What does resilience depend on or how to develop immunity to problems

Why do different people experience difficulties and adversity differently? What is resilience and how can it be developed? How can empathy help develop resilience? We will try to find answers to these questions in the article.

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Many problems in a person's attitude to a difficult situation begin with the perception of what is happening to you. There is a huge difference between what is happening to YOU ​​and what is just happening. It is the belief that problems or difficulties are happening to “you” in most cases that are the main cause of catastrophic consequences: increased anxiety, causeless worry, anxiety or the development of feelings of guilt. Your freedom always depends on the path you choose, helping you realize your level of personal responsibility.

What does resilience depend on?

When you're standing in a checkout line answering the phone, most will say, "I'm stuck in line," few will say, "Standing in line." It would seem a trifle. But it is precisely the emphasis on the pronoun “I” that gives rise to major psychological problems. The belief that an event is happening to you, and not just happening, hyperbolizes our “ego.” It’s as if the universe developed precisely so that, billions of years later, something would happen to you. When this or that event happens, you “float” with the flow, feeling that the choice was forced on you. It is in moments like these that resilience emerges.

In one of her articles, Maria Konnikova describes the life of a child who took with him just bread and sausage delicacies as a snack, which were inaccessible to him. This child was a member of the group of N. Gamerzi, who analyzed the behavior of resilient children.

Many endure the blows of fate. Surviving catastrophes, natural disasters, wars - many manage to get out of such troubles without any losses and become stronger. And someone is unsettled by a broken heel or a flat car tire. Often showing extreme resilience in critical situations, some people become limp from the dull and insipid daily life. And others, on the contrary, in the event of serious life disasters fall into a stupor and find themselves unable to act.

Resilience

Resilience In modern Russian psychology , attempts are being made to holistically comprehend the personal characteristics responsible for successful adaptation and coping with life’s difficulties. ... In domestic literature, it is customary to translate “hardiness” as “perseverance” or “ vitality ” (D. A. Leontyev ), but, due to the versatility of this concept and in order to preserve the meaning as much as possible, in the future in the text we will use the author’s term “ "hardiness". According to the Great English-Russian Dictionary, “hardiness” means endurance, strength, health, stability, courage, bravery, fearlessness, audacity, impudence.

People are absolutely unable to assess risk in situations where the risk is emotional in nature, that is, when the consequences have an emotional connotation.

What helps one survive:

1. Live without internal conflicts;

2. Find a comrade in fate;

3. Be able to navigate the current reality;

4. Create opportunities for your own and your loved one’s survival;

5. Find a person who will help you survive on your own.

Life is full of difficulties, and it is easier to overcome these difficulties with two people, that is, with a person who loves you along with your difficulties.

The main thing to remember is that fear is what scares us and prevents us from surviving.

TYPES OF INSURANCE

1. Fear of death. The thought that we can be destroyed in an instant never leaves us.

2. Fear of injury. Physical injury, mutilation, or loss of a body part seems like a terrifying prospect to us. We project this anxiety onto people who are disabled, or disfigured, or who have lost some body parts.

3. Fear of losing independence.

4. Fear of abandonment. A boycott (involves completely or partially ending a relationship with an individual) can destroy self-esteem.

5. Fear of personality destruction (Ego Destruction). It has many forms: Fear of failure, fear of being embarrassed, being ridiculed, fear of shame, fear of guilt, fear of dependence, fear of close relationships.

** Source vikent.ru

Vitality of representatives of various social groups according to Bruno Bettelheim

Comments by Maksimov M.

According to the observations of Bruno Bettelheim, all prisoners in the concentration camp could be divided into three groups - according to how they reacted to external circumstances: “In the first group, place those who were best able to resist the camp, in the second - those who were worse, in thirds are even worse […] this is the answer given by life.
In the last group

- officials of all types and stripes. For them, the main thing in life is the uniform, regalia, ranks, and the attitude of the authorities. That is, all life values ​​are external. Once in the camp, they are instantly deprived of all this and find themselves naked. The main advantage of an official - the ability to obey - here turns against him. And the result is a rapid disintegration of personality.

In second place

- deeply religious people. This is understandable - in normal life they were engaged in improving their souls. They have faith, and they can take it with them to camp. And there it may even strengthen. Believers in the camp try to stick together, help each other and support other prisoners.

At the first place

- people for whom honor is much more important than life. In the old days these were aristocrats, now - I find it difficult to find the right word, let it be “aristocrats of the spirit.”

Commentary by Erich Fromm

Erimkh Fromm, “Anatomy of human destructiveness”, M., “Ast”, 2006, p.
94-95. “The behavior of these people showed how incapable the middle class of Germans were to oppose themselves to National Socialism. They did not have any ideological principles (neither moral, nor political, nor social) to provide at least internal resistance to this machine. And they had a very small margin of safety to survive the sudden shock of arrest. Their self-awareness rested on confidence in their social status, on the prestige of their profession, the reliability of their family and some other factors... After their arrest, almost all of these people lost important values ​​and typical features for their class, for example, self-respect, an understanding of what is “decent” and what is not no, etc. They suddenly became completely helpless - and then all the negative traits characteristic of this class came out: pettiness, quarrelsomeness, narcissism. Many of them suffered from depression and lack of rest and whined endlessly. Others turned into swindlers and robbed their cellmates (to deceive an SS man was an honorable thing, but to rob one of your own was considered a disgrace). It seemed that they had lost the ability to live in their own image and likeness, and tried to focus on prisoners from other groups. Some began to imitate criminals. […] Bettelheim gives here a very subtle analysis of the self-esteem of typical middle-class representatives and their need for identification: their self-consciousness was nourished by the prestige of their social position, as well as the right to give orders. When these supports were taken away from them, they immediately lost all their moral spirit (like air released from a balloon). Bettelheim shows why these people were so demoralized and why many of them became obedient slaves and even spies in the service of the SS. But it is necessary to name another important reason for this transformation: these non-political prisoners could not grasp, fully understand and appreciate the situation; they could not understand why they ended up in a concentration camp, they were not criminals, and only one thought fits in the orthodox consciousness: only “criminals” deserve punishment. And this lack of understanding of the situation led them into complete confusion and, as a result, to mental breakdown. Political and religious prisoners reacted to the same conditions in completely different ways.

For political figures who were persecuted by the SS, the arrest was not a bolt from the blue; they were psychologically prepared for it. They cursed their fate, but at the same time accepted it as something consistent with the very course of things. They were naturally concerned about what awaited them and, of course, about the fate of their loved ones, but they undoubtedly did not feel humiliated, although, like others, they suffered from the terrible conditions of the camp.

Jehovah's Witnesses all ended up in a concentration camp for refusing to serve in the army. They held on almost even more steadfastly than the political ones. Thanks to their strong religious convictions, they did not lose their identity, since their only fault in the eyes of the SS was their reluctance to serve with weapons in their hands, they were often offered freedom if they nevertheless agreed to serve contrary to their beliefs, but they steadfastly rejected such offers.

Jehovah's Witnesses, as a rule, were rather narrow-minded people and sought only one thing - to convert others to their faith. Otherwise, they were good comrades, reliable, well-mannered and always ready to help. They almost never entered into disputes or quarrels, were exemplary workers, and therefore guards were often chosen from among them, and then they conscientiously pushed the prisoners and insisted that they do the work efficiently and on time. They never insulted other prisoners, they were always polite, and still the SS men preferred them as elders for their hard work, dexterity and restraint."

A similar stratification was observed in Stalin’s camps, where hereditary aristocrats, career military personnel and clergy often turned out to be the most persistent. ***

Resilience

Material from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia

Hardiness _ _

- “endurance”, “stability”, “hardness”) - the ability of an individual to withstand stressful situations, while maintaining internal balance without reducing the success of activities.

History In 1975, S. Muddy and his research team began studying managers at the Illinois Bell telephone company. At this time, the company was radically changing the way it works, and because of this, employees experienced severe stress. In 1981 and 1982 approximately 40 thousand workers were laid off there.

Studying a sample of about 450 company managers on various medical and psychological parameters, S. Maddi found that two-thirds of the subjects in a situation of sudden change confirmed G. Selye’s concept of stress: their health deteriorated, their performance indicators fell, and their relationships with loved ones deteriorated. Cases of high blood pressure, migraines, depression, divorce, and suicide attempts were recorded. But with the other part of the sample, everything was different. A third of the subjects, on the contrary, succeeded under the influence of a long-term, uncertain stressful situation. They felt healthier than ever, strengthened their relationships with loved ones, and at work they came up with valuable ideas, worked better, more efficiently, and if they left the company, they succeeded in other places, and sometimes started their own businesses.

Curious about the difference between the “victims” and the “successful,” S. Muddy began to look for differences between these two groups. It turned out that the differences between the “successful”, called resilient, and the “victims”, non-viable, consisted in the presence or absence of three attitudes: in relation to stressful situations, in a special attitude towards the people around them, and in the use of special transformational or regression coping.

Currently, the term “hardiness” has the most established translation in modern scientific terminology, “vitality”, proposed by D. A. Leontiev.

Components of Resilience

S. Maddi identified three relatively autonomous components of resilience: involvement, control, and risk taking. The severity of these components and vitality in general prevents the emergence of internal tension in stressful situations.

• Involvement (“commitment”), meaning the involvement of an individual in the events of his life and his activities, receiving pleasure from it
• Control (“control”) motivates the subject to search for ways and means of influence and influence on the situation, with the goal of transforming it into a less or non-stressful one, avoiding falling into a state of helplessness, conviction of the existence of a cause-and-effect relationship between his actions, deeds, efforts and results, relationships, events, etc.
• Taking a risk (“challenge”) allows an individual to understand the inevitability of risk and remain open to the world around him, accept the event as a challenge and test, and makes it possible to gain new experience and learn certain lessons for himself.

In addition to these components, resilience includes core values ​​such as cooperation, trust and creativity.
The components of resilience develop in childhood and partly during adolescence, although they can be developed later with the help of training. Their development depends decisively on the relationship between the parents and the child. In particular, acceptance and support, love and approval from parents are fundamentally important for the development of the involvement component. For the development of the control component, it is important to support the child’s initiative, his desire to cope with tasks of increasing complexity to the limit of his capabilities. For the development of risk taking, the richness of impressions, variability and heterogeneity of the environment are important.

Mechanisms of resilience

In his research, S. Maddi describes five main mechanisms,

thanks to which the buffering effect of vitality on the development of diseases and stress is manifested:

• assessing life changes
  as less stressful
• creating motivation
  for transformational coping
• strengthening the immune response
• strengthening responsibility
  towards health practices (healthy lifestyle)
• seeking active social support
  that promotes transformational coping

Characteristics of a resilient person
According to S. A. Bogomaz, a resilient person

• highly comprehends his own life, is satisfied with his past and present life, which he perceives as interesting and emotionally rich
• tends to distort reality, creating an ideal picture of the world
• demonstrates a high level of activity and determination, thanks to which he is involved in life events with interest, strives to control the situation and manage his own health
• characterized by high emotional intelligence and the ability to adequately manage one’s own and others’ emotions.

Researchers have confirmed the connection between resilience and flexibility of thinking, creativity, high socio-psychological adaptability and overall psychological well-being of the individual.
Thus, a resilient person is not only able to maintain “faith in himself and his strength”, in the positive outcome of any situation, but also knows how to effectively rebuild his own attitudes, skills and abilities in accordance with the transformation of the experience gained. A resilient person is able to selectively approach the choice of coping strategies in a given situation. Uses a problem-oriented coping style in situations that require and have the possibility of resolution, and an emotion-oriented style in situations that cannot be resolved, with prolonged stress.

The concept of resilience in different approaches

• In the theories of existentialists, resilience is associated with individuality, activity, the subject’s focus on creative activity, the determination of designing future self-development, and awareness of the meaning of existence in a social society.

• Irrationalist philosophers explain resilience through a person’s desire for self-affirmation through fortitude and success in life.

• Hermeneutics interprets the meaning of a subject’s life through self-awareness, active “feeling,” personal “empathy” and connects these concepts with resilience.

• The philosophy of positivism supports the need to actualize vitality in adolescence - “creative impulses to get used to” in society, subject to personal development of thinking.
• The humanistic direction believes that resilience is manifested in a person’s desire for perfection, self-determination of behavior, self-actualization, the theory of “self,” social interaction, etc.

A.F. Zamaleev and other Russian philosophers complement foreign authors and talk about the need for an individual’s cognitive activity, leading to self-development, motivation to achieve a set goal, turn to will, consciousness, individualization, which opens up new directions for studying the phenomenon of human resilience.
Resource is a multidisciplinary concept. According to V.P. Zinchenko, the resource approach makes it possible to describe in terms of one language both the requirements imposed by the external environment on the system and the internal capabilities of the system to satisfy these requirements. Personal resilience is considered by some researchers as a personal resource, as well as the ability to take advantage of external resources in vital situations.

Adaptation is also a multidisciplinary concept. Psychological adaptation is the process of establishing optimal compliance of the individual with the environment during the implementation of human activities, which allows the individual to satisfy current needs and realize the significant goals associated with them (while maintaining physical and mental health), while ensuring at the same time the correspondence of the person’s mental activity, his behavior to the requirements of the environment. Psychological stability is a personality quality, individual aspects of which are stamina, balance, and resistance. It allows an individual to withstand life’s difficulties, unfavorable pressure from circumstances, and maintain health and performance in various trials.

The psychological stability of an individual is associated both with the manifestation of the ability to maintain a constant level of activity and good mood, and with the manifestation of such personal qualities as responsiveness, the presence of diverse interests, and the avoidance of simplification in values, goals and aspirations.

Personal stability , according to A. N. Leontiev, is determined by the relationship of meaning-forming motives with certain behavioral characteristics, with ways of carrying out activities.

The term vitality was first introduced by B. G. Ananyev, who meant by vitality the general ability of a person to work. The most important factor in maintaining vitality and vitality, according to B. G. Ananyev, is the trainability of intellectual functions. Currently, the emphasis in determining viability is somewhat shifted towards human survival and personal self-preservation (I.M. Ilyinsky, P.I. Babochkin, M.P. Guryanova and others). In the English-language psychological literature, hardiness is considered as a factor of psychological resilience (“resilience”). Resilience, in contrast to resilience, is defined as a personality trait that buffers the effects of severe stress. Vitality includes a wider range of phenomena of the human psyche, which develops according to certain genetic, psychological and socio-psychological patterns. It is a multicomponent personal formation that influences the actualization of various properties of the human psyche in situations of life stress and tension. The presence of this quality is inherent in a person as an individual, personality and subject.

Personal potential is an integral characteristic of the level of personal maturity; it reflects the extent to which an individual can overcome given circumstances, ultimately, the individual’s overcoming of himself, as well as the extent of the efforts he makes to work on himself and the circumstances of his life. One of the specific forms of manifestation of personal potential is when a person overcomes unfavorable conditions for his development .

These unfavorable conditions can be determined by genetic characteristics, somatic diseases, or by external unfavorable conditions.
There are obviously unfavorable conditions for the formation of personality; they can indeed have a fatal influence on development, but their influence can be overcome, indirectly, the direct connection is broken by introducing additional dimensions into this system of factors, primarily self-determination based on personal potential. The concept of resilience intersects with the above concepts, however, it denotes a separately significant phenomenon of the human psyche, which develops according to certain genetic patterns, is a multicomponent personal formation that
influences the actualization of various properties of the human psyche in situations of life stress.

Resilience and mental health article on the topic

Resilience and children's mental health

Difficulties invariably occur in the life of any person. Their occurrence is natural. Children encounter difficult situations no less often than adults! A difficult situation is characterized by a discrepancy between what a person wants and what he can. The child faces this all the time. What is natural for an adult can be difficult and difficult for a child.

Any difficult situation leads to disruption of activity, gives rise to negative emotions and experiences, and causes discomfort. All this can have adverse consequences for personal development. But is it only the unfavorable ones? After all, obstacles and hindrances are normal phenomena of life; they provoke activity aimed at overcoming them.

Methods of behavior in difficult situations are individual in nature and become stable in adults (self-control, self-regulation). They begin to develop already in childhood, but this development does not occur automatically as they grow older. The child’s temperament, his personality traits, and individual experience are of great importance. Constructive ways of behavior can be formed (active, conscious overcoming of difficulties; activation of development): the ability to apologize, be the first to approach for reconciliation, and non-constructive (do not lead to a solution to the problem, can cause deviations and deformations in development): the emergence of various bad habits, such as biting nails, masturbation; withdrawal; refusal to communicate; aggressiveness.

Difficult situations can be temporary, fleeting (fell, not accepted into the game); short-term, but very acute and significant (loss of a loved one, separation from mother, moving to a new place); long-term, chronic (parental divorce, conflicting upbringing, school failure). The most traumatic ones are short-term, but acute and long-lasting.

For preschoolers, the most traumatic situations are those associated with the loss (real or imaginary) of a sense of security:

• hostile, abusive family;
• emotionally rejecting family;
• family not providing care and supervision;
• a disintegrating or broken family;
• excessive demands of parents (overprotection);
• the appearance of a new family member (stepfather, stepmother, brother, sister);
• contradictory upbringing or a sharp change in the type of upbringing (before everything was possible, now nothing is possible);
• alien environment outside the family (language, culture);
• separation from the family (hospitalization, referral to kindergarten)

For school-age children, in addition to those listed above, situations associated with a decrease in the value of the self are traumatic:

• inability to meet family expectations (to be an excellent student, to be able to read well);
• detachment from other family members;
• non-acceptance by the children's team, teacher;
• inability to cope with the academic load.

Gradually overcoming minor difficulties, the child prepares for adult life. It is necessary that he develops the need to find solutions and the ability to withstand adverse influences.

The influence of parents on the child’s development of behavior in difficult situations is great:

1. Family parenting style: authoritative parents - proactive, sociable, kind children; authoritarian parents - irritable, conflict-prone children; indulgent parents (permissive type of parenting) - impulsive, aggressive children.
2. The behavior of parents in difficult situations, which the child (often unconsciously) accepts as an example to follow.
3. Targeted teaching of children ways to overcome difficult situations.

What can parents do?

• Observe your child’s behavior in difficult situations.
• Analyze with your child possible ways to overcome difficulties in everyday life that may arise. You can play out these situations with a preschooler; with a schoolchild, a conversation is enough.
• Turn to your own experience of behavior in difficult situations, evaluate the effectiveness of your actions, and discuss this with your child.
• Teach your child the elements of auto-training (the ability to relax by counting to ten, for example); see the article “How to help your child and yourself overcome negative emotions.”

These simple actions on the part of parents can be the start for the child to develop independent skills to overcome difficult situations and develop constructive ways of behavior.