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What is Resilience?

I have wondered what resilience truly is. Reading Tina Marie Hahn's comments on resilience helped me achieve a better understanding. I agree that resilience is not something we are born with.

 

We talk about resilience in a couple of ways. When someone has experienced much adversity in their life, and responded somewhat positively, we say they are resilient. They bounce back quicker than most. If we look at kids who come from an impoverished or problem filled background and succeed, we infer resilience as the reason why. And if we look at someone who has sunk to the depths of behavioral despair, and come back from it, we attribute their rehabilitation to resilience.

 

If we consider resilience as an innate trait we are born with, then many of us are deficient and it feels like we are criticized based on an accident of birth, similar to skin color. We are bad seed because we were not born resilient, and it is natural to seek punishment and possible isolation for us born without resilience.

 

When we look at resilience in the context of a response system and base it on learning, then it requires having a training opportunity. That training opportunity might be a family of origin, a social support network or a formal training opportunity. In essence it becomes a learned response, a countermeasure, to negative behavioral results.

 

Reading and thinking about the resilience literature has added some depth to my analysis about the development of negative behaviors in response to ACE’s. I believe the Root Cause of negative behaviors can be found in three places: 1) as a response to developmental trauma (adult or ACE’s); 2) as a consequence of nutritional deficits; and 3) lack of training opportunity on how to respond to one’s potential for bad behavior.

 

Number 3 is the addition to my thinking. If we are not taught how to respond to a desire to perform a negative act, we may perform it. This training can come from 2 sources that I have identified. It can be a culturally trained response, built into the family of origin, or observed and replicated behavior from another source within the culture. The second source is training. This might be provided in school, from the criminal justice system, or the family and youth services system. There are plenty of possible sources. Most of the time, the training comes after symptom expression (the negative behavior is practiced and the perpetrator is caught). What resilience advocates seem to want is to train before perpetration happens. That’s the right thing to do, in my opinion.

 

Training should build awareness of why you might practice or perpetrate negative behaviors. It should help you recognize the signs of imminent perpetration and a response to stop it from happening. There are a lot of barriers to creating awareness and response.

 

I have actually put building knowledge and awareness of the impact of ACE’s, adult onset trauma and nutritional deficits into the Restoration to Health Model I have worked on for the past 5 years. It’s the first step towards achieving wellness. It’s also intended to be taught in a non-blaming environment.

 

In this model, resilience can be taught and applied. It supports the innate ability of people to learn and train their response system to a level of resisting perpetration of bad behavior. Recognizing signals that the body is activating, applying intervention techniques such as deep breathing, emotional freedom technique, mindfulness or other taught interventions, quiets the activation response. The negative behavior is avoided, and the consequences that follow are no longer possible. That’s real resilience in this model.

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Wonderful questions, Dr. Hahn. It may take some space to answer. I am developing the healing protocol and have not moved it into actual trial. As an attorney, I literally am given no respect for my thinking on healing. I am currently seeking funding for development and trial through the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, Alaska. But everything I propose has support independently. It just has not been put into a systemic approach.

As a health care executive, I was always puzzled by the poor response we had. Despite great care, people were not getting better in a lot of cases. When I began my research in 2008, I found quickly that between 50 and 70 percent of visits to primary care resulted in a diagnosis of no medically defined systems. That sent me to research behavioral health. I administered 2 different behavioral health systems that literally had no visible results. As I looked at behavioral health, I discovered the literature on violence and nutrition. When I put it all together, I realized that children went through a process of developmental trauma, poor nutrition and a cultural system that eventually led to varying degrees of behavioral adoption, and ultimately poor behavioral and physical health. And each individual had different experiences, although the same developmental processes apply. I did not accept resilience as anything other than a method for helping reverse the systemic pathway to negative behavior and health development.

As a systems analyst, I decided to develop a systems approach for healing guided by knowledge from all 3 disciplines—medical, behavioral and nutritional. I also determined that an assessment that revealed developmental deficiencies in all 3 areas would be beneficial to healing. The screening process leads to a healing protocol that is systemic as well. We didn’t get sick overnight. The body and brain are incredible in their ability to heal given the proper environment for healing.

So what you describe as your training for ACE’s 101 is essentially the first step to healing—knowledge and information. By letting clients know what happened to them, and relating the development of health and behavioral issues as a progression, we explain that we are normal, given what has happened to us. In response to your fact statement, I also try to let people know that the process of learning is one that require repetition and a learning mind—one that is not stressed by the fear response constantly, if given time to learn. So the first step is knowledge that you are the same as everyone else, with great potential. But what happened to you led to the place you are today. We can reverse that pathway if you want to. And they have to want to.

The second step is to reduce any nutritional deficiencies that impact the development of negative behaviors. For example, Dr. Joseph Hibbeln has explored the relationship between Omega 3 deficiencies and imbalances relative to Omega 6. Deficiency and imbalance are related to both anger, aggression, violence, suicide and ADD/ADHD behaviors. Bill W., through his relationship with Dr. Abram Hoffer, found relief through mega supplementation with niacin. There is lots of literature on mega vitamin intervention that show excellent results.

The third level of healing uses the benefit of exercise, and in particular, Trauma Release Exercise and Somatic Experiencing. As biological beings, we have a fear response that is centered in our Limbic System, and an anxiety response that is centered in our prefrontal cortex. We have to deal with each separately, and TRE is a way to dissipate chemicals generated by the fear response that are not dissipated by fight or flee. Anxiety requires tools to dissipate anxious feelings related to past experience and fear of the future. That’s addressed more fully in the fourth level, but because anxiety is also fueled by our fear response, it should responds to level 3. And of course exercise releases endorphins, which are good for mood. Non blaming or shaming is a part of this whole system. When you watch an animal cleanse its body of fear chemicals, they go to a safe place. That's an absolute requirement for successful intervention.

The fourth level is more of an assisted self help healing protocol. Emotional Freedom Technique, Meditation/Mindfulness and EMDR all benefit from increasing research demonstrating successful intervention.

The fifth level is more in depth therapeutic methods and psychotropic medication, if warranted.

Many clients will benefit from the first 2 levels and rebound just fine. Some may need to move on some of the next three levels. That is a recognition of the different levels of need.

I might add that I believe that many behaviors that are deemed positive or neutral behaviors are also signals of trauma and need. Becoming successful in sports, music, arts, or any other highly visible endeavor brings praise to the participant, and can encourage positive coping chemicals. However, when the praise stops as it often does, then the participant may rely on negative behaviors to produce the same coping chemicals.

So in summary, what you do is the first level of the interventions I propose. It can be effective because it eliminates the blaming we do—over birth status, betrayal by our caregivers and any other sources of developmental trauma.

This has been rambling, I know. But if you have specific questions, I am happy to try to respond.

 

Hi Patrick, I am wondering how well you think your training will work with:

1. People who have sunk to depths of behavioral despair who have been rehabilitated by their resilience.

2. People who feel critized based on an accident of birth, similar to (the accident of - I assume) skin color.

3. People who are bad seeds because they were not born resilient and who find it natural to seek punishment and isolation for their deficit.

4. People who require a training opportunity to gain a learned response, a countermeasure, to their negative behavioral results; people who need a training opportunity on how to respond to their potential for bad behavior.

5. People who must be taught to respond properly to the desire to perform a negative act in order not to perform it.

6. People who can obtain the learned behavior of appropriate action by a training in school, from criminal justice, or from family and youth services.  The training must come before symptom expression and before the negative behavior is practiced and the perpetrator is caught.

7. People who need training to recognize the signs of imminent perpetration and are educated on the proper response to stop it from happening.

The training is intended to be taught in a non-blaming environment.

I ask this because we are talking about people who as children have been betrayed by the people who are supposed to love and care for them and by a society that turns her eyes away from them. In my ACEs 101 course, I was taught to be aware of and understand the neurodevelopmental and epigenetic factors that are at work in their bodies on a cellular and structural level. In my ACES 101 course, I was taught to look upon these people as my brothers and sisters and ask them w/earnest compassion "What happened to you?" "Who hurt you?" "How is this affecting your life now?"

So I'm just wondering how well do you think your training will do with people hurt and bruised by a society that prides herself on being great and awesome but in my observations shows herself to be so much less?

Thanks Tina

Last edited by Former Member

Great post, Patrick. 

I think there's a less blaming way of calling a way of coping with extraordinary stress "bad behavior", because those behaviors work, in the eyes of the person doing the behavior. Wouldn't it be less blameful to recognize smoking cigarettes or weed, or overeating, or binge drinking as logical choices to severe and chronic trauma, and, in many cases, to acknowledge that it is our communities and systems that haven't been providing alternatives to coping as well as healing and need to do so? 

Cheers, Jane

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