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Connections are
critical to resilience
(November
2005 Issue)
By Ami Albernaz
Following a natural disaster, the process of rebuilding lives and
communities inevitably extends far longer than media coverage does.
And although the process is slow, most of those displaced will recover.
Resilience, the ability to adapt to challenging, stressful or traumatic
life experiences, has become the subject of much psychological research,
particularly in the wake of 9/11, but also as a component of the
positive psychology movement that has gained force in recent years.
It has long been known that traumatic events sometimes have positive
long-term outcomes, such as bringing communities closer together,
reorienting a person's priorities or simply enabling a person to
realize he can get through a catastrophe. Recently, psychologists
have been examining resilience, trying to learn what accounts for
it and how people can boost their resilience following trauma.
Resilience "does not mean not feeling pain or sadness, but it does
mean having coping skills," says Laura Barbanel, Ed.D., ABPP, co-chair
of the American Psychological Association Task Force on Promoting
Resilience in Response to Terrorism and a practitioner in Brooklyn
Heights, N.Y. The degree to which an individual is resilient, Barbanel
adds, depends in part on the ways in which he or she interacts with
the world and the social supports the person can tap into.
For psychologists working with people who have been through trauma,
tapping into resilience means working through the reactions to the
event as they surface. The course of healing varies among individuals,
a fact to which individuals must be sensitive.
If a person has never been through a particular experience before,
she has no memory stores to draw on that could guide her in how
to deal with it, says Lee Fitzgibbons, Ph.D., a psychologist in
Raymond, Maine. People may benefit from guidance, then, in processing
these feelings. "The most important thing is to have acceptance,"
Fitzgibbons says. "Symptoms will often start to dissipate if allowed
to take their natural course."
Fitzgibbons warns, though, that if symptoms have not diminished
after three months, a person should seek help if he hasn't already
done so. "At that point, it generally tends to be chronic," she
says.
Research has shown that anywhere between five and 30 percent of
people who witness a traumatic event will suffer lingering effects
of that trauma long after it has happened. For victims of a natural
disaster, such as a hurricane, the percentages are four to seven
percent, according to the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress
Disorder.
The biological components of resilience are now being explored.
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston have suggested
that the thickness of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is linked
to the ability to inhibit fear, while other research has looked
at the role of certain brain chemicals. Even though how people react
to trauma is determined in part by biology, there are steps they
can take to boost resilience.
The characteristics associated with resilience include seeing problems
as challenges, rather than insurmountable obstacles; anticipating
change as potentially positive; and setting small, realistic goals
that can keep one moving forward. The APA Help Center (www.apahelpcenter.org)
lists 10 ways to build resilience; chief among these is drawing
on the support of family, friends and people in the community. "Connections
to others are important to resilience," Barbanel says. "Healing
of trauma typically occurs through connection to others; that is
why we can talk about 'resilient families' or communities."
Ervin Staub, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst, says connections with others are more beneficial
than we might realize.
"People are more likely to act in their own behalf if they don't
feel abandoned," he says.
In terms of a wide scale response to catastrophe, Staub says that
when thinking about a national response to catastrophe, it is just
as important to extend emotional support, to let people know that
others care, as it is to provide money. Along with providing people
with food, temporary shelter and the means to rebuild their homes,
it is important to be sure that community institutions that offer
psychological support are also rebuilt.
It is important that such institutions "make people feel that they're
worth it," Staub says. "Sometimes people abandon themselves."
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