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The ability to resurrect after a drama, to adapt to life’s challenges – that’s what we call mental resilience. Here is the story of a concept that brings hope.
“Please take your seats and fasten your seat belts. Our plane has entered the turbulence zone,” the stewardess announces, and the difference in the behavior of passengers immediately becomes noticeable. Someone turns pale and clings to the armrests, someone silently moves his lips: either he is praying, or he is mentally talking to someone close, the third demands water, pills or is loudly indignant at the unprofessionalism of the crew, and someone continues to read the book no matter how what didn’t happen.
We also react differently to other stressful situations. And there are more and more of them. The salary was delayed, there was an unexpected traffic jam on the road, the doctor sends him for examination, it is not known whether there will be a next quarantine… What helps us cope?
Like a bouncy ball
The concept of psychological stability appeared in psychology in the twentieth century. And it came from physics. A rubber ball thrown on the ground will change shape momentarily, but will quickly recover: this is called “elastic deformation”. And the vase will break irrevocably – it has a much smaller margin of safety, and almost any deformation ceases to be elastic for it.
“The main indicator of the stability of a system is the ability of this system to experience external influences without destruction, that is, without transitioning not just to a different state, but to one where the system ceases to be itself,” explains Doctor of Psychology Tatyana Rogacheva1. – In this case, the opposite of stability is instability, which manifests itself in erratic and unpredictable behavior, inexplicable mood swings; in neurotic, psychotic and simply dangerous for other behaviors.
Resilience can be described in another way: as the ability to work effectively under extreme conditions. This quality can also be called professional reliability, and its opposite is, accordingly, unreliability.
One of the first to pay attention to this issue was the aviation psychologist Fyodor Gorbov, who was part of the team of specialists who prepared the first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin for the flight. Exploring the phenomenon of paroxysm (sudden temporary disorder) in the flight crew, he formulated the concept of the neuropsychic stability of the pilot.
Some subjects who showed strong emotional reactions during the study under emotional influences, but retained their working capacity and ability to concentrate, operative memory and other characteristics and productivity of activity, were disqualified by medical commissions due to neurological diseases several years later.
So it turned out that reliability as the ability to perform a task in difficult conditions is not always accompanied by the ability to recover.
innate property?
It seems natural to assume that much depends on the nervous system that we inherited from our parents. Maybe a silent phlegmatic is better able to tolerate stress than an excitable choleric?
However, specialists who studied athletes with different types of nervous system failed to find a direct correlation between neurological data and high results.
Therefore, the psychologist Lev Abolin proposed to consider not so much the qualities of the nervous system as the qualities of the personality, including anxiety, the motivation to achieve success and avoid failure, and worldview qualities. But he also failed to establish a direct relationship.
After a series of experiments, Lev Abolin came to the conclusion that neither age, nor work experience, nor psychological characteristics make it possible to accurately predict who and how will behave in a difficult moment.
This reminds us that defining sustainability is not always easy. However, the term has become so popular that there is now a market for resilience – coaching institutes offer management techniques to help workforces get through difficult stages (layoffs, transfers to another place or to another position), or seminars to increase psychological resilience in love, where optimism and resilience are cultivated.
However, the margin of safety should not be understood as a sporting achievement, as a personal result.
How to check your stability?
Is it possible to predict how we will behave in an alarming situation?
Physician and cosmobiologist Fyodor Kosmolinsky describes two methods that have been used to determine the resilience of pilots.
Task 1. From a kneeling position with arms crossed behind your back, fall onto a soft mattress spread under it with your head on the pillows, without bending the body, without making any unnecessary movements. Before this, a practical demonstration was held, demonstrating the safety and harmlessness of the fall.
This task is difficult for those who are emotionally unstable, as well as for those who have functional disorders (for example, in the past there were traumatic brain injuries, loss of consciousness …).
Task 2. Walk on the boom (also known as the “log” sports equipment) under the metronome. In case of fear, the heartbeat quickens, the breath is held, the walking speed changes, and the coordination of movements worsens. These reactions are more noticeable, the greater the height of the log.
By doing these tests, you will be able to predict with a high probability how much you will be able to maintain your presence of mind in a stressful environment. However, if you decide to test yourself, be careful, check the safety of projectiles and complicate the task gradually.
Saved from the crash
Psychological resilience can only be imagined as a tapestry in which the threads are woven day after day. Also, no one can be resilient alone.
“Psychological mutual assistance is of great importance for preventing mental trauma and for increasing resistance to stress and readiness to respond quickly in emergency situations,” emphasizes Tatiana Rogacheva.
Behind every resilient person is another who reached out to him at the right moment. A person with psychological stability is more like a rescued shipwreck than a triumphant hero.
But when we develop mental resilience, does that mean we return to where we were? After the flu, the patient returns to his usual appearance. After drama, shock or trauma, a person will never be the same. And he will not become what he would have been if he had not survived this test.
A person with a spiritual wound begins to live, think, love again and is gradually freed. But in his soul, as well as in his brain, traces of the wound will always remain. These marks may cause him to continue to take the position of the victim. But they can, on the contrary, encourage him to show more tolerance and wisdom.
“I managed to get behind the wheel again”
33-year-old Larisa recalls how she recovered from the accident with the help of a friend
“I was on my way to a meeting that promised to be unpleasant: the customer, to whom I did the design of the house, quarreled with the foreman, I had to resolve their conflict. The road went to the mountains, but I drove it a hundred times, so I drove on autopilot, immersed in my thoughts. And suddenly a car behind me overtook me, and a self-satisfied type grinned at me through the window, and I got angry and revved to overtake him.
But the car slipped, swerved, and I was carried to the side of the road. Bald tires, they should have been changed a long time ago! I remembered this and drove extremely carefully … but not at that time. Immediately other cars began to stop. I was completely whole, not a scratch. They helped me get out, I was not even late for the meeting …
I got scared only the next day: I realized that if the same thing had happened 100 meters further, I would have landed not on the side of the road, but on a cliff. I imagined a falling car in every detail, with me inside … My driving experience at that time was one and a half years, and for the first time something happened to me. Maybe that’s why it shocked me so much. And I also knew that my grandfather died in an accident, rolling over in ice.
There was nothing to dream of getting behind the wheel. It made me sick just thinking about it. I refused all orders, sold the car and went on vacation. I thought I’d break up. But it didn’t help. And it was impossible to work without a car: who would take me to the facilities? I can’t afford a personal chauffeur.
I told my school friend about everything – we live in different parts of the country, but we keep in touch. She soon came to visit me. I rented a car. “Can you just sit next to me? I don’t know anything here, show me where to go, that’s all.” I couldn’t refuse.
A couple of days later: “I’ve been driving all day, nodding, let’s you drive a little bit.” The house was already nearby, and I agreed. History repeated itself, I said: “You are cunning!” She did not deny it: “If I began to convince you, you would not believe it, but you see that nothing terrible is happening. But promise me to ride quietly.” And now, for six years, I have been fulfilling her condition: if I am upset or angry, I take a taxi or sit at home.
1. Tatyana Rogacheva is a teacher of psychology, co-author of the textbook (G. V. Zalevsky, T. V. Rogacheva, T. E. Levitskaya Psychology of extreme situations and states. Tomsk TSU, 2015), from where all the examples and materials are taken.