Early resilience researchers delved deeper into the construct of resilience and began to ask more detailed questions about what resilience actually is. While researchers agree that resilience empowers people to overcome adversity, the details of how resilience actually works varies in significant ways. Since there is no gold standard definition of resilience, it is likewise hard to replicate it. It has been described in such differing categories that become mutually exclusive by their definition. Large bodies of research have approached resilience according to each of these three categories: as a trait, as a state, or as an outcome.
The first way that resilience was defined was as a trait, propagated by developmental psychologists who capitalized on the early years of infancy through adolescence, defining resilience as an observable trait in those who met the important milestones of each life stage at the predetermined timeframes. Certain temperamental characteristics in children that elicited positive responses from caregivers were considered resilient traits; these included being affectionate, cuddly, easy to soothe, and good natured. Theorists claimed them as personality traits, making resilience a quality that those with the correct traits would naturally possess. This trait-based framework posited the idea that resilience was a trait that some people possessed while others did and could not. This is obviously problematic because those deemed as not having the golden list of qualities were also deemed as incapable of resilience. Thankfully, researchers continued to plunge the depths of resilience, allowing the reality of within-person variation, which means that individuals might rise above in some situations but not in others, to defy the one-dimensional suggestion that someone is either resilient or not. Trait-based resilience was redefined as more of a predictor of future resilience instead of proof of innate resilience.
The shift away from trait-based resilience initiated the second wave of resilience research, which viewed resilience as a state. This perspective suggests that resilience is not predetermined, but supports the view that resilience can be learned. This view posits that resilience is an adaptive process that anyone can practice. Individuals are not born resilient. Rather, they are made resilient through positive interactions with their environment. Practicing certain skills that promote resilience leads people toward improved levels of functioning and well-being, things indicative of resilience. This view facilitated understanding of how certain systems could set resilient processes into motion even if no evidence of resilience was previously demonstrated. This idea that resilience could be learned paralleled research into growth mindsets, revolutionizing prior standards that even suggested the brain became fixed and unchangeable. Neurological research has debunked this, proving that the brain remains malleable throughout one’s lifetime, meaning that people can orient themselves toward continual learning and growth across their lifespan. Sustained efforts to learn new skills will propel people toward prevailing over their previous struggles. Those who grow in the grit required to overcome adversity do so by specifically working on their areas of weakness. The reciprocal nature of resilience means that developing new skills and utilizing new resources rather than simply doing the tasks that come easily is central to developing resilience. Resilience as a state highlights the importance of intentionally pursuing a dynamic, skill-building process that can be cultivated through intentional efforts till evidences of resilience are achieved.
The third wave of resilience research identified resilience as an outcome. When defined as an outcome, resilience is viewed from a long-term perspective. Favorable adjustments performed over a long stretch of time that result in positive outcomes are deemed to be resilient. Eugene Peterson calls this idea ‘a long obedience in the same direction.’ According to this viewpoint, individuals would be deemed resilient, if, after having endured long-term poverty or chronically abusive relationships, they still met normal developmental milestones and demonstrated healthy psychological adjustment. The goal of outcome-oriented resilience is to observe whether someone developed into a competent, confident, and caring adult by demonstrating the ability to achieve positive results after adverse situations, the ability to function competently amidst acute or chronic stressors, and the ability to recover from adversity or trauma. A long-term resilient outcome would be evidenced by more than the absence of pathology. It is also reflected when someone who experienced extreme adversity maintained a stable trajectory of healthy functioning and positive adaption to life.
After considering the three aforementioned perspectives on resilience— resilience as a trait, as a state, and as an outcome— it becomes evident that resilience is a complex construct that cannot be adequately understood from any single perspective. To understand it well, resilience must be approached from multiple perspectives. Which this leads to a fourth option: incorporating all three approaches into a comprehensive model. It is advantageous to consider resilience as a phenomenon that results from many types of input and levels of interpretation. Building on any resilience-promoting traits the individuals might innately possess is a good starting point, but only when combined with the understanding that resilience can be taught, so that it maximize the utilization of influences and environments that could further enhance the pre-existing qualities.
I have yet to meet someone who would not want to become more resilient. It seems most people just don’t know how to go about it. Explaining that resilience is multifaceted (achieved in many ways) and multidimensional (incorporating many different types of thinking and behaving), makes for a good starting line. A comprehensive model fosters liberty for individuals to consider sourcing through own resilience from multiple dimensions. Keeping the definition expansive so that it includes innate trait resilience, learned state resilience, and outcome-oriented resilience evidenced over stability over a longer period of time, invites the widest berth of people and opportunities to engage in this incredible, life-changing construct. Resilience is a dynamic and individualized process that morphs and develops across one’s entire lifetime, combining seasons of loss, maintenance, and growth into an overall trajectory of healthy and adaptive functioning.
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