Why do some people overcome any difficulties, while others do not? The answer is in a special character trait – hardiness. What is it and can it be brought up in oneself?
Norman Garmesy, a cognitive developmental psychologist and clinician at the University of Minnesota, has studied thousands of children in his research career. But one boy in particular stood out to him.
The boy was 9 years old, he grew up without a father, his mother suffered from alcohol addiction. Every day the child brought a kind of “sandwich” with him to school: two slices of bread without any filling. There was nothing else in the house that he could take with him to dinner. Despite this, the boy did not want others to feel sorry for him and condemn his mother. So he carried a “bread sandwich” to school every day with a smile on his face.
The boy with the “bread sandwich” belonged to a special group of children identified by Garmezi. These children were successful in life despite the fact that they were in incredibly difficult living conditions. All of them had a common character trait, which the researcher later defined as “hardiness”.
Over the years, Garmezi visited schools in economically disadvantaged regions and conducted research according to standard protocol. He made appointments with the principal and the social work assistant and asked the same question: “Does your school have children from disadvantaged backgrounds who, despite the circumstances, have become the pride of the school?”
There was usually a long pause after the question. Garmezi recalls: “If I were to ask, ‘Are there disadvantaged kids in your school?’ – the answer would follow immediately. But I wanted to know about the children who were able to adapt to the situation and become good students despite the difficulties. It was a new approach – previously scientists were trying to find out what pushes children to problem behavior.
The study of resilience is a difficult task for psychologists. Tests won’t show if you have this gift or not.
You can determine this only by analyzing how you behaved in difficult moments of your life: did you bend under the weight of circumstances or overcome them. If you have been so lucky so far that you have not found yourself in difficult situations, then there is no chance of knowing how resilient you are.
Life difficulties can be different. Some of them are the result of low socio-economic status and disadvantaged domestic conditions, and Garmezi studied them mainly. Some difficulties are chronic: parents with psychological and behavioral problems, violence and humiliation in the family, a difficult divorce of parents. Other difficulties are short-term: an accident or participation in traumatic events.
The intensity and duration of a stressful situation is important: in chronic cases, the intensity of stress can be small, but since such stress occurs periodically and lasts much longer, it has a huge impact on the formation of the adaptation mechanism and the use of psychological resources.
Garmezi’s research career was interrupted by progressive Alzheimer’s disease, but his students and followers determined that defense mechanisms fall into two groups: individual (psychological factors) and external (environmental factors). They conditionally called them “predisposition” and “luck.”
In 1989, cognitive psychologist Emmy Werner published the results of a 32-year study. She studied a group of 698 children living on the island of Kauai, Hawaii, from birth to their thirties. Werner tracked the consequences of any stress: transferred in the womb, poverty, problems in the family.
Two thirds of the children belonged to a stable, successful and happy middle class, the remaining third lived in the so-called “dysfunctional families”.
Like Garmesy, Werner soon discovered that not all “dysfunctional” children responded to stress in the same way.
Two-thirds of them experienced severe learning or behavioral difficulties, committed crimes, or experienced mental health problems. But the remaining third of the children became competent, self-confident and caring adults. They have achieved success in their studies, personal life and society.
Werner found several factors that could predict the emergence of hardiness. Some of them were a happy accident: a sensitive teacher, a caring parent. But other factors were physiological and reflected how children reacted to their environment.
From the earliest years, “hardy” children “dictated their terms to the world.” They were self-sufficient and independent, rejoiced at new experiences, and were positively disposed. “Despite the fact that these children were not particularly gifted, they successfully developed their best skills,” Werner wrote. Most importantly, such children had, as psychologists say, an “internal locus of control”: they believed that they themselves, and not circumstances, influence life.
In addition, the researcher found that hardiness can change over time. It’s like balancing the scales all the time: what will pull it off – stress or protective factors? Some children have experienced many severe stresses, one after another, and their resilience has waned.
Most people have a psychological “breaking point”. On the other hand, some people who didn’t have resilience to begin with can learn to “work it out.” Some study participants were able to learn how to deal effectively with adverse circumstances.
How to learn resilience
George Bonanno, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University and head of the Loss, Trauma and Emotion Lab, has been researching resilience for about 25 years.
His theory begins with the observation that all humans have inherited the same coping mechanism that has evolved over many millions of years and that we share with other species. But why do some people use this mechanism more effectively than others?
Bonanno discovered that one of the key elements in developing resilience is assessing the situation: do you perceive the event as a trauma or an opportunity to learn and grow? “An event becomes traumatic when we evaluate it as such,” explains Bonnano. He suggested using the term “potentially traumatic event”: any frightening event may or may not be traumatic.
Bonnano explores intense negative events that can seriously traumatize the human psyche, in contrast to Garmesi and Werner, who studied all negative events, regardless of their intensity.
For example, consider the reaction to an event such as the death of a close friend. Surely you will grieve
But, if you can still find a deep meaning in this loss – for example, what happened will help you realize how important it is to take care of your health – then this event will be less traumatic.
It is for this reason, explains Bonanno, that “stressful” or “traumatic” events alone cannot predict how a person’s life will develop in the future. Life becomes predictable only if a person negatively assesses what happened to him.
The good news is that you can learn to treat adversity in a positive way. “We can make ourselves more or less vulnerable by thinking in certain ways,” says Bonanno. Another Columbia University researcher, Kevin Ochsner, proved that if people are taught to think differently about external stimuli, to rethink them in a positive way instead of the initial negative reaction, then they will change their initial reaction to negative stimuli.
Similar conclusions were reached by the authors of a study on “explanatory styles,” the psychological technique we use to explain what happened. Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, proved that teaching people to change their way of explaining what happens to them makes them psychologically successful and less prone to depression.
Researchers agree: Cognitive skills that build resilience can be learned
Changing styles can range from internal to external (“bad events are not my fault”), general to specific (“this is just one event, not proof that everything in my life is bad”), and from permanent to impermanent (“I am able to change my life for the better”).
The same can be said about the locus of control: the internal locus (“I am the master of fate”) is associated with lesser experiences, the transition from the external locus (“circumstances are stronger than me”) to the internal leads to positive changes in the psychological and physical plane.
Unfortunately, the gift of resilience can be lost. “Over the course of life, we become less resilient,” says Bonanno. We easily invent non-existent problems and exaggerate those that do exist. This is one of the dangers of human thinking.”
We are able to torment ourselves over a trifle and eventually turn it into an insoluble problem. In a sense, we are prophesying our own failure. Focus on adversity as an unsolvable problem and a potentially traumatic situation will become a truly traumatic event that will slow down your life and ability to further develop.
Try to look at adversity as temporary difficulties and you will see how the scope of your ability to cope with the situation expands. You will learn to learn from what happened a lesson and begin to develop.
About the author: Maria Konnikova is a Russian-born American psychologist, author of popular science columns on the brain and the book Outstanding Mind. Think like Sherlock Holmes.”