Resilience, Trauma and Healing

Resilience is the capacity to adapt, survive and bounce back after or even in the midst of hardship and adversity. Human beings and communities are intrinsically resourceful and adaptable—resilient, in a word. How resourceful they are is affected very powerfully by the social environment.

One often sees stories in the media of smiling survivors of natural disasters and other traumas. Such stories show the enormous strength and resilience of individuals and groups when faced with stressful and traumatic situations. If the infrastructure is still intact, people generally continue to function, going to school and work, caring for each other and so on. However, a great many factors can undermine this natural resilience: factors that affect individuals, like health issues and poverty, and factors that affect whole communities, like injustice and conflict.

A growing body of scientific evidence points to the widespread impact of trauma worldwide, especially in conflict-affected regions. Individuals and groups may carry frozen grief and unaddressed pain beneath their smiles or their stoic “moving on.” The resilience of affected communities is seriously compromised, not only in mental health terms, but in terms of their economic well-being and their susceptibility to violence, illness, substance abuse and many other problems.

But there is also growing evidence that recovering from trauma, overcoming its invisible wounds, makes individuals and communities stronger. Trauma undermines resilience; healing from trauma builds it up. There is, in short, a proven connection between the overall social health of a community – sometimes called its “social capital” – and its members’ resistance to and ability to overcome trauma.

Social capital is a term that refers to the shared customs and values and networks that enable people to work together. It has been called the glue that holds societies together. Trauma tends to undermine social capital. Traumatized people frequently withdraw from society, for example; traumatized communities are easily tipped into anger and violence. But trauma can also provide an occasion for strengthening social capital, even to the extent of rebuilding previously broken communities.