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How people learn to become resilient (2016)

newyorker.com

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Re: How people learn to become resilient (2016)

#51

Post by nxc18 »

watwut wrote: post #43
nxc18 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to this, the article mentions the need to be more specific when facing challenges and stressors. A big trend, at least in PNW leftist activism, is looking at the entire system while focusing in on flaws. No improvement is acceptable unless it is total and complete, and partial steps are even worse than doing nothing. Myanmar coup? Time to protest global capitalism. Bad conditions in a jail in Wyoming? Time to…

I have seen protests against police violence and against coups, but none of them was framed as protest against global capitalism. They also had demands. If you perceive those as being about global capitalism, you was using odd information sources. Or you lie. Maybe you socialize only with most hardcore communists, or only with hardcore right wing, but your perception is not based on reality.

What are the demands of the Myanmar Coup protests that happened in PNW, and how could they have been met by the local community?

I am specifically referring to the most hardcore leftists, but I don’t tend to socialize with them. I don’t think its right to call them communists, anarchism is popular though.

I don’t know if you can make a broad claim about no protest being framed as against global capitalism; if you had been to one, you’d know that the protestors like to be clear that they are decentralized, so no one person owns the framing. They have many different framings internally, and certainly you know how I frame them. My framing is based on the chants of, and sprayed graffiti saying ‘land back’, ‘rent is theft’, ‘kill all landlords’, and ‘end capitalism’.

Re: How people learn to become resilient (2016)

#52

Post by troelsSteegin »

psychtrauma wrote: post #2

'Resilience', in this sense, is usually presented as a positive personal trait to be proud of. However, (after a lot of therapy), I see it more as a simple reflection of the undue trauma I faced and was required to handle.

In the article Konnikova (and Seligman) describes resilience as a product of methods that can be taught. The framing is that resilience is an interpretive skill.

The Konnikova article links to a NYTimes article [0] which in turn (in the reader comments) links to a HuffPost article [1] by a medical school specialist on PTSD. Quoting from that: "The American Psychological Association defines resilience as 'the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of threat.' ... Resilience is common and can be witnessed all around us. Even better, we learned that everyone can learn and train to be more resilient. The key involves knowing how to harness stress and use it to our advantage. "

The problem with resilience as a skill is that "resilience" may be a skill you don't have before you need it. How can one be expected to have total control over one's "construal"? Trauma, like grief, is personal and subjective. Emotion is immediate. We feel the way we feel. In a crisis, should one feel worse because you are not yet deploying the resilience? Resilience is not one sure trick but an interpretative mindset set that may or may not be available to you when something that you may or may not be able to understand has happened to you. One could view therapy as a process of developing over time a resilient response to experienced trauma.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/magazine/the-profound-emp... [1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trauma-resilience_b_1881666

Re: How people learn to become resilient (2016)

#53

Post by TameAntelope »

nxc18 wrote: post #46
TameAntelope wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taboo on the word "leftists". You're otherizing, I don't think it's helpful. I don't see the people you're referring to as being in the driver's seat of any meaningful change that's actually being considered in a way that might actually lead to implementation.

Yes, exactly, they are not in the drivers seat because they systematically choose not to be in the drivers seat. I don’t know if its necessarily wrong to otherize the people who smash windows in my community, spray paint graffiti on the walls (Land Back! Pigs must die! Kill cops! Rent is theft!). If anything, I think they have chosen to make themselves the enemy of the community they live in by refusing to productive…

I think it's always wrong to otherize, though I get your frustration.

It's fairly interesting to me to see this relatively small group of people causing fairly limited damage be the focus of so much attention, rather than the ideas and concepts of more influential (and therefore relevant) social justice advocates.

It's noisy and grabs your attention yes, but I think it's a mistake to think of it as representative of anything other than the specific people causing the damage.

Re: How people learn to become resilient (2016)

#54

Post by watwut »

ceh123 wrote: post #41
majormajor wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're all lucky that not everyone's goals are just to improve their own life, but that some people want to improve society too. If you were ill you'd want the doctor who told you both "here's how to cope" and "here's how we cure this thing," not the one who stopped at the first.

To quote from kiba's reply elsewhere in this thread: >The problem is that systematic problems requiring systematic solution doesn't provide a framework for individual behavior in the meantime. To twist your analogy around, it's more like having a doctor say "you probably got cancer because you lived next to a coal plant." Incredibly important information to have societally, should absolutely be considered and maybe e…

It does not take away anything from patient either. It may push him into changing place where he lives, so that further harm is prevented both to him and his family.

Also, if that is actual cause, it would be harmful for doctor to speculate about how patient harmed himself.

Re: How people learn to become resilient (2016)

#55

Post by Dudeman112 »

haswell wrote: post #42
GenerocUsername wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trauma is the natural state of the universe. To think life should be free of trauma is a hyper-modern and sheltered view of the world enabled by our extreme comfort provided by modern technology and the invisible labor from less privelidged people and those who lived and died before us. Trauma is the natural state, and our resilience has and always will be a defining characteristic of successful people... Of whom we…

> Trauma is the natural state of the universe. As a survivor of sexual abuse on a lifelong journey of survival, it’s difficult to communicate just how strongly I disagree with (and am repulsed by) this statement and the sentiment behind it. It lacks awareness of the many kinds of trauma, and trivializes the experiences of those who’ve been subjected to things that are anything but natural. Do not mistake the prevalen…

>Trauma is the natural state of the universe.

I agree with everything you said.

Also: fuck the natural state of the universe. The natural state of the universe is shit and we should seriously fight against it.

There is no fairness or justice or good in the laws of the universe. Nature is a bitch.

But that's not so bad, because we can be fair and good and make the environment better.

Re: How people learn to become resilient (2016)

#56

Post by watwut »

nxc18 wrote: post #28
newacct583 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow your conclusion here. So... you don't think that there are systemic problems worth correcting? Or you think there are, but you don't want to because the disadvantaged should just be resilient instead? It's one thing to say that there are alternative therapies to pulling down statues and burning shit in the street. It's rather another to reject the goals of a movement because you don't like their tactic…

The way leftists approach fixing systemic issues is fundamentally incompatible with actually changing anything. The smart leftists work towards positive change by doing disgusting things like engaging in compromise and working with people who aren’t ideologically pure; when they do such things they inadvertently reveal themselves to be something far more horrible, like a liberal or a progressive-but-not-progressive-e…

If left wing does something wrong, it is left wing fault. If right wrong does something wrong, or is left wing fault because left made them do it.

But, it is never the case that right made left do something bad.

Re: How people learn to become resilient (2016)

#57

Post by Dudeman112 »

throwawayboise wrote: post #8
inglor_cz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to think of resilience as a psychical equivalent of the calluses on your fingers that you get from playing the guitar. Developing them is painful, but they give you power to try and do something bigger.

IOW "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

No one ever became stronger by getting their legs crushed by a ton of metal. In fact, I'd argue they mostly became weaker.

Re: How people learn to become resilient (2016)

#58

Post by throwaway3b03 »

psychtrauma wrote: post #2

'Resilience', in this sense, is usually presented as a positive personal trait to be proud of. However, (after a lot of therapy), I see it more as a simple reflection of the undue trauma I faced and was required to handle.

We either read different articles, or have almost contradictory viewpoints. I have deep background in developmental trauma, developmental psychology, and trauma is in fact what destroys the resilience mentioned in the article.

You don't become resilient due to going through trauma, you are resilient when your body is in a certain physiological state (which is reflected throughout, from brainwaves, to vagal tone, to digestive system functioning, to immune system etc). Trauma is an event that takes the body out of that state into a state of fear/fight-or-flight. This state can become chronic if the perceived state of danger is maintained (even if the actual physical danger may no longer be relevant, the thought patterns developed could continue for the rest of person's life for instance). Some people go their whole lives with the coping behaviors developed in response to that trauma (whether it's workoholism, addiction etc).

Also important to mention is that there's a window of time between birth (and even before) and the very early childhood when the brain structures related to affect regulation are developed. Trauma in that period is likely to affect a person severely for a lifetime.

In other words, trauma is what makes a person less resilient. Lack of stressors does not make a person less resilient, on the contrary. Learned helplessness is an extremely common outcome of severe trauma, which is quite the opposite of resilience.

Re: How people learn to become resilient (2016)

#60

Post by KittenInABox »

GenerocUsername wrote: post #12
psychtrauma wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you are failing to consider those who faced trauma and failed to handle it. I would have previously agreed with you, and I think that is an important viewpoint that is useful to contemplate deeply. But, I now wish to reject the point of view that I should be proud because I faced my individual trauma somehow 'better' than those other people. Those other people shouldn't have faced that trauma either.

Trauma is the natural state of the universe. To think life should be free of trauma is a hyper-modern and sheltered view of the world enabled by our extreme comfort provided by modern technology and the invisible labor from less privelidged people and those who lived and died before us. Trauma is the natural state, and our resilience has and always will be a defining characteristic of successful people... Of whom we…

The defining characteristic of successful people IMO is not resilience but that their life has given them the opportunity to be successful in the first place!

There is nothing hyper-modern about condemning war, sexual assault, child abuse, and genocide. These things have been viewed as terrible by various civilizations since civilization existed.

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