Let’s discuss resilience. This is one of those terms people toss around a lot, especially in the field of trauma healing. They’ll say something like:
“Wow, you really are quite resilient.”
“You just have to be resilient.”
“Children are really resilient.”
And quite honestly? It makes me to want to scream sometimes.
The truth is, most people who use the term lack a clear definition—especially for those of us who experienced childhood complex trauma. Saying “resilient,” people usually imply something like “bouncing back.” Like you’re a damn yoga ball that can simply spring back into form after being slammed into the ground.
But supposing you never had any form to begin with?
Suppose chaos, neglect, violence, and silence marked your early years. Imagine your entire nervous system orienting not toward safety but toward survival. What, specifically, are you meant to “bounce back” to?
That’s the point at which the conventional concept of resilience fails. It doesn’t apply to those of us who never experienced safety in the first place.
Let’s dissect this word and reconstruct it into something more real.
Resilience Isn’t About “Bouncing Back”
That’s the big myth. Bouncing back suggests you were stable before the experience. But complex trauma sometimes strikes before we’ve even had an opportunity to get established. The ground was not particularly solid to begin with. No safety net here, nor supportive hands to catch you if you fell.
Resilience then is not about going back to something, such as the perception of safety. It has to do with becoming something. Often for the first time.
It’s not sparkly or pretty. It is gritty. Clumsy. Learning to feel your emotions after years of suppressing them is difficult. It’s telling yourself “no” while your whole body screams to people-please. It’s getting triggered and, instead of numbing out, choosing to sit with the feelings because some part of you wants to do things differently.
That’s resilience.
What Real Resilience Looks Like
For trauma survivors, resilience is not about “being strong,” in some performative sense. It’s not about pushing through or behaving as if you’re normal when you’re not. It’s about gradually, agonizingly, stubbornly learning how to:
- Sit with discomfort, rather than fleeing from it.
- Tell the truth about what occurred to you—even if nobody else wants to know.
- Look after a body you learned to separate from.
- Believe once more in yourself. Or perhaps for the first time ever.
Brick by brick, decision by decision. That’s how it’s constructed. On some days, it’s hardly apparent. Other days it’s collapsing in the shower since something deep has shifted at last. Though from the outside you might not seem “resilient,” it doesn’t mean you aren’t living it.
You Weren’t Born Broken
Resilience is not a magic ability some people are born with and others simply miss out on. It’s not a character quality. It’s an ability. And it can be built.
The tragedy of complex trauma is that it steals the basic ingredients for resilience before they have time to grow—safety, trust, connection, choice. That doesn’t mean you are doomed though. It merely means you have to start from nothing. And while it’s quite difficult, it’s also quite courageous.
You’re already cultivating resilience if you’re doing this work—that is, if you’re reading, reflecting, asking difficult questions, establishing boundaries, attending therapy, meditating, whatever it looks like for you. Currently. Right now. Even if it doesn’t feel like it.
The Raw Materials of Real Resilience
How much effort is required? Those who’ve successfully reclaimed their resilience share the these traits:
- Regulation: Learning how to calm your nervous system. Breathing, moving, feeling without getting overwhelmed or shutting down.
- Awareness: Recognizing your own patterns, particularly the ones imprinted onto you without your knowledge or consent.
- Connection: Creating secure, constructive relationships. Even if that begins with your relationship to yourself.
- Agency: Remembering that you have choice. You’re no longer trapped the way you once were.
- Meaning: Making sense of your story will help you to integrate it, personalize it, make it yours. It’s not about making excuses for what happened.
You don’t have to become an expert. Nor do you need to execute it flawlessly. You simply must keep showing up.
The Dao Has Something to Say About Resilience, Too
I’ll delve into this further in future entries, but just know—people have explored and developed a vast body of wisdom on this topic for thousands of years. Resilience, according to Daoist thought, is not about pushing on. It has to do with discovering flow. Moving not against, but rather with life. Learning when to be gentle, when to be firm, and when to let go.
That does not constitute weakness. Water has that kind of resilience. It carves through rock without even trying.
If You’re Still Here, That’s Resilience
Seriously. Are you still reading this? Do you still find yourself in it, yearning for healing, still curious?
That’s resilience.
Not the kind people applaud.
Not the kind you see in Instagram quotes.
But the real kind.
The sloppy, vulnerable, authentic kind.
You’re not in need of being fixed. You’re not broken. You’re transforming. Keep at it.