Thriving Through Challenges: A Behavior Analytic Perspective on Resilience
By Evelyn Gould
What does it mean to thrive? What makes someone resilient? These are questions we often ask ourselves when faced with life’s inevitable challenges. While some people seem to weather storms effortlessly, others struggle to stay afloat. But what exactly sets these resilient individuals apart?
The Oxford English Dictionary defines resilience as "the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness" and "the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity." However, from a behavior analytic and ACT perspective, we view resilience as more than just "snapping back into shape."
As B.F. Skinner emphasized, we are not the same organism from one moment to the next…so we might ask ourselves, who would want to go back to being exactly the same after going through a challenge? True resilience involves transformation and growth - it involves change!
Resilience as a Process of Growth
Resilience from our perspective is about adaptation or learning. The American Psychological Association (APA) describes resilience as "the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress." This definition highlights resilience as a dynamic process rather than a static trait - it is less about who you are and more about what you do.
Resilience is not about the specific challenges you face - it is about how you respond to those challenges. How we talk about ourselves and our experiences plays a huge piece in that. From an RFT (Relational Frame Theory) perspective, language gives our experiences meaning. How we relate to ourselves and the challenges we face (through words) can therefore either foster or hinder resilience. Resilience is also not about ‘being fine’ or absence of discomfort or distress - it is about adapting through adversity. Learning, adapting, growing through challenges involves experiencing discomfort. Sometimes learning is messy.
How resilient we are in any given challenge depends on our learning history and how well we can resource ourselves through that challenge. But since resilience can be shaped, under the right conditions, we can all learn new and better ways to support ourselves through difficulty.
Behavioral Flexibility and Resilience
Flexibility is clearly an important or critical feature of resilience. Individuals who exhibit greater behavioral flexibility are more likely to adapt and thrive in a constantly changing world. Indeed, research (e.g., see Rodriguez & Thompson, 2015) has shown that individuals with a diverse, flexible repertoires are more likely to demonstrate:
Increased sensitivity to changing contingencies: They can adjust their behavior based on the evolving demands of their environment .
Contact with a broad range of reinforcers: They have diverse ways to meet their needs and access positive experiences.
More effective problem-solving and creativity: They can more easily generate new behaviors or develop innovative solutions to problems.
Improved social development and success: They can more easily adjust their behavior based on evolving social demands or changes in context.
Improved skill acquisition or learning: They acquire new skills more rapidly and with fewer errors.
Cultivating flexible repertoires is thus key to promoting thriving: expanding opportunities for new learning ways to respond to challenges, as well as new ways to experience joy and a sense of meaning, even in difficult times.
Resilience and Psychological Flexibility
Resilience is about transformation, growth, and flexibility. By understanding resilience as a dynamic process of learning and adaptation, we can better support ourselves and others in flexibly navigating life's challenges.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) aims to promote well-being and resilience specifically by fostering psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility involves "flexibly interacting with (i.e., languaging about) our experiences, in context-sensitive ways, that help us connect with meaning and purpose, and thus promote resilience, even in adverse contexts" (Ming et al., 2023).
By centering psychological flexibility as a primary outcome and guiding principle for all that we do as behavior analysts, we stay focused on building flexible repertoires that support clients to grow and thrive, no matter what life throws at them.
As we cultivate resilience in this way, we open ourselves and our clients to new possibilities for fostering a richer and more meaningful existence.
References
American Psychological Association (n.d.). Resilience. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience
Ming, S., Gould, E., & Fiebig, J. H. (2023). Understanding and applying relational frame theory: Mastering the foundations of complex language in our work and lives as behavior analysts. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.
Rodriguez, N. M., & Thompson, R. H. (2015). Behavioral variability and autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 48(1), 167-187.
