Resilience

How to weather and recover from adversity, get unstuck and thrive?

Andy Weeger

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences

September 3, 2024

Motivation

How we deal with our inner worlds does drive everything. Susan David, Psychologist

Foundation

This unit is inspired by and based on the books Resilience by Southwick et al. (2023) and Emotional Agility by David (2016)

This book written by world leaders on the science of resilience, is a must-read for everyone … The lessons in this book are what we should teach our children. Barbara Olasov Rothbaum

Susan David is the leading authority on how our thoughts, emotions, and motives can empower or derail us. Her work combines compelling research, an engaging style, and practical wisdom to show people how to create meaningful change in their lives in order to thrive. Peter Salovey, President, Yale University

Resilience by Southwick et al. (2023) and Emotional Agility by David (2016)

Reflection

Think of some hardship you have experienced and mastered.
What helped you to do so?

Think for yourself first (5 minutes) and then discuss with your neighbor the things that were helpful (10 minutes). You can stay with the measures, and do not have to share the distress if you don’t want to.

Resilience

Opening quote

We assumed resilience was rare, reserved for a select group of unique individuals. We were wrong. Resilience is common. It can be witnessed all around us, and for most people it can be enhanced through learning and training Southwick et al. (2023, p. 22)

Definition

The term resilience is used to describe an individual’s capacity to withstand and ultimately recover from adversity.
(Southwick et al., 2023)

Themes of resilience

In their research, Southwick et al. (2023) identified recurring themes that characterize resilient people:

  1. Confrontation with fears
  2. Maintaining of an optimistic but realistic outlook
  3. Searching, accepting, and providing social support
  4. Imitating resilient role models
  5. Relying on a inner moral compass
  6. Turning to religious or spiritual practices
  7. Attending to health and well-being
  8. Remaining curious, pushing to learn new things
  9. Approaching problems with flexibility, and, at times, acceptance
  10. Finding meaning and growth during and after traumatic experiences

Resources

Building resilience and bouncing back is easier for some than it is for others.
(Southwick et al., 2023)

The privileges that my be conferred by race and several other identities in our society need to be acknowledged. In addition, people with valuable resources such as financial security, good health, and rich social networks can leverage these resources when adversities happen.

Optimism

Optimism is a future-oriented attitude that includes confidence that things will turn out well.
(Southwick et al., 2023)

Our emotions are strongly tied to our attention and behavior (e.g., surviving or learning). Unlike pessimists, optimist do not remain focused on the negative. When optimist broaden their attention, they increase their capacity to reappraise situations that initially seemed negative. This allows them to (sometimes) see challenge in hardship and opportunities to grow.

Emotional agility

Reflection

We all perceive different kinds of emotions in our everyday life.

Which emotions are good,
which are bad?

Bad or good emotions?

According to David (2016), there is a core narrative about emotions1:
There are good emotions (e.g., joy, happiness) and bad emotions (e.g., grief, anger)

However, beauty and fragility often go hand in hand2.

Research shows that struggling to determine whether a thought or feeling is good or bad can …

  • take up huge amounts of mental energy,
  • lead the thought or emotion to hang around for longer,
  • decrease our ability to solve problems,
  • negatively impact our relationships, and,
  • lead to lower levels of well-being over time (David, 2016).

Bothness

Bothness is the idea that you can do something even if you are scared to do it. We can be afraid and still engage with a challenge. We can grieve and still laugh at a joke.

Bothness gives us access to the full spectrum of life. Too often, we think that life is a series of either/or decisions. Be bold. Choose both.

Let’s listen to the expert

Thoughts on emotion and behavior

Growth and freedom

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom. Frankl (1985)

Emotional rigidity vs. agility

Emotional rigidity vs. emotional agility (David, 2016)

 

 

 

Hooked

Getting hooked means that we let our actions be guided by our thoughts, feelings, and stories, rather than of what is really important to us.

A ‘hook’ is a thought or emotion that draws us in and keeps us preoccupied. These hooks are often extremely counter-productive.

The four most common hooks:

  1. Thought blaming: “I thought I’d embarrass myself, so I didn’t go.”
  2. Monkey mindedness: Dwelling at length on a situation and ‘awfulising’ the circumstances.
  3. Old, outgrown ideas: Believing that you must always act in ways that you have in the past, even when the circumstances might prove otherwise.
  4. Wrongheaded righteousness: The need to be ‘right’ at all costs.

Getting unhooked

David’s (2016) framework for increasing emotional agility

 

 

 

 

 

Closing remark

Who’s in charge—the thinker or the thought?’ Are we managing our own lives according to our own values and what is important to us, or are we simply being carried along by the tide? David (2016)

Challenges

You want to learn how to lead change more efficiently? Here are three challenges that might help you along the way.

  • Level 1: Reflect through writing. During next next two weeks, take 10 minutes at the end of each day to write about your emotional experiences from the past day; don’t worry about making it perfect or readable: go where your mind takes you; it’s not about the document (you can delete it); the point is that those thoughts are now out of you and on the page.
  • Level 2: Watch the gaps. Identify the values (i.e., qualities of action), that are important to you3; analyze your behaviors in challenging situations and watch the gaps between them and your values (i.e., is my response in line with my values of …)—often simply noticing gaps can help to close them
  • Level 3: Getting unhooked. extend watch the gaps and recognize your patterns, notice if you’ve been hooked by your thoughts and feelings; if so, label them, accept them, and then act on your values (i.e., take deliberate action that aligns with your values; do not revert to the familiar, but take and enjoy the challenge, without being overwhelmed)

Reading list

For digging deeper, I recommend reading the articles of the reading exercise (again) plus following articles/books:

  • Psychological flexibility: Bond et al. (2013), Kashdan (2010)
  • Self awareness: Brown & Ryan (2003)
  • Logotherapy: Frankl (1985)
  • Emotional agility: David & Congleton (2013) (HBR), David (2016) (book)
  • Differences in emotion regulation processes: Gross & John (2003)
  • Reflect through writing: Lepore & Greenberg (2002), Slatcher & Pennebaker (2006)
  • ACT: Luoma et al. (2007), Wilson (2014)
  • Fundamental attribution error: Tetlock (1985)
  • Acceptance and commitment therapy: Hayes et al. (2006)

Q&A

Literature

Bond, F. W., Hayes, S. C., & Barnes-Holmes, D. (2013). Psychological flexibility, ACT, and organizational behavior. In Acceptance and mindfulness at work: Applying acceptance and commitment therapy and relational frame theory to organizational behavior management (pp. 25–54). Routledge.
Brown, K. W., & Ryan, R. M. (2003). The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 822.
David, S. (2016). Emotional agility: Get unstuck, embrace change, and thrive in work and life. Penguin Publishing Group.
David, S., & Congleton, C. (2013). Emotional agility. Harvard Business Review, 91(11), 125–131.
Frankl, V. E. (1985). Man’s search for meaning. Pocket Books.
Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348.
Hayes, S. C., Luoma, J. B., Bond, F. W., Masuda, A., & Lillis, J. (2006). Acceptance and commitment therapy: Model, processes and outcomes. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 44(1), 1–25.
Kashdan, T. B. (2010). Psychological flexibility as a fundamental aspect of health. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(7), 865–878.
Lepore, S. J., & Greenberg, M. A. (2002). Mending broken hearts: Effects of expressive writing on mood, cognitive processing, social adjustment and health following a relationship breakup. Psychology and Health, 17(5), 547–560.
Luoma, J. B., Hayes, S. C., & Walser, R. D. (2007). Learning ACT: An acceptance & commitment therapy skills-training manual for therapists. New Harbinger Publications.
Slatcher, R. B., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). How do i love thee? Let me count the words: The social effects of expressive writing. Psychological Science, 17(8), 660–664.
Southwick, S. M., Charney, D. S., & DePierro, J. M. (2023). Resilience: The science of mastering life’s greatest challenges. Cambridge University Press.
Tetlock, P. E. (1985). Accountability: A social check on the fundamental attribution error. Social Psychology Quarterly, 227–236.
Wilson, K. G. (2014). The ACT matrix: A new approach to building psychological flexibility across settings and populations. New Harbinger Publications.

Footnotes

  1. The labels god and bad are, e.g., also used in most of the academic articles about emotions.

  2. When you love someone, your also open up yourself to having your heart broken—life demands that you can experience some of the so-called bad thoughts and bad emotions — that is “the truth of living”.

  3. Possible personal values as noted in David & Congleton (2013): accuracy, achievement, adventure, authority, autonomy, caring, challenge, change, comfort, compassion, contribution, cooperation, courtesy, creativity, dependability, duty, family, forgiveness, friendship, fun, generosity, genuineness, growth, health, helpfulness, honesty, humility, humor, justice, knowledge, leisure, mastery, moderation, nonconformity, openness, order, passion, popularity, power, purpose, rationality, realism, responsibility, risk, safety, self-knowledge, service, simplicity, stability, tolerance, tradition, wealth