When I first began studying childhood trauma, particularly its connection with leadership, I would search numerous news articles for certain keywords. One of those words was "resilience."
At the time, between 2018 and 2019, almost every article on resilience dealt with climate change. In other words, how the earth was resilient and was capable of recovering from damage if humans changed their ways - today.
And then COVID hit. Within a short few months, climate change resiliency was replaced by the need for humans themselves to be resilient.
Everyone spoke about "bouncing back" through the process of being mindful or compassionate; taking up journaling or a hobby; or thinking positively or setting goals.
I will readily admit I'm no expert on resilience. Perhaps some or all of these suggestions are helpful in some manner. However, I could never seem to get my head wrapped around these ideas completely because how people defined resiliency seemed to be all over the map.
So I did what I regularly do: I started reading scientific articles on the subject.
The first thing I learned was that "resilience has been described as a trait, a process, an outcome, or an all-encompassing combination of all three."
In fact, resilience has been described by some as "an empty word that can be filled with almost any meaning" (Munoz, R. T., Hanks, H., & Hellman, C. M., "Hope and resilience as distinct contributors to psychological flourishing among childhood trauma survivors," Traumatology, 26(2), 177–184, 2020.)
Well, that's not good. How do you measure someone's resilience? Can you really teach resilience if we can't agree on what it really is? Do we teach a variety of techniques and just pray that someone becomes resilient?
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If you'd like to know more about my primary topic, "(Re)Building Trust: A Trauma-informed Approach to Leadership," please visit my website at mrchrisfreeze.com.
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