Resilience: Restoration Vs. Tolerance
by Lauren Dummit, LMFT, CST, CSAT-S
Many people have different interpretations of the word “resilience.” Pychcentral.com defines it, “When faced with a tragedy, natural disaster, health concern, relationship, work, or school problem, resilience is how well a person can adapt to the events in their life. A person with good resilience can bounce back more quickly and with less stress than someone with less developed resilience.”
A common assumption is that resilience means the ability to push through, to endure. There seems to be a collective misunderstanding of what it means to be resilient. As a result, many people, especially in American culture, are experiencing the detrimental impacts of overworking. Societal norms have seemed to take on an attitude of “the more pain, the more gain.” The tendency is to use the mind, or the neocortex, which is involved with logic, reason, planning, and decision-making, to override the body’s needs. The body, the sensations, and one’s sense of intuition are all part of the limbic system. This part of the brain is much more primitive than the neocortex. It is where the seat of wisdom lies. Current American culture values productivity above all else, urging its citizens to strive for praise and approval for pushing through, toughing it out, and working harder despite the cues from one’s body that may signal hunger or the need to rest, sleep, etc. Many people today have adopted the belief that this is what is necessary to be successful.
Those who work out tend to understand that to build muscle one’s body requires a period of recovery. For example, lifting weights creates small tears in the muscles. Given proper time to recover, these small tears increase muscle mass. However, these small tears can only lead to injury without adequate recovery time. Our nervous system operates under similar needs. If one truly desires to cultivate success and resilience, he or she cannot overlook the importance of a sufficient recovery period. Otherwise, we are putting our health and safety on the line. (https://doi.org/10.1080/001401399185487)
Just because one is not actively working does not mean that he is resting. It is prevalent for the average person to struggle to fall asleep due to an inability to let go of thoughts related to work or everyday stressors. In addition, people often get stuck in a state of sympathetic hyperarousal when they are perpetually checking their phones for updates. The nervous system is continually striving for homeostasis. The harder it must work to get there by down-regulating sympathetic activation, the higher the allostatic load. This means that more energy is being used, translating to an increase in burn-out, costing American companies $62 billion annually in lost productivity. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110901093653.htm).
Just recently Norway released the results of a study, indicating that 7.8% of Norwegians meet diagnostic criteria for workaholism. Researchers quote a definition of workaholism as “being overly concerned about work, driven by an uncontrollable work motivation, and investing so much time and effort to work that it impairs other important life areas.” (https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JMP-05-2013-0143/full/html)
This seems to be the current trend in American culture as well. Americans seem to value productivity and success above many other core values. Advances in technology have extended working hours and availability, obstructing adequate cognitive recovery and resulting in significant healthcare costs and turnover costs for employers.
From an early age, the messages one receives about resilience are often misleading. Often, parents praise and reward depleting efforts, such as commending their child for staying up and completing homework until the wee hours, which is a massive distortion of what resilience actually means. A resilient individual is a well-rested one. When one is exhausted, he travels to school or work, putting the safety of everyone on the road at risk with his impaired driving; he does not have the cognitive resources to perform on tests or class assignments; he has lower self-control with his peers and/or colleagues; at home, he is moody with his parents, partner, or other family members. Overwork and exhaustion are the opposite of resilience. The younger these patterns are ingrained, the more laborious they are to break.
Ironically, people often deprive themselves of a good night’s sleep in the name of work and productivity. Due to the overstimulation of the sympathetic nervous system, they might struggle to access enough of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for calming them and even being able to fall asleep. However, lack of sleep leads to moodiness, fatigue, irritability, depressed mood, difficulty learning new concepts, inability to focus, lowered frustration tolerance, and forgetfulness. (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/307334)
When the body is out of synch from overworking, many mental and physical resources are wasted just trying to return to homeostasis. Resilience is not just about accessing one’s inner strength and perseverance to keep moving forward; it’s also about honoring the organism's needs for rest and recovery in between spurts of productivity and action.
Authors Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz proclaim that the value of a recovery period rises in proportion to the amount of work required of us. (Loehr, J. E., & Schwartz, T. 2003). Marshaling all of one’s internal resources to keep pushing forward to counteract a low arousal level can be referred to as “upregulation.” Maintaining a consistent state of upregulation is energy-consuming. The more one depletes his energy, the more effort is necessary to restore a state of balance.
The solution is not so simple as just deciding to slow down. It necessitates a much more conscious effort to access one’s internal resources. Internal recovery refers to the more brief interludes of relaxation that one is able to interject into their typical schedule, such as short, pre-planned or even spontaneous breaks, by shifting attention or changing to other work tasks when the mental or physical resources required for the initial task are temporarily depleted or exhausted.
External recovery refers to actions that take place outside of work, such as during one’s free time or vacation time. The brain requires a pause from mental stimulation. It is also necessary to allow the nervous system to experience a respite from sympathetic activation. Otherwise, one’s allostatic load gets too high, leading to toxic levels of cortisol in the system, which then, in turn, results in further health problems.
Stress triggers particular holding and bracing patterns in the body, which use great energy to maintain. In order to conserve energy and resources, the organism will begin to shut down other systems, such as the immune system, the reproductive system (decrease in libido, sexual dysfunction, irregular periods, etc.), the digestive system (constipation, irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, bloating, stomach pain, etc.), or the muscle-skeletal system (pain in the muscles, bones, or joints, etc.) among other crucial systems within the body. In addition, when the body is braced or tense, one often does not get proper blood flow and oxygen delivered to certain areas of the body. When cells do not get adequate nourishment, they die. The brain needs a rest as much as our bodies do. One cannot discount the connection between the brain and the body. Therefore, both need adequate rest and time for recovery.
Allowing for both internal and external recovery periods is imperative to one’s mental, emotional, and physical health and well-being. There are various measures one can take to self-impose some boundaries. For example, there are apps like Offtime or Unplugged, which generate tech-free zones by tactically planning automatic airplane modes on one’s cell phone. Other solutions may include consciously deciding to take a mental break every so often (60-120 minutes) to recharge one’s resources.
Many people often take for granted the human need for social interaction and for cultivating a sense of community, which results in more and more people spending their lunch breaks eating at their desks or even in their cars. However, is a lunch break recuperative if one spends it compulsively working? It can be much more vital to commit to using one’s downtime as a recess from cognitive overload, instead allowing oneself the leisure and pleasure of social engagement. Connecting with others activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is necessary for one’s capacity to digest food.
Many people become self-sacrificing in the name of productivity, perhaps even deprivational. However, it is crucial for one’s overall sense of health and well-being that he or she practices self-care, which may mean taking full advantage of one’s paid time off from work, using it to rest and recharge, which, in turn, generally boosts one’s efficiency. Another option may be to carve out a window of time each day or even one full day of the week to commit to doing nothing but activities that are regenerating, such as journaling, napping, practicing yoga, meditating, spending time in nature, watching movies, laughing, having sex, etc.
Anything that someone is too hard on eventually breaks down or gets worn out. The body and mind are no different. To build resilience, it is helpful to maintain an autonomic nervous system that operates within one’s window of Tolerance. The Window of Tolerance is the nervous system’s comfortable, functional, social state. Threats result in hyperarousal, fight or flight, and hypo arousal, freeze, immobility. Someone with a dysregulated nervous system has a very small window of tolerance. They may have a Faux Window of Tolerance, where they manage to function despite being under physiological stress.
When one is chronically operating outside of his or her window of tolerance, deluding themselves that they are functioning well, he or she is just operating from what Kathy Kain and Stephen Terrell refer to as the Faux Window of Tolerance in their book, Nurturing Resilience: helping clients move forward from developmental trauma. They explain that when one is functioning from the Faux Window of Tolerance, any additional stressors may push them over the edge, leading to the collapse or breakdown of various systems within the body because their capacity for resilience is already compromised.
Resilience does not mean one does not get activated in response to stressors. However, it measures how well one can cope with stressors. By accessing both internal and external resources, one can teach his or her nervous system to remain regulated. The resilient individual exhibits an increased capacity to contain the activation created by the stressor. Containment does not necessarily mean disinhibition and downregulation. It refers to expansion in one’s Window of Tolerance, the amount one can tolerate and integrate. If there is a deficiency in internal containment, more external containment is needed.
References
Browse journals by subject. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/001401399185487
A study shows that insomnia costs the US workforce $63.2 billion a year in lost productivity. (2011, September 2). Retrieved from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110901093653.htm
Kain, K. L., Levine, P. A., & Terrell, S. J. (2018). Nurturing resilience: helping clients move forward from developmental trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Kathleen Davis, F. N. P. (2018, January 25). Sleep deprivation: Causes, symptoms, and treatment. Retrieved from https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/307334
Loehr, J. E., & Schwartz, T. (2003). The power of full engagement: managing energy, not time, is the key to performance, health, and happiness. Crow’s Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin.
Psychometric assessment of workaholism measures. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JMP-05-2013-0143/full/html