3 Learning to be resilient

Can we learn to be resilient from the way that we are brought up from childhood – our early experiences and family background?

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Psychologists have argued for more than 100 years that early childhood socialisation has a significant impact on the way that individuals relate to others later in life. This socialisation also supports our resilience, through:

• strong and supportive family relationships
• family social networks that extend into the community
• the development of good communication skills
• the ability to show empathy to others
• sociability, i.e. a liking for developing new social relationships.

Of course our liking for social relationships is also connected to our personality characteristics. Some people are more sociable than others.

Watch the following video to hear how chartered psychologist Professor Ivan Robertson connects resilience and sociability with personality.

Activity 3 Sociability and social networks

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Watch the video ‘Resilience: personality’ and note how Professor Ivan Robertson explains how resilience is connected to our ability to develop social relationships.

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Transcript: Video 2 Resilience: personality

IVAN ROBERTSON

Underlying personality has an important part to play in our level of resilience. Of course, resilience can be developed, but a personality is the starting point and it's really the platform from which we can build higher levels of resilience. Let me just illustrate that by explaining a couple of ways in which personality might influence how resilient we are. A good area to look at is the area of social support. We know that having a good social support system is important for people's resilience, but building a good social support system is also related to the kind of person we are and the kind of personality characteristics we have. It links to the kind of personality we have in terms of how we relate to other people, how much we enjoy being with other people, how we behave when we are with them, how agreeable we are, how well we empathise with their concerns, and how we build, or we don't build, long-term stable friendships. So the kind of social support that we build and the extent to which we have a really good one is partly a reflection of the other people but it's also partly a reflection of our own underlying personality characteristics. Another important aspect of resilience involves actively confronting challenges rather than hiding from them. But of course to do that you need a level of confidence and self-belief, to enable you to actually take on the challenge. You also need to focus on the challenge in a practical and problem-focused way, rather than being overwhelmed by the emotions in your own emotional reaction. Again, if we look at underlying personality characteristics, those characteristics can have an influence on how we cope with challenges, what our level of confidence is, and some people are just more inclined for example to find it difficult to escape from the emotions that they're experiencing and focus in a problem-focused way on the problem that they're trying to deal with.

End transcript: Video 2 Resilience: personality

Video 2 Resilience: personality

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Consider what his explanation means for you. Can you identify whether your personality type might have a positive impact on your resilience? Or might you need to find other ways to develop it? Make some notes in the box below.

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Comment

Robertson describes the importance of personality and social support systems for resilience, but he emphasises that these aren’t static things and can be learned and developed. He identifies key factors, such as how we behave with others, how we build long-term friendships, our empathy and the ways in which we actively confront challenges. In particular, he also identifies the ability to remove ourselves from overwhelming emotions in difficult times as important.

You will be looking at both social networks and at the means to handle difficult emotions through the course.

The way we live our lives is not determined by our childhood experiences. There are many success stories of sports people, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and people in your own community who have achieved in many fields, despite difficult backgrounds and obstacles to success.

You might think that if the personality characteristics that we are born with play such a key part in our resilience – it can’t be learned after all.

CEO Genie Joseph, founder of ACT RESILIENT, disagrees. She outlines three types of resilience that she has identified through her work with US military personnel and their families (Joseph, 2012). They are:

1. Natural resilience – the resilience you are born with. It protects us and encourages us to play and learn and explore our world.
2. Adaptive resilience – which occurs when challenging circumstances cause you to adapt and grow, becoming stronger and more resilient because of what you have encountered.
3. Restored resilience – also known as learned resilience. This means you can learn techniques that can restore the natural resilience we had as children.

The implication here is that through adaptive and restored resilience we can certainly learn techniques and build habits that will support us in developing and enhancing our resilience further.

One thing we can certainly do to support our own resilience is build caring and supportive relationships around us.

In the earlier clip Professor Robertson talked of the importance of social support networks, or the ability to develop them, in helping resilience. Simon Weston (Activity 2) also talked about the support of his family and friends contributing to his resilience. According to the American Psychological Association (2014), many studies show that the primary factor in personal resilience is having caring and supportive relationships within and outside the family. These relationships create love and trust, provide role models and offer encouragement and reassurance. This helps to bolster a person’s resilience, particularly in times of difficulty.

So, in summary – while personality traits and strong support networks clearly have an influence on how resilient we are, resilience is also a skill that can be learned and developed.

You’ll explore strategies for developing your own resilience later in the course.