SOS 3200 Module 3 Resilience Paper: Ordinary Magic, Paths Through Loss and a Resilience Scale Example

Ordinary Magic in a Hard Year: Measuring and Building My Resilience

Student Name

B.S. in Health Studies, Thomas Edison State University

SOS-3200: The Management of Stress and Tension

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Ordinary Magic in a Hard Year: Measuring and Building My Resilience

Introduction

People often call resilience bouncing back, and for years I assumed it was a trait some people are born with. Five years ago my mother died suddenly of a stroke. I was devastated for weeks, but I kept working, cared for my children and, within a few months, felt mostly like myself, though I still miss her. Now my father's Parkinson's disease is slowly worsening. I wanted to understand my own resilience and how I might strengthen it before harder years come.

Resilience as Ordinary

Masten (2001) reviewed decades of research on children who develop well despite poverty, trauma or family adversity. She concluded that resilience is not rare or extraordinary. It arises from ordinary human adaptive systems: close relationships with caring adults, intelligence and problem-solving skills, the ability to regulate emotions and behavior, a sense of mastery and connections to effective schools and communities. She called this ordinary magic. When resilience fails, it is because those systems have been harmed or swamped, not because some special quality was missing. The implication is that resilience can be protected and built by strengthening these everyday systems.

Resilience After Loss

Bonanno (2004) challenged the assumption that people who do not show intense grief after a loss are in denial or will suffer delayed grief. He distinguished resilience, a stable pattern of healthy functioning after a loss or trauma, from recovery, in which a person's functioning drops for months and then gradually returns. In studies of bereaved adults, resilience was the most common pattern, and delayed grief was rare. He described several routes to resilience, including hardiness, a tendency to see oneself favorably, and positive emotion and laughter, which help people stay connected to others during loss.

My experience after my mother's death looks more like Bonanno's recovery pattern than pure resilience, since I struggled for some weeks. But it was a shorter and milder dip than I had feared, and his research helped me see that feeling steady again was not a sign that I had not loved her.

Measuring My Resilience

Connor and Davidson (2003) developed a 25-item scale to measure resilience as a set of characteristics, including personal competence, trust in one's instincts and tolerance of negative feelings, acceptance of change and secure relationships, a sense of control and spiritual influences. Items run from 0 to 4, so totals range from 0 to 100; a higher total signals more resilience. In their samples, general population adults scored higher than primary care patients and psychiatric outpatients, and scores rose in patients whose post-traumatic stress improved with treatment, suggesting resilience can change.

My total was 71, below the mean they reported for the general population. My highest items concerned close relationships and believing I can achieve my goals. My lowest concerned being able to handle unpleasant feelings and thinking of myself as a strong person when facing life's challenges.

What the Scores Suggest

Comparing the scale and Masten's systems points to the same gaps. My relationships and problem-solving skills are strong. My ability to tolerate unpleasant feelings and calm myself is weaker, which matches the night worry I described in module two. I have also drifted away from my church, which once gave me both community and a sense of meaning.

Building Resilience

Masten's view suggests that I can strengthen the systems I already have. To build self-regulation, I will learn a relaxation practice, which I will plan in module six. To reconnect with community, I will attend church twice a month and join its caregivers' prayer group. To protect relationships, I will keep a standing Sunday call with my brother so he shares news about our father and I do not feel alone with it. Following Bonanno, I will also make room for laughter and positive moments with my children, which can sustain me through hard periods rather than distracting me from them.

Resilience at Work

Resilience also shows at work. When our billing system changed last year, three people on my team quit. I stayed, partly because I had learned to break large problems into small steps, a skill Masten would count under problem solving and mastery. I also leaned on a coworker who had been through a similar change at another hospital. What I lacked was a way to calm myself after hard days, so I carried the tension home. This pattern repeats the gap the scale found: strong problem solving and relationships, weaker self-regulation.

What My Children See

My children watch how I handle stress. Masten's research suggests that children's own resilience grows from relationships with steady adults. If I can model calm problem solving and honest talk about hard feelings, I may build resilience in them as well as in myself.

Looking Ahead

My father's illness will bring repeated losses rather than one. Resilience research on chronic caregiving shows that support, rest and meaning matter even more over long periods. Building these resources now, while demands are manageable, may help me stay steady later.

Faith as a Resource

The Connor-Davidson scale includes items on spiritual influences, and my scores there were middling. Faith once helped me through hard times, including my mother's death, when the church community brought meals for weeks.

Limits

Self-report scales are influenced by mood on the day they are taken. Much resilience research focuses on children or single events. My score is one measurement, and I will repeat it at the end of the course.

Conclusion

Masten showed that resilience comes from ordinary systems, Bonanno showed that steadiness after loss is common and healthy and Connor and Davidson gave me a way to measure where I stand. My relationships and problem solving are strong, while my self-regulation and community ties need work. Strengthening them now is my best preparation for what lies ahead with my father.

References

Bonanno, G. A. (2004). Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? American Psychologist, 59(1), 20-28. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.59.1.20

Connor, K. M., & Davidson, J. R. T. (2003). Development of a new resilience scale: The Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC). Depression and Anxiety, 18(2), 76-82. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.10113

Masten, A. S. (2001). Ordinary magic: Resilience processes in development. American Psychologist, 56(3), 227-238. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.3.227