Throwing Resilience Out With the Bathwater
A Closer Look at a Naive Intervention
by Jennifer Finch, LPC, SEP, NCC
If you have been to a workshop, a professional training, listened to a podcast, watched a Ted Talk, or been on any social media accounts within the last 5 years, most likely you have heard, or most likely over-heard, the word RESILIENCE. (* Over-heard, as in over and over, and over, again; not as in over-heard a secret of some kind).
It is often demonstrated with the cute, coupled pairing of a Taoist story about a farmer and his son.
There is a Taoist story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, the townspeople came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “Maybe, we shall see,” the farmer replied.
The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the townspeople exclaimed. “Maybe, we shall see,” replied the old farmer.
The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The townspeople again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. “Maybe, we shall see,” answered the farmer.
The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The townspeople congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “Maybe, we shall see,” said the farmer.
We can easily identify and make the connection to how “resilient” the farmer is. There is a lot to gain and understand from the teaching in this heuristic story. The impermanent nature of all things, circumstances, including our own human life expiration, for instance. However, in using the story to demonstrate resiliency, some part of it through the years of hearing it felt a bit drab.
A conscientious client of mine from yonks ago, spoke up in a class I teach from time to time called, Kintsugi: Turning Your Wounds Into Wisdom. She said, “Geez, your son didn’t go to war, go have a steak or something!” I agreed with her. The absence of the old farmer’s emotional responses made me wonder if he was perhaps morally broken. Frozen. Shut down like a stigmatized swan song and about to give up the whole endeavor entirely. Or maybe he was narcissistically spirited, suffering from an overconfidence effect. Smug. Maybe he’s blinding us all and he is secretly engaging in celebratory ventures? Steak and a Big Cab.
The point being, often in my own teaching of resiliency and compassion, I could recognize that it zapped out the joy. The exuberant joy of life. Which is an extreme emotional and whole body-mind-soul state of being. A tall, crested peak on a mountain top.
Despite many of us acting these days more like the townspeople in the story, perhaps with the modern addition of pitchforks, we don’t want to over-identify with them. Flying across the land like tumbleweeds at high noon won’t get us anywhere except to Interstate Exhaustion. But are we really trading our excessive reactivity and busy-body-nosy-ness in to be more like the farmer?
Resiliency is a steady, unwavering, unflappable state. Foreign to most of us. And, even if we train to become more resilient like a mountain, does it improve us? Does it cultivate growth and evolution? Sure, resiliency absolutely gets us through difficulty, and is usually more effective than our explosive series of current interventions patrolling us through unforeseen change. The farmer marched onward in his life, robustly, but did he ever feel magnificent beyond belief? Truly connected to something really big and full of awe? Did he ever feel so substantial and happy beyond anything that could be explained?
How are we doing? Individually? Culturally? Are we able to live confidently? Authentically? Joyously? Happy, full, and satisfied to our all-encompassing human extent? Not all the time, of course, that’s an illusory tale, but at least more often than not?
One of my greatest teachers, Dr. Gabor Mate, claims that we are in an uphill battle. In a recent episode of the Rich Roll podcase @richroll listen/read what Dr. Mate has to say:
“In our society there is a genocide of authenticity. There is very little that actually promotes healing, and there is very much that undermines it. This society loves you to be addicted. Feeling inadequate so that you're trying to meet other people's expectations. It loves you to try to fit in instead of being authentically yourself. This culture kills authenticity so that this path towards wholeness is not supported by the culture, in fact it's undermined by it. So, we have to kind of take it on for ourselves, this is not just necessary as individuals, but in the face of cultural programming and propaganda.”
So, I ask, is resiliency enough? Is it big enough to handle post-traumatic generations? Is resiliency helping us improve, get stronger, better, are we growing? Or do we live in a culture that keeps handing us peanuts when we are allergic to peanuts?
To live our fullest life, I believe we must begin to expand beyond resiliency. We must drop the illusion that we can only tolerate some teensy-weensy amount of stress before we topple over. If we have larger stress, we need to learn to self-soothe, not look to external pacifiers, and begin doing our own work. As we work on ourselves, we are indeed making a dent in our cultural programming as well.
A human life is flush with extreme states. If you don’t agree, try being around a toddler for about five minutes. Or spend some time drenched and soaked in Mother Nature.
The type of joy I describe above, exuberance and awe, is felt most readily, sometimes immediately or even simultaneously, out of its equal and opposite energy, pain. The more pain, the more powerful the joy. But only if we allow it. Only if we allow our pain to crush us, shatter us, and crack us wide open will we be able to experience the greatest heights of joy and happiness. If we keep bubble-wrapping our pain, skirting around it, or bulldozing over it, we are cutting joy off at the knees.
Pain comes in varying degrees and dosages. We might not be able to handle the world’s pain, nor should we. But at the very least we should be able to handle our own lives, including the tsunamis of pain that we have experienced directly.
I aim to begin broadening the puny scope of resiliency. I am developing a model to move beyond resiliency and create a real-world solution that helps us grow from disorder, chaos, and pain. One that helps us live fully, even amid extreme states. Especially, in the center of extreme states. Right from the start. I believe as individuals, and as an interconnected culture, we need to be training in how to become “antifragile” (antifragile is a word I am adopting from the economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb). We are capable of so much more than what we are currently demonstrating. I admit, we don’t need another model in the field of psycho-spirituality, but at the same time, I have severe concerns that if we continue in the direction we are heading with the flavor of the month “resiliency model”, we are going to be swallowed up whole into the jaws of fragility. We are without a doubt, going the wrong way.
***
Antifragile, a made-up word by an economist none the less, is a word I deem brilliant. It is the exact opposite of fragile. I have been searching for a descriptive word such as this for a very long time. To my surprise, it didn’t exist, and had to be invented by a humorous and industrious numbers guy. In my Kintsugi workshop, we work with teacups; I often refer to them as fragile. No one would disagree. But after we have repaired the cracks with gold, I have struggled as to what quality I can regard the new teacup. Of course, now it is antifragile!
I propose this terminology can be constructed from the rich world of economics into a psychology. I believe antifragility can be developed into a strong individual constitution, cultivated into a hearty disposition, and chiseled in as a character aspect. I even theorize that with sedulous care it can be dedicated to one’s concept of spirituality, if you will. It is envisioned by me to have these engrained characteristics:
Someone that:
· loves mistakes, the anti-perfectionist which is fragile
· embraces uncertainty
· handles volatility with grace
· likes non-linear time
· is brimming with patience and can tolerate impatience, the anti-instant gratificationist
· leaves time for spontaneity (anything can happen at any given time) (As I sometimes say, “Save time to poop.”)
· is connected to their core self
· is embodied and not living in their head (or excessive chatter)
· is purpose-driven and busy, but not preoccupied with busyness, being busy, or proving to themselves and others that they are busy
· doesn’t feel like a tumbleweed townsperson, doesn’t create chaos in their lives or family systems (life delivers us enough already)
· has an ability to see things how they really are
· doesn’t ignore or deny their reality or the reality of those around them (like their children’s reality)
· finds stress to be necessary
· gets stronger and improves under, or because of harm
· is self-healing and has skin in the game
· naturally is in control (only of one’s self), but surrenders to all that cannot be controlled (this means everything else)
· flows (not rigid)
· finds suffering, pain and hardship to be necessary (this is where REAL spirituality is birthed) *REAL = NOT manufactured, mandatory, pressed upon, imprinted, influenced from social media or other people who refer to you as “beautiful beings,” naïve, guru-driven, spiritual materialism
· one that alchemizes scars, visible and invisible, turning them into gold (my under-development, Kintsugi Method)
· sends thanks to every single thing, event, circumstance and person that has caused them pain, hardship and suffering, for opening them up to a spiritual dimension and pushing them towards an ultimate reality giving them the opportunity to became something bigger, stronger, more capable, and antifragile. (Thanks are given on a non-linear timeline.)
So, you see, resiliency isn’t enough. It only gets us half-way there. To embrace antifragility we need to feel and accept everything that has happened to us. We need to lean into our current situation with clarity. We need to inhabit our un-constricted wholeness, even with our pain, and not be terrified of it. No guts, no glory. Our stamp of authenticity is given by our personal experience with hard-testing struggle.
We need to begin teaching how to feel more like ourselves and live in a world that we cannot understand. Not, trying to understand the world, and then try to fit ourselves into it. It will arrest our development if we continue in this reverse order, and quite frankly, it is making us more fragile.
***
Resilient people are quite impressive. They feel sturdy. But just because an item doesn’t break, doesn’t mean it has improved. The very over generalized type-cast image I am creating here is a strapping, well-built war veteran, who sits stoically in the fatherly living room chair with a 5:00 brewski. Strong, confident, disciplined, kind and compassionate even. You might get a survival story or two now and again, but exuberant, unleashed joy? Belly laughs? Improv dancing in the kitchen? Poetic tears? Existential waxing?
People who have broken, a thousand times over, and blossomed to wholeness, growth from their pain, eloquently glow, move freely within their bodies and glide through their spacious environment. Their feet kiss the ground as they walk, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say. Now these people are interesting! They have become antifragile. Or what is synonymous with what I refer to in my Kintsugi workshop as, “Never-Not-Broken.” They understand how fragile life is, how fragile they are, and moment-to-moment make a full-fledged decision to live their best antifragile life. It’s precious. Every moment of it. There is a tingling sense of adventure around these people. A hallmark is their sense of humor. Just as suffering equates to spirituality; humor can be directly correlated to pain.
Antifragile individuals live unapologetically. Not rudely, harshly, angrily, or ignorantly. They do not suffer fools. They have shining confidence, embodied boundaries, and an internal locus of safety. Beyond popular belief (especially in the trauma world), safety doesn’t come from anything or anyone external or outside of themselves and antifragiles know this innately.
They have broken free from the trappings of modernity that keeps trying to eliminate uncertainty, cushion the jaggedness, and straitjacket emotions. They speak from their scars, but don’t need to announce them. They don’t need to exclaim trauma and every trifling trigger to their teachers, quasi-peers, or socials. Because they have lived it many times, they know with certainty that anyone with a human life is delivered it one way or another. Outside of their family of origin, Mother Nature has built them. And just like her, they have moved beyond resiliency, and have blossomed into something more antifragile.
References:
@gabormatemd excerpted from Rich Roll podcast #702. Google the query Rich Roll Gabor Mate from wherever you enjoy your podcast listening.
“Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder,” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2012.
