When people discuss difficult times, there is a long-standing presumption that improving entails returning. Return to your former self prior to the diagnosis, the layoff, and the divorce papers that were placed on the kitchen table. It’s a reassuring image that seems almost mechanical: bend the metal, and it will return to its original shape. The problem is that this is rarely the case when you see someone truly recover from a serious illness.
Consider a friend who worked for the same company for sixteen years before losing his job two years ago. For a while, he had the appearance of someone recovering: a polished resume, scheduled interviews, and a return to the gym. However, at some point, he lost interest in returning to his previous position. He didn’t want to go back to the version of himself that had needed it, not because he hadn’t succeeded in landing it once more. Researchers have begun focusing more on that distinction.
The bounce-back metaphor has been quietly dismantled for years by psychologists who study resilience. Instead, the more recent terminology used in the field refers to reconfiguration, which is settling into a new, more robust shape rather than reverting to an old one. It’s possible that those who are referred to as resilient aren’t the toughest individuals in a particular setting. They may just be the ones who are open to changing their form in any way.
This has a neurological component; to put it simply, it sounds almost clinical. Stronger connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala—the area of the brain responsible for rational thought communicating more effectively with the area responsible for fear—have been observed in people who recover well from adversity, according to brain imaging research. Stress is not eliminated by that link. It simply means that rather than being locked on for months, the alarm system calms down more quickly. Cortisol decreases earlier. The heart rate returns to baseline more quickly. It doesn’t stop the bad day. It merely reduces the duration of the unpleasant day.
The emotional work that goes into all of that is perhaps more fascinating and more difficult to quantify. Decades ago, Viktor Frankl wrote about a similar experience from inside a concentration camp, observing that individuals who found some meaning in their suffering appeared to endure it in a different way than those who couldn’t. People who actively process loss instead of burying it tend to adapt better over time, according to a version of the same theory that resilience researchers continue to arrive at. Suppression provides temporary respite. In ways that the body seems to keep a silent tally of, it seems to cost more later.
It’s difficult to ignore how frequently the popular definition of resilience completely misunderstands this. The terms “toughness,” “grit,” and “never letting anyone see you sweat” are highly valued in self-help culture. However, the true story is usually more complicated if you ask someone who has actually experienced something horrible. Gratitude and grief go hand in hand. Relief sits next to anger. Those who chose not to experience any of it are typically the ones who emerge stronger. On a schedule that wasn’t totally their own, they are the ones who allow themselves to experience the majority of it.
This study also reveals social connection, albeit in an almost stubborn way. Individuals who have even one stable, supportive relationship typically bounce back from adversity more quickly than those who don’t, both emotionally and physiologically, as evidenced by quantifiable changes in heart rate variability and immune function. That begs the question of how much resilience is truly a personal quality and how much is borrowed from those in proximity when things go wrong.
For what it’s worth, the friend eventually accepted a position in a completely different industry, which he claims he wouldn’t have thought of two years ago. He doesn’t claim to have healed. He says he’s moved. It’s difficult to say how important that distinction is to those who study this professionally. However, it’s the kind of minute, lived detail that makes the science seem less like science and more like something that most people have already experienced, though they haven’t yet found the right words to describe it.
