How people learn to become resilient (2016)(newyorker.com) |
How people learn to become resilient (2016)(newyorker.com) |
I guess what I am getting at is there is a blend of self-respect, self-expectation, discipline, morality or something involved. At a certain point a person decides to stop trying to fight and be comfortable with whatever hand they have.
Some family environments may “spoil” the child because wealth allows the care-givers to provide a “Brave New World” like environment to grow up in.
This is very different than an environment where food and shelter isn’t being met and the challenge is to acquire the basics.
In an environment where “getting spoiled” might be an issue what is lacking is the fundamental need to develop autonomy and self-efficacy.
This is the environment I grew up in.
While a student—my dad was always trying to cheer me up with fancy dinners, and sumptuous gifts instead of trying to teach me how to create this same environment for myself.
Later, as an adult—they would discourage me from all attempts to overcome struggle.
Once I had a problem with a supplier while trying to launch a business and the first reaction out from my dad was that I should quit. My struggle was too much for my parents to bear. He didn’t believe I could endure the challenge.
Two things further complicate the situation.
1-
The child in question may also be continually told that they are lucky to be provided for. Isolation may ensue.
2 -
If only one parent is the breadwinner—the spouse may also end up being spoiled because they are out of touch with the circumstances that created the financial privilege.
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Without going too much more into it, I do believe I have developed a much better sense of what to accept and what to reject as gifts. I’m not perfect at it, but here is my thinking right now.
Reject material goods. Reject rent payments. Reject the payment of household expenses.
Accept experiences and time together. This is not as easy as it sounds.
For example, how should I pay for extra activities if my dad has picked out a luxurious resort and is inviting me on his dime? If it was my dollar, I would have opted for a much cheaper backpacking trip where 7 days camping equate to to one night at said resort. Still—I don’t want to have a bad time while I’m on vacation and so I choose to do these activities which he is more than happy to pay for. (Previously I have been on miserable vacations where I did nothing fun because I felt bad about spending his money. Truth is—I can’t afford this place on my own.)
At the end of the day—we are a family and we need to get along and we need to understand each other. We need to spend time together. We actually even like spending time together.
If I’m ever as financially successful as my father I need to make sure that these rules are clear up front for my children.
The more complicated wrinkle is with my mother who divorced my father. She is spoiled and spends her money very poorly. There is nothing I wish for more than to see her run her life with self-efficacy. She should have enough self-restraint so that she can actually enjoy the very exciting things she does do in life. Still—she dosen’t. In fact, she may never develop the capacity to do this for herself.
Money is a powerful creature. If used correctly—it can really enhance life. If used incorrectly, it can destroy you. In my life—I have seen it do both.
I guess no matter what backgrounds we have, we have our own ways of failing.
However, (after a lot of therapy), I see it more as a simple reflection of the undue trauma I faced and was required to handle.
One place where one needs to build resilience is in how we work and how we learn new things. The key thing is developing skillsets that enable us to go through life. Some key tools are:
1. Understanding how humans work: On why the early stages of work tend to be stressful.
2. Pushing through pain points: On the power of mental reframing.
3. Seeking motivation from within: Especially on large projects where you’re just a cog in the wheel.
This article https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/humans-and-work-thre... explores this further.
How People Learn to Become Resilient - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11083526 - Feb 2016 (25 comments)
I figured it was anti-ad-blocker tech, but even disabling ad blocker and going to incognito does nothing. Calls to "https://dolphin.condenastdigital.com/engines/atmo" are the calls that seem to fail with "ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED". I don't see a similar call being made in Firefox, which does load successfully.
Is my Chrome getting fingerprinted and somehow punished for running uBlock, or is newyorker.com just broken for Chrome in certain cases? Either way, it makes using my subscription that much harder...
Sucks to hear you having that issue.
Its impossible to read a summary of what have happened with me, because it would be so long that I would never end.
A short summary of the beginning would be something like this: I just never accepted anything coming from adults, teachers. I saw when they said something to me, than the next second do the very opposite. And I realized that when my parents divorced, that everything that I learned from them needs to be erased. They could not tell why they divorced, a specific reason. Because it never really is about one thing from what I can tell now. It was not something I come up with, it was more like a realization, hard truth, something that hit me hard, or something around these lines. And then I just proceeded to build up a mental image about the world from the ground up. I guess we all do that while growing up, but I really just couldn't accept anything anyone told me to do, or think the way they want me to.
Cant say that I 'am a very successful person. Sometimes I can be spot on, even on very large scale questions, using my own version of the world. I was able to make a really good investment choice, when everyone was shitting themselves, and running around like a beheaded chicken that the world was about to end. 2008 financial crisis and Covid. (I was in 7th grade in 2008 with really shitty grades) And sometimes I miss by a mile, usually when around topics where feelings must be involved. That is the part that I am trying to get better since I've realized.
I think its more about some things can make you or brake you. Resilience is understanding the real reasons why something happened. Like someone got angry at work when I asked him to send some documents for me. If the person is rude and got, to some extent angry at me, than I could translate that as that person not liking me, or that the person has some difficulties at home. In the first choice we could grind on about why is that, what have I done wrong, where in the other, you just move on. At least in my experience.
somehow this helps people make difficult, lasting changes in their lives that were previously beyond them, which is exactly the opposite of what should happen according to the research profiled in this article.
I think it's probably valuable to have an accurate locus of control -- the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Unfortunately this idea that an internal locus of control is always the superior, correct attitude is already floating out into pop psychology in schools and workplaces. I'm sure the actual research is nuanced and interesting but that's not what's reaching people.
For some additional prescriptive details.
“Though not especially gifted, these children used whatever skills they had effectively”
At least that’s how I interpreted the above quote.
I too know the "what the fuck else am I supposed to do" feeling in response to people saying stuff like "how did you deal with something like that?" or "you're so strong" but I think it does a disservice to yourself to ignore that crumpling under the pressure was a possibility, and one that was avoided if you're still here.
I would have previously agreed with you, and I think that is an important viewpoint that is useful to contemplate deeply. But, I now wish to reject the point of view that I should be proud because I faced my individual trauma somehow 'better' than those other people.
Those other people shouldn't have faced that trauma either.
You don't become resilient due to going through trauma, you are resilient when your body is in a certain physiological state (which is reflected throughout, from brainwaves, to vagal tone, to digestive system functioning, to immune system etc). Trauma is an event that takes the body out of that state into a state of fear/fight-or-flight. This state can become chronic if the perceived state of danger is maintained (even if the actual physical danger may no longer be relevant, the thought patterns developed could continue for the rest of person's life for instance). Some people go their whole lives with the coping behaviors developed in response to that trauma (whether it's workoholism, addiction etc).
Also important to mention is that there's a window of time between birth (and even before) and the very early childhood when the brain structures related to affect regulation are developed. Trauma in that period is likely to affect a person severely for a lifetime.
In other words, trauma is what makes a person less resilient. Lack of stressors does not make a person less resilient, on the contrary. Learned helplessness is an extremely common outcome of severe trauma, which is quite the opposite of resilience.
https://news.ufl.edu/2019/07/how-genes-resilience-affect-syr...
The Konnikova article links to a NYTimes article [0] which in turn (in the reader comments) links to a HuffPost article [1] by a medical school specialist on PTSD. Quoting from that: "The American Psychological Association defines resilience as 'the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of threat.' ... Resilience is common and can be witnessed all around us. Even better, we learned that everyone can learn and train to be more resilient. The key involves knowing how to harness stress and use it to our advantage. "
The problem with resilience as a skill is that "resilience" may be a skill you don't have before you need it. How can one be expected to have total control over one's "construal"? Trauma, like grief, is personal and subjective. Emotion is immediate. We feel the way we feel. In a crisis, should one feel worse because you are not yet deploying the resilience? Resilience is not one sure trick but an interpretative mindset set that may or may not be available to you when something that you may or may not be able to understand has happened to you. One could view therapy as a process of developing over time a resilient response to experienced trauma.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/magazine/the-profound-emp... [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trauma-resilience_b_1881666
Developing them is painful, but they give you power to try and do something bigger.
This sort of reasoning is exactly why I intentionally moved away from leftist frameworks that (although many of them I would argue are more correct) focus heavily on systemic critiques. This is my main problem with a good amount of leftist philosophy and why I much prefer the frameworks of post-modernists.
Even when the systemic analysis might be correct, if your goal is to improve your life it is far more important to move the locus of control into yourself rather than examine things outside your control that might be working against you.
Edit: e.g. if you want to get a new/better job it's far more productive after receiving a rejection letter to ask questions like "what did I do wrong?" and "what can I do differently next time?" than it is to worry about what systemic factors make you less likely to get the job.
I also want to be explicit that this is not a critique of the validity or importance of systemic critiques, more so just what I found to be practical in my life.
If you were ill you'd want the doctor who told you both "here's how to cope" and "here's how we cure this thing," not the one who stopped at the first.
It's one thing to say that there are alternative therapies to pulling down statues and burning shit in the street. It's rather another to reject the goals of a movement because you don't like their tactics.
A big trend, at least in PNW leftist activism, is looking at the entire system while focusing in on flaws. No improvement is acceptable unless it is total and complete, and partial steps are even worse than doing nothing.
Myanmar coup? Time to protest global capitalism. Bad conditions in a jail in Wyoming? Time to protest global capitalism. Trial outcome isn’t exactly what you wanted? Time to protest global capitalism. Frustrated that people aren’t paying attention on the 170th night of increasingly incoherent, demand-free protests about issues over which locals have zero control? Time to protest global capitalism.
Then on Twitter, after every protest, you have to complain when global capitalism wasn’t dismantled. If action was taken in response to protest, you have to tweet that it isn’t enough, because it didn’t abolish all borders, dismantle global capitalism, give all land back, and eliminate all government and corporations.
If people had an internal locus of control, they might think about how they can accomplish things, and that might involve identifying solutions to fix parts of the system, rather than demand the whole thing comes crashing down (with no actual thought on a replacement).
edit to clarify: none of the protest triggers leading to ‘time to protest global capitalism’ is meaningfully connected to or specifically about global capitalism; that’s the point. The folks I’m talking about don’t actually have a solid conception of the world and how they specifically want to change it, they’re just angry and don’t really think they can, so they act out against the entire system (I think in decades past it would have been ‘The Man’). Right now its trendy to hate on global capitalism, and assert that it fundamentally is linked to colonialism and white supremacy, among all other social ills. I’m not defending this thinking, just describing it, since it was so foreign to me and apparently to others.
Based on some of the movements that seem to be picking up steam, and my own life, I believe there's something about this current time that promotes a diminished locus of control. There seems to be a real appeal of ideas who that speak to this need.
It's quite a mindvirus. Even if you know you have it, you can't quite shrug it off.
It isn't that difficult to draw parallels lol.
You realize that the idea of characterizing a large and active social movement as an idle demand for a handout and government coddling is just spin, right? Have you ever met a serious SJW? Do they seem like apathetic victims to you, or do they have the kind of "resilience" detailed in the article?
You seem to be taking the article to mean that "injustice is OK because <insert disadvantaged group> can just be resilient and endure it"?
You might have to be resilient to deal with the trauma without collapsing, and then find that you still have to be resilient to deal with your new, permanently changed life after the fact too.
it's difficult to attack because, among other things, it is already integrated with the justice system. it fills the role of "okay, you're guilty of {drug-related offense}, but since it's your first time we're gonna cut you a break. we can't just let you get off scot-free, so you gotta go to these meetings and get this slip signed. maybe you'll end up turning your life around in the process." any discussion of a replacement probably has to start with "how much does it cost?" and "who's paying?".
>The problem is that systematic problems requiring systematic solution doesn't provide a framework for individual behavior in the meantime.
To twist your analogy around, it's more like having a doctor say "you probably got cancer because you lived next to a coal plant." Incredibly important information to have societally, should absolutely be considered and maybe even an have impact on policy. However, that does nothing for the patient today.
Also, if that is actual cause, it would be harmful for doctor to speculate about how patient harmed himself.
Example: the body-positivity/fat-acceptance movement, which is often hostile to the concept of "unhealthy body weight" and "losing weight".
Maybe you socialize only with most hardcore communists, or only with hardcore right wing, but your perception is not based on reality.
I am specifically referring to the most hardcore leftists, but I don’t tend to socialize with them. I don’t think its right to call them communists, anarchism is popular though.
I don’t know if you can make a broad claim about no protest being framed as against global capitalism; if you had been to one, you’d know that the protestors like to be clear that they are decentralized, so no one person owns the framing. They have many different framings internally, and certainly you know how I frame them. My framing is based on the chants of, and sprayed graffiti saying ‘land back’, ‘rent is theft’, ‘kill all landlords’, and ‘end capitalism’.
Systematic problems are worth correcting and shouldn't be ignored.
The problem is that systematic problems requiring systematic solution doesn't provide a framework for individual behavior in the meantime.
You can't wait for problems to get fixed. Even if you're working hard or contributing money to those that are working to get problems fixed, you're still stuck in whatever circumstances you are in. It may be a long time for these problems to be fixed, in the meantime we're the heroes(or villains) of our own stories.
Systemic critiques are absolutely necessary to improve society, but you can't live every day only in a systemic mindset because that will inevitably move your locus of control much farther outside yourself.
Can you explain what exactly you want to see and how burning anything or tearing down statues accomplishes that? As far as I can tell, all it accomplished was status quo, with a lot more people feeling threatened by leftists.
I don't see the people you're referring to as being in the driver's seat of any meaningful change that's actually being considered in a way that might actually lead to implementation.
I don’t know if its necessarily wrong to otherize the people who smash windows in my community, spray paint graffiti on the walls (Land Back! Pigs must die! Kill cops! Rent is theft!). If anything, I think they have chosen to make themselves the enemy of the community they live in by refusing to productively engage with it.
Its really frustrating seeing people who purport to want progress actively destroy community will to make progress on things. They make things a lot harder for the people who are trying to make good changes happen.
But, it is never the case that right made left do something bad.
It's fairly interesting to me to see this relatively small group of people causing fairly limited damage be the focus of so much attention, rather than the ideas and concepts of more influential (and therefore relevant) social justice advocates.
It's noisy and grabs your attention yes, but I think it's a mistake to think of it as representative of anything other than the specific people causing the damage.
"Shouldn't" is an interesting word for e.g. getting cancer. We would all be better off if nobody had to ever face that, but... what would "they shouldn't have gotten cancer" really mean, there? That they should be bitter over being unlucky?
That would be a very different statement to make about a trauma inflicted by another human, though.
i'm not happy or pleased that my therapist calls me resilient. she uses the word as something positive but i'd rather not be "resilient" at all. the experience and effects of trauma are something i could do 1000% without. and i'm sure most people who have survived such an ordeal can attest to that fact.
I have a personality type which crumbles on every occurrence of some challenges in life, and I’m havin nearly panic attacks about almost everything. part of that emotion is “why me, I don’t want this problem in my life”. and frequently for short periods of time I’m on the verge of giving up.
what my therapist is trying to teach me that all events in my life are kinda inevitable, and it’s up to me to decide how to handle them, and I thing therapist is trying to develop some resillience in me by explaining that some trauma in my life is just unavoidable. getting older is unavoidable. diseases (albeit preventable) unavoidable. economic crisis inevitable and so on and so on. so having resiliency is a good thing, regardless if you prefer to have that trauma or not. and you should be proud that you handled it well.
And I can add that another benefit for him would be time and money saved on therapist. Therapy takes time and a lot of money. Being in situation where you don't need it is better, even if you lose on tiny bit of resilience.
Trauma is the natural state, and our resilience has and always will be a defining characteristic of successful people... Of whom we are descendents.
As a survivor of sexual abuse on a lifelong journey of survival, it’s difficult to communicate just how strongly I disagree with (and am repulsed by) this statement and the sentiment behind it.
It lacks awareness of the many kinds of trauma, and trivializes the experiences of those who’ve been subjected to things that are anything but natural.
Do not mistake the prevalence of something for being “natural”. Trauma, by definition, is the opposite, prevalent though it may be.
And even if you could lump all kinds of trauma into the same category, my conclusion would be very different than yours. If trauma is the natural state, then we should be doing everything to change that state, not throw up our hands and conclude “oh well, that’s just the way things are, and the best survive”.
Imagine taking this stance on slavery, or more broadly: racism.
I agree with everything you said.
Also: fuck the natural state of the universe. The natural state of the universe is shit and we should seriously fight against it.
There is no fairness or justice or good in the laws of the universe. Nature is a bitch.
But that's not so bad, because we can be fair and good and make the environment better.
I would have thought that since traumatic experiences have been around forever, humans would have adapted to dealing with those better by now. And yet the medical evidence laid out in this book seems to show that healing from traumas is difficult. To me, that means there is something "unnatural" about trauma (or at least the most awful cases).
I'm probably not doing the book enough justice. Here's the goodreads profile for anyone who wants to explore further: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18693771-the-body-keeps-...
There is nothing hyper-modern about condemning war, sexual assault, child abuse, and genocide. These things have been viewed as terrible by various civilizations since civilization existed.
I can and do recommend therapy to everyone.