Digging into Resilience & The Equation of Balance

Emmy Werner followed, from the prenatal period to adulthood, 505 babies born in Kaui in 1955.

In particular, she was interested to see what would happen to high risk children - those born to poverty, perinatal stress and a disorganized caretaking environment.

One out of every three of the high risk children, 10% of the total cohort, had developed into a competent, confident, and caring young adult by age 18.

Young men and women in this study who were able to elicit primarily positive responses from their environments were found to be stress-resistent, even when living in chronic poverty or in disorganized homes with disturbed parents.

(Is there a connection to the 3 to 1 positivity ratio foreshadowed here?)

Those that provoked negative responses from their environments were found to be vulnerable, even in the absence of biological stress or financial constraints.

As disadvantages and the cumulative number of stressful life events increased, more protective factors in the children and their caregiving environment were needed to counterbalance the negative factors and to ensure positive developmental outcomes.

From Overcoming the Odds: High Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood, Emmy E. Werner and Ruth S. Smith.

Excessive stress occurs when the demands made on an organism exceed that organism's reasonable capacities to fulfill them.

From When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress, Gabor Mate, MD

Stress: Demands > Capacity

This explains why we all have a breaking point. Stack enough stressors and we are all vulnerable. Possible combinations of “what is demanding” and “our capacity” are infinite and unique, but the process is not. I just got through reading an autobiography of Nina Simone, I Put a Spell on You, and her breaks from reality seem to have come long after the traditional late adolescence onset and more likely related to chronic exhaustion and a life extremely out of balance. There is also a question about the connection between creativity and madness which Jung described as: "Schizophrenics drown in the same waters as mystics delight in" or something like that, but that's another post.

Is there a balancing human equation? When demands are greater than capacity, what resources (human, personal, environmental, tangible, metaphysical, etc.) can be drawn upon to sustain us?

Adaptation: Capacity (+ + + + + + + + + + + +) = Demands

If you had to list them, what are your + + + + ?

Do we know when to call on our resources?

Do we feel entitled to fight to survive, adapt or succeed?