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SOLVING THE RIDDLE OF RESILIENCE
BY GORDON NEUFELD
The phenomenon of human recovery is the ultimate riddle of life. We are fragile; we get wounded; so how do we get better?
I have found myself circling around this topic in my keynotes for several years now. These presentations have been variously titled, each approaching the subject from a different angle: the crisis of well-being, becoming the answer, bouncing back, fitting together, stress to strength, the pyramid of potential, keys to flourishing, trauma-informed practice, the counselor as alchemist, stress and trauma, and most recently, what's happening to our kids? Meanwhile my colleague Gabor Mate has published a new book on trauma, inspiring all kinds of discussions around the topic. Various literatures are converging in and around the topic of human recovery, but with language that is still very confusing and lacking a grounding in the sciences of attachment and development.
Part of the difficulty is the subject matter, as science stumbles when it tries to find an explanation for life itself – the miracle that continues to remain elusively inexplicable. Given that recovery is a potential only where life exists, teasing apart the dynamics can be challenging. Nevertheless, what science CAN do is study the conditions that are conducive to spontaneous recovery. This is the part that has fascinated and intrigued me, and is what this upcoming course is all about.
In short, and without giving too much away, the scientific jury is in: safety has everything to do with recovery, but not the kind of safety we have been thinking about. It is not a safety that can be achieved by teaching empathy, by standing up to bullying, by reducing the stress load, by thinking more rationally, by going to therapy, or by apprehending abused children. It is not the safety that can be found in numbing ourselves or our kids, or by getting children to be nice to each other, or even in controlling their exposure to a wounding world, although we certainly should be doing more of this. The nature of this safety is key to solving the riddle of resilience.
The construct of safety is closely tied to the construct of threat. There has been a curious evolution in the last one hundred years in our understanding about what threatens us; in other words, what the monster is that haunts us so and wounds us so often. Science first concluded it was threats to survival, then assumed it was stress, only to find that neither of these explanations suffice. Although most of us are still struggling with these stale ideas, science has indeed moved on and so must we. Until we can truly name the monster in our lives, we will not have much success in keeping our children safe from it, never mind helping our children recover when they have been wounded by it. Meanwhile, all indications are that we are experiencing more threat than ever; that is, that the monster is actually getting bigger these days.
Being part of solving the riddle of resilience is one of the great satisfactions of my life. I am looking forward to sharing what emerges when the puzzle pieces are put together. I can assure you that the implications for practice are profound and apply to all who have been wounded, from the cradle to the grave.
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