Relational Resilience by June Jordan

"Given that life subjects all of us to tensions and suffering and that relationships as well as individuals are buffeted by forces that create pain, disconnection, and the threat of dissolution, the capacity for relational resilience, or transformation is essential.

Movement toward empathic mutuality is at the core of relational resilience. When individuals move from mutually empowering and mutually empathic relationships into disconnection, they are often beset by a damaging sense of immobilization and isolation. They lose the sense of a life-giving empathic bridge.

When people are unable to move from disconnection to connection, the resulting combination of immobilization and isolation may become a prison (“condemned isolation”) and may contribute to psychological anguish, physical deterioration, and sometimes even death.

Thus, we can no longer look only at factors within the individual that facilitate adjustment; we must examine the relational dynamics that encourage the capacity for connection.

Reframing our understanding of resilience in terms of a relational model has implications for both psychotherapy and social change. Therapy, then, can be understood as largely an effort to explore and enhance the capacity for relational resilience.

And in moving beyond personal resilience to personal transformation and social change, the relational context is central.

What makes for relational resilience and mutuality and ultimately encourages the transformation from isolation and pain to relatedness and growth? In exploring this, I suggest we need new models. I believe we must make the following moves:

1. From individual ‘control over’ dynamics to a model of supported vulnerability
2. From a one-directional need for support from others to mutual empathic involvement in the well-being of each person and of the relationship itself
3. From separate self-esteem to relational confidence
4. From the exercise of ‘power over’ dynamics to empowerment, by encouraging mutual growth and constructive conflict
5. From finding meaning in self-centered self-consciousness to creating meaning in a more expansive relational awareness"