A set of skills, not a disposition or personality.
training for resilience can change the brain to, well, make it
more resilient
"with a little practice, anyone can develop resilience,
says Southwick, 67, a professor of psychiatry at the Yale
School of Medicine."
It can be cultivated by forcing people out of their comfort
zones.
Dr. Dennis did so by dragging along his children on "semi-dangerous"
adventure trips such as a kayaking trip with his son Alex: It rained the
entire time, the life jackets didn't fit and they had to share a
broken-ruddered boat for 12-mile runs every day.
Enables people
to not only get
through hard
times but to
thrive through
them.
"Just as rubber rebounds after being squeezed or squished,
so do resilient people."
people bounce back from difficult
experiences--- both those they seek out and
those that blindside them--- while others
don't fare quite so well.
there are lots of ways to intervene
so that stress or trauma doesn't
derail you
Resilience can help us with stress.
"humans get stressed
far more than they
realise"
"The vast majority of us will
be faced with one or more
major traumatic stressors
during a lifetime," says
Southwick.
countless smaller
stresses also take a toll
nearly all our modern ills, including heart disease
and possibly even brain disorders like Alzheimer's
disease, have stress as a common risk factor
"Resilience training can help people to deal effectively with
chronic disease and improve their quality of life," says Charney.
"It helps people cope."
The latest science shows that if you train your brain, how
you act under pressure can, in large part, be up to you.
"anyone could train him - or herself to be more resilient"
Ways/factors to cultivate resilience:
tight-knit community, stable role model,
strong belief in their ability to solve
problems
people thrive in the
aftermath of adversity
Quotes:
For resilience, there's not one
prescription that works. Find what
works for you. --- Dr. Dennis Charney
Very few highly
resilient people
are strong in
and by
themselves. You
need support. --- Dr. Steven Southwick
To measure how resilient you are,
consider how you react to things that
don't go your way/stress.
What causes stress: social pain(rejection
and loneliness), fear, everyday stressors
like worrying about the future or fretting
about the past
Resilient people can appropriately regulate the
fear circuits in their brain under a stressful
environment. They do not reinforce the fear
circuit and instead build and strengthen different
connections, developing a new response to
stress.
How to become more resilient: face your
fears, develop an ethical code to guide
daily decisions, have a strong network of
social support, exercise as it develops
new neurons which help with dealing
with stress
"When people are exposed to a stressor in a
lab, their heart rate and blood pressure don't
go up quite as much if a friend is in the room
as they do if they're alone."
Resilience focuses
on mindfulness:
"Marines who trained
in mindfulness
returned to baseline
levels of heart rate and
breathing rate faster
than those who hadn't
been trained."
"They also showed a lower
activation in the region of the
brain associated with
emotional reactions. By the
end of training, their brains
actually looked more
resilient."
Meditation
helps with
resilience:
becoming tougher has
everything to do with
tuning into the mind
consistent practice
changes how the brain
looks as well as how it
operates
the more
experienced
the meditator,
the more
quickly the
brain recovers
from stress