Principles for Realizing Resilience: A New View of Trauma and Inner Resilience

Principles for Realizing Resilience: A New View of Trauma and Inner Resilience

This paper offers a new view of trauma and human resilience based on three principles for realizing resilience. This view challenges the current perspective of how and why traumatic events appear to induce and sustain painful symptoms from the outside, by explaining how these symptoms are created and maintained from within, regardless of circumstances. It proposes that all people can access innate resilience allowing them to move through loss and trauma with minimal distress, grace, and even positive emotions. It distinguishes between accessing innate resilience from coping with loss and trauma with social supports, personality traits, and management strategies. While more rigorous, controlled research is needed to document the efficacy of interventions based on these principles, existing supportive evidence is compelling and appears to warrant the field’s attention.