Fw: Victors, Not Victims: How the Resilient Cope

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Subject: Victors, Not Victims: How the Resilient Cope

Article URL: http://www.cbshealthwatch.com/cx/viewarticle/402587 Victors, Not Victims: How the Resilient Cope Sharon McDonnell, Medical Writer Introduction Edith Eger survived a Nazi death camp because she was a teenage ballerina who danced for camp officers. The rest of her family died there. Today, a California psychologist, she says, "Everything I know I learned from Auschwitz. I'm the person I am because of it." Lance Armstrong, now free of testicular cancer which spread to his abdomen, lungs, and brain, and gave him a one in two chance of survival at best, won the grueling Tour de France bicycle race not once, but twice. Because many people not only survive but even thrive despite crushing hardships, more researchers are studying resilience--the ability to overcome and bounce back after obstacles. They have found that the resilient share certain traits and behaviors that protect them from a nightmarish environment. What's more, resilience can be learned. "Resilient survivors treat their pain as a problem to be solved--not a fate to be endlessly lamented," say and Sybil Wolin, authors of The Resilient Self: How Survivors of Troubled Families Rise Above Adversity (Villard, 2000). "While early hardship can cause enduring pain, often it is also a breeding ground for uncommon strength and courage." Wolin, MD, is a professor of psychiatry at Washington University's medical school in Washington, DC, and a researcher at its Center for Family Research; his wife, Sybil Wolin, PhD, counsels families on school failure. The Seven Resiliences Seven resiliences help people cope with hardship, according to the Wolins: Insight. Creativity. Humor. Independence. Initiative. Relationships. Morality. Insight, they say, is a "lifeline that can pull a survivor out of a family maelstrom," protect you against abuse and chaos when you understand your family troubles are not your fault, and help you look coolly and skeptically at parents' distorted beliefs. Insight was what helped Alan learn to predict his manic-depressive mother's mood swings on the basis of certain cues. He realized at a young age that her alternating overenthusiastic attention and neglect toward him were her problems, he told the Wolins. Another boy, age 7, learned to prepare his own meals: His paranoid-schizophrenic mother never ate at home because she suspected the food was being poisoned. His matter-of-fact reply when asked why he ignored her delusions: "Well, I'm not dead yet." He saw that friends--and even families on TV--ate at home and didn't keel over and die, so he disregarded his mother's bizarre belief. This boy was one of a group of children of psychotic parents who were found to be resilient, confident, "good copers." They tested high in practical problem-solving skills (developing novel, imaginative ways to address problems) in studies conducted by psychiatrist E. . Dr. , coeditor of The Invulnerable Child (Guilford, 1987), found "invulnerable" children were adept in winning support from teachers, relatives, and other adults, and minimized emotional involvement with their mentally ill parent. They became highly independent early in life and tackled their environment with a sense of self-reliance. Creativity helps the once-helpless "achieve a sense of effectiveness by generating projects that stretch the self, produce growth, and instill feelings of competence and effectiveness" through music, drama, art, or writing, the Wolins note. Important: Relationship With Adult Turning misfortune into a learning experience, or even good fortune, is one of the most striking traits of the resilient, says Al Siebert, PhD, author of The Survivor Personality (Perigee/Berkley, 1996), who has studied Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans. "The number one indicator a person has survivor traits is when they say after a hardship, 'It's the best thing that ever happened to me'--it shows they have a talent for serendipity," says Siebert, who teaches management psychology at the Professional Development Center, affiliated with Portland State University's School of Business. "When hit by adversity, you have a learning/coping reaction, rather than a victim reaction. You feel responsible for how you react to what other people do." For example, Eger today is warm, compassionate, and feels sorry for the Nazis, who had to live with the consequences of their cruelty. "Forgiveness is a selfish act to free yourself from being controlled by your past," she notes. The most protective factor for a child in a tough environment is a good, trusting relationship with an adult, who need not be a parent, according to Emmy Werner, PhD, one of the earliest resilience researchers, who studied 698 children born in Hawaii for 40 years, starting in 1955. One-third of them--all from poor families, most marked by alcoholism, drug addiction, or abuse--became resilient adults who had one-third fewer mental health problems and stronger marriages than the others, and were not on welfare or in trouble with the law. Every resilient adult had a healthy relationship with an adult as a child. "Resilient kids are planners, problem-solvers and picker-uppers," concludes Werner, co-author of Overcoming the Odds: High-Risk Children From Birth to Adulthood (Cornell Unversity Press, 1992) and professor emeritus of human development at the University of California at . Building Children's Coping Skills There are 40 "assets" that build children's adversity-coping skills, according to the Search Institute, a nonprofit youth research and education group in Minneapolis. For teenagers, these include: A support system with caring adults. Positive influences from their friends. Expectations that certain behavior is "out of bounds." Creative outlets. Peaceful conflict resolution. Community involvement through clubs, teams, or volunteer work. In a study of 100,000 sixth- to 12th-graders in more than 200 cities and towns in the United States, the Search Institute found 53% of children with up to ten of these assets had drinking problems. 61% had problems with violence. Only 3% of children with 31-40 factors had drinking problems. 6% had violence problems. The Search Institute, which has measured these factors among over one million children since 1989, has devised lists of assets for younger children, including infants and toddlers. How to Become Resilient After you face adversity, Al Siebert, PhD, author of The Survivor Personality, says you should ask yourself: Did I learn something useful? Did I gain new strengths? Develop more self-confidence? Become more understanding of others? Why can I be thankful that I had that experience? Why was it good for me? Besides learning from unpleasant experiences, Siebert recommends these tips to develop resilience: Play and laugh. Develop strong self-esteem. Value your paradoxical traits. Practice empathy for difficult people. Expect good outcomes. Sharon McDonnell is a freelance medical writer. Reviewer: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Reviewed for medical accuracy by physicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Harvard Medical School. BIDMC does not endorse any products or services advertised on this Web site.