Individual+resilience

Personal Maintenance

Social Science & Medicine 64 (2007) 765–775 Is attachment style a source of resilience against health inequalities at work? Mel Bartley, Jenny Head, Stephen Stansfeld

Personal characteristics may originate in childhood that increase the likelihood of both poor health and disadvantaged social position in adulthood. The concept of protective resilience makes a similar but converse argument: that positive characteristics acquired at one phase of life may enable individuals to withstand later adversity.

A developing person needs a ‘secure base’ from which to venture forth into the wider world

Theoretically it is expected that styles of attachment develop from early relationships with mother and father and are maintained into adult life. Attachment styles developed in childhood have been shown to be associated in adults with a range of outcomes. Secure attachment is seen in this perspective as a possible ‘resilience factor’, emerging early in life, which may protect individual wellbeing in the face of risk and adversity, because it is regarded as reﬂecting the ability to effectively regulate and mitigate the strength of emotional responses to adverse personal or health events. These have been enumerated to include being comfortable exploring new situations, having low levels of hostility, and being able to ask for and make use of help from others, and ‘‘able to maximize the opportunities presented to them by the environment’’

According to the literature on resilience, a protective resilience factor is one whose importance is greatest in the face of adversity.

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What is Psychological Resilience?
Psychological resilience refers to an individual's capacity to withstand stressors and not manifest psychology dysfunction, such as mental illness or persistent negative mood. This is the mainstream psychological view of resilience, that is, resilience is defined in terms a person's capacity to avoid psychopathology despite difficult circumstances. Psychological stressors or "risk factors" are often considered to be experiences of major acute or chronic stress such as death of someone else, chronic illness, sexual, physical or emotional abuse, fear, unemployment and community violence. The central process involved in building resilience is the training and development of adaptive coping skills. The basic flow model (called the transactional model) of stress and coping is: A stressor (i.e. a potential source of stress) occurs and cognitive appraisal takes place (deciding whether or not the stressor represents something that can be readily dealt with or is a source of stress because it may be beyond one's coping resources). If a stressor is consider to be a danger, coping responses are triggered. Coping strategies are generally either be outwardly focused on the problem (problem-solving), inwardly focused on emotions (emotion-focused) or socially focused, such as emotional support from others. In humanistic psychology, resilience refers to an individual's capacity to thrive and fulfill potential despite or perhaps even because of such stressors. Resilient individuals and communities are more inclined to see problems as opportunities for growth. In other words, resilient individuals seem not only to cope well with unusual strains and stressors but actually to experience such challenges as learning and development opportunities. Whilst some individuals may seem to prove themselves to be more resilient than others, it should be recognized that resilience is a dynamic quality, not a permanent capacity. In other words, resilient individuals demonstrate dynamic self-renewal, whereas less resilient individuals find themselves worn down and negatively impacted by life stressors. [|John Dewey] (1859-1952), the renowned 20th century American educational philosopher, describes this sense of continuance through dynamic self-renewal: > A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered. While the living thing may easily be crushed by a superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existences... It is the very nature of life to strive to continue in being. Since this continuance can be secured only by constant renewals, life is a self-renewing process.

Closely Related Terms for Psychological Resilience
Relevant psychological literature on resilience hasn't always used the term 'resilience' or 'psychological resilience'. Consider searching for material using synonyms or closely related keywords, such as (major terms in bold):
 * Adaptive Coping
 * Adversity Quotient
 * Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman)
 * **Hardiness**
 * Learned Optimism (Martin Seligman)
 * Learned Resourcefulness (Rosenbaum)
 * Life Orientation
 * **Resourcefulness**
 * Self-esteem, Self-concept, Self-confidence, Self-efficacy
 * Self-healing personality (Howard Friedman)
 * Sense of Coherence (Aaron Antonovsky)
 * Sense of Meaning (Viktor Frankl)
 * Thriving (Al Siebert - [|Thrivenet])

What are the Characteristics of Resilient People?

 * Ability to "bounce back" and "recover from almost anything"
 * Have a "where there's a will, there's a way" attitude
 * Tendency to see problems as opportunities
 * Ability to "hang tough" which things are difficult
 * Capacity for seeing small windows of opportunity and making the most of them
 * Have deep-rooted faith in a system of meaning
 * Have a healthy social support network
 * Has the wherewithal to competently handle most different kinds of situations
 * Has a wide comfort zone
 * Able to recover from experiences in the panic zone or of a traumatic nature