Several Factors Critical In Ability to Handle Crises

Having a moral compass. “In traumatic situations, there are always difficult choices,” Southwick explained. “I have never met a posttraumatic stress disorder patient who did not have a lot of guilt” because he or she believed that they had not done enough to help others affected by the trauma. Resilient individuals, in contrast, are convinced that they took the right course of action in a difficult situation. For instance, he said, an American prisoner of war survived four years in solitary confinement because he believed deeply in what he had done, that he had made the right choices.

Religious faith. There was a woman who was raped, then thrown into a river. Yet she managed to swim to shore and survive. Her religious faith is what saved her, she told Southwick.

Meditation. Meditation has been used for thousands of years to calm the mind, said Southwick. “It is extremely powerful.... It helps us face whatever comes our way calmly and courageously.”

Acceptance. “Acceptance is a very important survival mechanism,” Southwick asserted. Once people accept the implications of a crisis, they can test whether they have the power to change them.

Social support. Friends can help an individual deal with trauma, even if that individual is especially susceptible to stress due to genetic factors. In one study of subjects with a particular version of the serotonin transporter known to make people vulnerable to stress, subjects functioned better if they had social supports on which they could rely.

Exercise. Exercise can promote not just physical resilience but psychological resilience, it appears. When rats increased their physical exercise, it triggered nerve growth in the hippocampus—a brain region not only crucial for memory but also bombarded by stress hormones.

Coping skills. There are numerous skills that people can acquire to help them deal with adversity. For example, Southwick reported, a special-forces soldier learned how to handle different types of weapons, parachute from a plane, speak several foreign languages, pick locks, and master other tasks that could benefit him in a life-or-death situation. As a result, the soldier was confident that, if dropped into the Amazon Jungle, or some other remote area on earth, he would not only survive but find his way home within a week.