The Science and Psychology of Acquiring Resilience

Resilience is more than a trait or quality endowed or imprinted in our genes but a skill that can be procured or acquired through persistent awareness of ourselves and our capacities. By accurately organizing who we are with our current capacity for resilience, we can take this knowledge and, through adaptable and modifiable actions, broaden or expand the boundaries of our current scope for tolerance. In other words, one's perception has to change to rebound from difficulties, pain, or suffering with more positivity and freedom. And to alter one's perception in this direction, there must be enough current awareness of oneself to make adaptable changes. Otherwise, we won’t know where to begin. Even worse, we will be deceived into believing we are resilient when we’re not. It is much better not to be resilient and know we are not than not to be resilient and think that we’re. An inclination toward the latter instills the faulty perception that little improvement needs to be made.

In the continuation of this article, we will learn how to recognize faulty perceptions and understand ourselves better. Then we will discuss mental and physical changes that can be made to improve our resilience. And lastly, we will cover how we can maintain and continue to strengthen our resilience despite the impulse for complacency. 

Understanding Ourselves and Recognizing Faulty Perceptions

17th-century philosopher and political theorist John Locke believed that the mind was a blank slate at birth; our thoughts, opinions, and identities result from our upbringing and sensory experiences. To be fair, it wasn't the worst theory considering the frame of mind and tools available in the 17th century. However, what Locke failed to consider at the time is the question of if everyone is a blank slate, then what causes differences in physical attributes? And if there are differences in physical characteristics, why presume that the mind is any different?

Over three centuries have passed, and much work in psychology and genetics has caused this theory to dissipate. We now know the genes that predispose us to celiac disease (HLA-DQA1 and HLA-DQB1), Alzheimer's (APOE4), dopamine deficiency syndrome (SLC6A3), and so forth. We now understand that the way we perceive and interpret the world can be influenced by the heritable aspects of neurodynamics. We know that no matter how much effort someone puts into mathematics or physics, they will, with high probability, not be as accomplished or talented as Albert Einstein or Richard Feynman. 

It may be that understanding ourselves reaches beyond Locke’s theory and toward realizing the accuracies and inaccuracies in how we perceive ourselves by recognizing our predispositions, biases, self-dialogue, and capabilities. More so, it is not only a recognition of these traits that is useful, such as when I'm interrupted in working, I get angry, but knowing why they are held and have a possessing influence. However, exploring these thoughts is never comfortable because exploration implies something to learn, and when we feel justified in our actions, further discovery feels unnecessary.

This urge for rationalization or justification is an attempt to maintain a consistent perception or view of ourselves is known as cognitive dissonance. When tension builds up and rubs against our identity instead of absorbing the novel or disparate information, we will feel prompted to deflect. I say we because cognitive dissonance can be found in every person despite what you think of yourself or others. Bridging the divide between cognitive dissonance and wanting to understand requires awareness and familiarity with navigating the subconscious mind, which governs most of our actions. These subconscious actions, principally located in the basal ganglia and cerebellum, get embedded in our personality or identity and influence our decisions independent of why we know or think we made those decisions. Cognitive dissonance is primarily influenced by our inability to articulate our subconscious narrative. However, this does not mean someone has the right to vehemently inform you of your subconscious narrative. Understanding yourself is already a struggle, and someone who claims to understand someone's subconscious narrative, let alone themselves, is most likely living in self-deception. 

To begin to understand ourselves, we need first to recognize our behavior. An example would be identifying how we react and feel when someone we like doesn’t show recognition of us or how we respond when someone shows us attention. In other words, the first step is to recognize our behavioral impulses by constantly asking ourselves what we are feeling: anger, embarrassment, sadness, joy, or, more often than we think, multiple emotions simultaneously. Then afterward, stop to listen to the internal dialogue we try to convince ourselves of. Listen lightly to the justification we give to defend ourselves and dissociate lightly from the emotions. Try to see and analyze the situation vicariously but subtly through someone else’s perspective. In this way, By taking off the weight associated with the justifications, we begin to feel free and light and can more aptly and honestly examine ourselves. 

By being more closely attuned to our subconscious impulses, we can be more closely tuned to our conscious narrative and current capacity for resilience. This step is crucial since, more likely than not, our pride or arrogance will convince us that we’re resilient: if not physically resilient, then mentally. And even if we aren’t convinced we’re resilient, understanding ourselves and recognizing faulty perceptions is valuable to developing and sustaining mental modifications to feel we are in control and more resilient. 

Improve Resilience Through Mental and Physical Strategies

How quickly we recover or react to a trialing and difficult circumstance depends on our perception of the situation. It is often a misconception that resilience is synonymous with a strong will. Indeed, a strong will, by definition, affects how long someone can last or tolerate a wearing event. But it doesn’t necessarily touch on our interpretive dialogue of the event. Often what seems to be resilience is simply a difference in how an event is perceived. Someone might perceive a break-up as a huge loss, while someone else might quickly start to perceive it as an opportunity to grow oneself. Someone might perceive a financially sparse situation as miserable, while someone else might put it into perspective and not fantasize about things they can’t afford. This shift in perspective requires, at the very least, recognition of our current attitude, rationalization, and a significant enough desire for change. And for a long-lasting change to occur, it is essential to reorient our attention from the previous thoughts that caused negative or stressful emotions to a new stimulus.

However, for many reasons, this shift in perception is challenging since it almost always requires a temporary adaptive or adjustment period. For instance, if everyone you surround yourself with says you need to be attractive or wealthy or you won’t find a beautiful partner could, through a constant inculcation of information, cause you to believe this and act differently. This change in perception is not necessarily the receiver's fault but is wired in our neurobiology. When we repeatedly observe an action or advice and what the benefits of the advice produce (such as wearing clean clothes to an interview is more likely to get you the job), a variety of visual-spatial neurons called mirror neurons may respond to these actions. The actions can then modify multiple brain areas, such as the inferior parietal lobe, central to how we perceive the world. To reconstitute how we perceive the world, we need to reorient our attention to what is accurate and not concern ourselves with what we believe is correct. This should start, as earlier mentioned, with understanding yourself. This way, modifying any behavior won’t appear forced but natural, liberating, and sustaining.

Apart from changing our internal dialogue, there are other ways to increase resilience. One such strategy is through physical activity. A study found that glucocorticoids increase the gene expression for FKBP5 in the insular cortex and hippocampus when running or doing aerobic exercise. The protein FKBP5 favors the exchange to FKBP4, which allows glucocorticoids, a type of steroid hormone, to move into the cell's nucleus and affect the transcription of many genes involved in anxiety and stress. In other words, by increasing short-term stress through aerobic exercise, you can decrease your baseline stress at rest and improve your overall resilience.

This does not mean that every workout regiment will improve mental resilience equally. If someone is a novice, at least physically, just about anything out of the ordinary will cause an adaptive response. But a significant adaptive response, physically and mentally, requires some struggle. And from my research and personal experience, strenuous aerobic exercise affects mental resilience more than most physical activities. However, it is essential to consider variations in how we react to exercise. Some people may find other forms of physical activity more worthwhile for improving resilience. Knowing what works best may require you to try different things. And if you want to continue to maintain and enhance resilience, you must find and implement something that can be adhered to. In the upcoming section, we will discuss how we can continue fostering our resilience despite the urge for complacency.

Fostering Resilience Despite the Urge for Complacency

Complacency almost always manifests itself after a new hill is traversed and a new peak is reached. And it becomes even more challenging if the summit is reached without external influence. This phenomenon often stems from the tug-of-war between reward circuitry and time. Many of these include fatigue, lack of motivation, forgetfulness, pride, and the feeling that enough was accomplished.

The reward circuitry starts with increased dopamine in the ventral tegmental area, where they project to multiple areas, such as the nucleus accumbens, a brain region associated with motivation and reward, and the frontal cortex, a brain region associated with attention and behavioral flexibility.

We produce dopamine when we initiate and complete something novel, such as the learning curve involved in modifying our perceptional behavior. And continue to have higher dopamine concentrations during the task if the outcome is positive. Our reward circuitry is necessary to sustain any motivating behavior. For example, if mice are deprived of the enzyme required to convert tyrosine into dopamine, they eventually refuse activity and food until they die within three weeks. Without a doubt, neurochemical motivation is necessary for our survival. Therefore, there is hardly such a thing as “I was not motivated to work out but still did.” Instead, “I was just motivated enough to work out” would be more accurate. Our mistake is conflating our perceived or psychological motivation as actual motivation. And even worse, not having a system in place when our perceived motivation and even our reward circuitry for acquiring resilience wanes. 

Ask yourself these questions:

What is/are my goals?

Is there an end objective?

Why do I have these goals?

What am I looking to achieve?

Will this undertaking direct me closer to the person I want to be? If so, How?

What am I sacrificing? Is it worth it?

Are my values sufficient enough to get me through a hard day?

Having reasons behind any undertaking will determine how far you’re willing to go. For example, do you want to be resilient and less reactionary? Maybe, you want resilience strong enough to endure unfavorable circumstances or stressful events. Perhaps it's to overcome or cope with something more severe or traumatic? If that's the case, then resilience training paired with other modalities (psychotherapy paired with psilocybin) might be even more beneficial. Whatever the reasons, know your values and recognize whether your values are honest and imposing enough to overcome moments of waned motivation or the desire for complacency. 

Summary

Resilience is the ability to cope with anything that is considered challenging. At the beginning of the article, we learned that coping is first recognizing how we are currently managing. If we attract negative emotions, we must realize this to a degree where we can make adaptable changes to attract positive emotions and improve our resilience. 

At first, we talked about understanding ourselves and recognizing faulty perceptions. In this section, we briefly reviewed John Locke, who came to an incorrect interpretation of reality based on the tools present in his time. Then we explored cognitive dissonance and how everybody, to some extent, is affected by this phenomenon that inadvertently forces us to maintain a consistent view of the world and ourselves. Moreover, this psychological phenomenon becomes harder to overcome or recognize when we refuse to be aware of our subconscious impulses. An example would be recognizing emotions and deconstructing our reasons behind those emotions.

Then we discussed mental and physical strategies for improving resilience. One underrecognized way of improving resilience is modifying one's internal dialogue of an event. As briefly mentioned, our perception of the world is wired in neurobiology, and to alter our perception, we need to reorient our attention. And to reorient our attention directionally, we need first to recognize behavior better off modified. A second strategy for improving resilience was aerobic exercise. This exercise drastically increases short-term stress but eventually reduces everyday stress and anxiety.

The last and final section was mainly about the influence of reward circuitry on time that eventually incites the desire for complacency. Science shows that motivation is more than just a colloquial term but is wired in our survival, let alone readiness to do something. Motivation springs forward in the beginning, but after time wanes once we habituate to our new environment and forget where we started. To maintain our resilience or to understand to what extent we want to be resilient, we must know our reasons and values by answering a series of questions as honestly as possible. 

In this way, we not only understand ourselves better (1) and have an application for improvement (2) but can sustain a certain level of resilience (3) and perhaps even wear away the urge for complacency. 

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