or listening to a song on the radio, your nervous system is constantly looking for clues of threat or safety. Is the music too loud, could that be a threat? Did someone walk by your office window and you got startled, is that a threat? The nervous system is constantly scanning for clues whether we are thinking about it or not, just like we breathe all the time without having to remember. (2, 4)
In a class I recently took on resilience, the teacher Deb Dana, did a demonstration on how unique each of our nervous systems were, based on our biopsychosocial imprints. She’d showed a photo of a face carved out of a rock. Then, she asked the class (over 300 students) to post their reactions to the rock face. People reactions varied the gamut from, calmness, pleasure, hatred, fear, sadness, to terror. It was fascinating to observe in real time how unique each of our own threat and safety scanning systems truly are. (7)
While many of these biopsychosocial factors are out of our control and influence the choices available to us, like we don’t get to decide the color of our skin, what country we are born into or whether we start out with money, or our genetic predispositions… the nervous system keeps on learning anyway from every environmental cue and situation it encounters. That’s it’s job, to constantly learn to keep us safe. Even though the nervous system does this automatically, we can also consciously participate in the process with it, just like we can choose to inhale or exhale. (3,5)
Think about the last time you put on a pair of shoes
Did you have to think about how to slip them on your feet? How to tie them if they had laces? Which shoe went on the left versus the right? That’s an example of a type of nervous system learning, a learned skill that becomes automatic. This means that our nervous systems are automatically learning how to become more stressed (threatened) or more resilient, given our biopsychosocial exposures, as well as our conscious or unconscious participation.
Just like learning to tie shoes, there are skills that we can practice to grow our ability to be resilient. And through time, those skills have the potential to create a positive contribution in our lives by becoming more frequent and automatic. Whether we are choosing to engage in learning to be more resilient or not, our nervous systems are constantly learning even if we aren’t consciously participating with them… that’s their job. Our nervous systems can learn to respond to stress by becoming more stressed, or they can do the opposite and learn resiliency. (5)
Now…
Back to the Tree
Remember that tree, the tree that could bend and not break?
I like to think of the image of the tree when I think of The Goal of Resiliency:
Nervous system flexibility (1)
Our nervous system has quite a number of ways it can respond to stress,
but for simplicities sake, I’m going to talk about three for now. (2)
3 ways our nervous systems respond
- Mobilized for action, fight or flight (Sympathetic)
- Immobilized, collapsed (Dorsal Vagal)
- Safe, connected (Ventral Vagal)
While trees don’t have a nervous system like humans,
Let’s use the image of the tree to help us think about these states.
imagine a tree had a nervous system
- Mobilized: the tree is swaying rapidly in the wind, lots of energy
- Immobilized: the tree is hibernating for the winter
- Safe: the tree is alive and growing green, just being a tree
If a tree swayed for too long or too fast, at some point it would break. If a tree hibernated for too long, it wouldn’t access what it needed to stay alive and it would die. Swaying is not innately a bad thing. Hibernation is not innately a bad thing. But if the tree stays mobilized or immobilized for too long, damage can occur. The goal is not for the tree to always be “safe” and avoid swaying or hibernation altogether, for there are benefits to both. The goal is for the tree to be flexible. (1) That if it bends, it won’t bend for too long or too intensely. Or if it hibernates, it won’t get stuck there.
The goal of nervous system flexibility, or resilience is to:
move fluidly and quickly between states
This can also be called pendulation. (6)
The goal is to use our fight, flight or freeze system for what it was made for: survival purposes, and to not get stuck in a state of chronic stress. To become flexible, we need to be able to tap into mobilization (fight) when we need to jump out of the way, but then reset back into safety. Likewise to be immobilized (freeze) when needed, but shift back to safety. This flexibility is the mark of a healthy nervous system, and is also the key to managing stress. One definition of stress can be staying mobilized or immobilized too long. Through time, the process of returning the nervous system to safety trains our bodies and minds to be less susceptible to stress “break” points. This means we grow our nervous system ability to have more space for growth, and we become stronger against stressors like the wind. Becoming flexible is not just a nice idea, it’s what helps us practically become less stressed, more resilient, and ultimately benefits our health and well being. (5)
what can we do to grow our Resilience?
Now that you know more about how your nervous system works, would you like to learn to work with it? Read part two of this article on How to Grow Your Resilience to discover what you can do to help your nervous system become more flexible. Or, if that’s enough reading for you now, and you’d like some reflection:
think about the following…
What became more clear to me about resilience?
What is still unclear that I’d like to learn more about?
How does this understanding of resilience relate to my life?
In the spirit of the quality of life,
Kristen
References:
- https://drarielleschwartz.com/resilience-informed-therapy/
- Dana, Deb. The Beginners Guide.
https://www.rhythmofregulation.com/resources - https://www.verywellmind.com/understanding-the-biopsychosocial-model-7549226
- https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding-the-stress-response#:~:text=The%20autonomic%20nervous%20system%20has,can%20respond%20to%20perceived%20dangers.
- https://drarielleschwartz.com/rewire-your-resilience/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiXOMLoDm68
- Integrated Somatic Trauma Therapy Certificate Program, Deb Dana