Resilience Factor 9: Flexibility

Michelle

The story of resilience that I think of almost mimics Amy Purdy’s story. It is the story of Andre Kajlich who is one of my husband’s good friends since elementary school. He suffered an injury just after college when he was struck by a subway train in Prague. He lost both of his legs, one at the hip and the other just below that. Although he hit a very dark period of his life, being a prior athlete, he wasn’t sure how he would pick up the pieces with not legs. He has amazing athleticism and just last spring passed me while riding his hand cycle on the Burke Gilman trail and left me in the dust. With repeated failures, he has been both flexible and creative. Now at 40 years old, he has set out to attain goals higher than anyone I know and to raise awareness and hope for other amputees. His non-profit is called Lowest-Highest and the goal is to go from the lowest point on every continent to the highest point. Upon hearing this my eyes were wide open… how could he accomplish this? Well, my husband got to witness the “how” first hand when Andre attempted his first continent last winter. There were innumerable obstacles this group had to endure including transportation issues once arriving in Argentina (really they didn’t have the transportation quite figured out before they left the US but that is another story). So, they started at the lowest point which was Valdes Peninsula, Argentina spent weeks riding their bikes (Andre uses a recumbent hand cycle) before ending up at the base of Mt. Aconcagua, Argentina (the tallest mountain in South America, second tallest in the world aside from Everest). From there, Andre and his group hiked through dust storms and foul weather to the base camp and beyond. Andre alternated between using his “off-road” wheelchair and crawling. Can you imagine crawling up a mountain in a dust storm? Once they got to base camp they had to acclimate to the altitude and do several practice climbs in the coming days. Andre spent his time at base camp with food poisoning one day and also he had to mend his clothing. They don’t quite make hiking pants for men with no legs to crawl and drag in. So, Andre would have to hand sew new padding into his pants while he was at camp. Andre’s story goes on and on with accounts of cognitive and flexibility.

https://www.andrekajlich.com/

Rebekah

Charles grew up in Oakland, CA in the 1980s to an addict mother and pimp father. The ages of 7 to 10 years old were the most traumatic for him, finding his mother's boyfriend dead, learning his dad was incarcerated in prison and later killed there, and his mothers own stints in jail while living with his grandmother following eviction from the projects. Despite all this, he says he has overcame and went on to graduate from college, a 2 decade corporate career, and to launching his own business. He goes on to describe why he and others like him succeed when others fail and attributes it to resilience by adapting to change and coping. "Some change in circumstances must have happen". He says he learned this by going through and escaping his own personal hell using sometimes irrational hope in the future and making each moment better than the next. During the course of his talk he uses humor to connect with the crowd and illustrates that trauma and stress didn't stop when he was a kid but continued up until the week of his very talk on resilience. He uses cognitive flexibility to use perspective and attitude to have power over our own resilience and ability to adapt to situations life throws at us and the difference between a history of being a victim and victimhood as a state of mind. He has gone on to use what he's learned and molded his purpose in life to helping others build resilience through his company The Audacity Firm (audacityfirm.com).

https://youtu.be/3qELiw_1Ddg

Josh

The first story that came to me when I read the prompt for this topic was the story of my cousin, S. When I was 16, S's brother, my other cousin, C, shot and killed himself in his car. S was working as a Registered Nurse at the time and S was the last person C called before he killed himself, an hour or so later. S felt deep guilt, deep shame, and found that he did not have the family support system he thought he did. His wife at the time refused tot talk about it. His parents, my Aunt and Uncle, are, I am sad to say, noticeably cold people emotionally. And S felt there was a stigma on therapy, having come from a rural background and having been told his whole life that therapy is for the weak and that if something is wrong you should be able to solve it yourself or you're a failure. He found his grief overwhelming. And finding he had nowhere to turn he began diverting opioids from his work. He was, of course, caught, fired, lost his license, and was then quickly divorced and quickly rejected by his immediate family. After he spent years trying to figure out how to deal with his losses and grief, he literally arrived on my doorstep looking for a place to stay. My wife and I let him catch his breath for a few weeks and, because of a certain amount of shared experience, started talking about my going to nursing school, his loss, his grief. Afterwards he left and we didn't hear anything from him for years. But during that time he went to rehab, started long-haul trucking, found a therapist, and fell in love with a wonderful woman who had also gone through similar things. He is now a professor of sociology at a college on the eastern side of the state. He's remarried. His relationship with his children from his first marriage is improving. When he decided it was time to face his past he struggled, and still does, but was able to move through his pain and shame. He was mentally flexible enough to reject the way he was raised and the stigma on reaching out for help. He's an inspiration to me to this day.

Helen

Flexibility reminds me the Wenchuan earthquake (2008) survivor Liaozhi who is well-known dancer with two prosthetic legs. Her both legs below the knee were amputated because of over 33 hours compression from the collapsed building. She is a good example of resilient people who exhibit emotional and cognitive flexibility. It took her years’ practice to become a famous dancer. This not only fulfilled her dream, but also brought her an opportunity to know and marry the young guy – her husband. The earthquake took her legs away but did not take her strength and spirit away. Her dances represent the story of her resilience that demonstrate her cognitive and emotional flexibility through the process of acceptance, reappraisal, dealing with failure, and generating humor.

South China Morning Post (2020, June, 11). Chinese disabled earthquake survivor Liao Zhi dances to encourage people. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6Yl-buJ-z0.

Yasmin

At my previous job and before becoming a nurse, I worked at a clinic. During this time, I worked with many physicians and advanced practice providers. The staff and providers were generally a good group to work with, but there was one particular physician who really stood out to me. He stood out to me because he was so incredibly patient, kind, approachable, intelligent, and funny to both the staff and the patients. I remember thinking that I admire this person and wish to have those same qualities. I remember I reached out to this physician and asked for advise when I was looking to apply to nursing school. He demonstrated those same qualities and took the time to listen and provide advice. Fast forward to when I was applying for my first nursing job and fresh out of nursing school, I asked this individual for a reference letter for my job application. He was kind and extremely helpful and supportive of me in my career journey. Fast forward some years after I no longer work with this individual, I found out that he has been suddenly diagnosed with cancer through social media. It broke my heart when I learned about his unexpected and tough path, and his small chance of survival. It made me think: but why him? Even still, I see his family members posting videos of him singing and dancing in his hospital room, showing that he is still his kind, friendly, and humorous self. This individual shows to me that he has truly followed the four steps of cognitive and emotional flexibility: acceptance, reappraisal, dealing with failure, and still generating humor! To this day, I admire him and how he has been handling this new and incredibly tough challenge in his life.

Roselyn

This is an excerpt of one of the stories told by World Vision. Santiago, a 14 year old boy, experienced and survived a typhoon that took away his family’s home. His story showed how despite the disaster, him and his family were able to draw a sense of gratitude out of it.

Santiago’s survival story

Santiago is 14 and has four siblings: E.J., Amiel, Princess, and Gerardo. He’s partial to 4-year-old Princess, his only sister. When she smiles, her eyes light up. Princess feels closest to Santiago too.

“I love him because he always takes care of me and he feeds me,” she says.

When Typhoon Haima bore down on the Philippines, Santiago’s family went to his grandparents’ house. But when the storm worsened, “My father and my grandfather had to destroy the plywood at the back of his house for us to escape,” Santiago says.

“When we checked on our house the following day, I could no longer see a trace of it,” he says. “Our things were soaked in floodwater, my books and school materials all destroyed.”

Recalling their narrow escape and their losses, Santiago breaks down and cries.

But three days after Super Typhoon Haima ravaged Northern Luzon, relief goods arrived in Solana.

Families who had lost almost everything, like Santiago’s, received kitchen sets, blankets, mosquito nets, and hygiene kits containing toothbrushes, toothpaste, laundry and bath soap.

“We’ve seen the best of people’s generosity in the past days,” Santiago’s mother, Elena, tells me. “My husband’s boss took us into their home, asking nothing in return; while you, from Manila, came to give us relief goods.”

Her family was the first to receive relief items in their community.

It was a joy for me to follow them from the World Vision distribution site to the place where they are staying. Princess excitedly opened boxes while other family members gathered around to see what they had received.

Were they happy? Yes, they were. Was I happy? Oh yes.

Moments like this are a highlight of my work. While there’s no getting used to emergency communications, that’s a good thing. It will always be a mix of pain and joy, sadness and gratitude.

Malujo, Joy, (April 2016) 3 Survival Stories from the Worst Disaster You Never Heard About. World Vision. www.worldvision.org/disaster-relief-news-stories/survival-stories-worst-disaster-you-never-heard-about

Crista

Hayley Arceneaux suffered from osteosarcoma when she was ten years old. She survived cancer and worked to become a physician assistant motivated from her with cancer as a child. She is about to become one of the youngest people to ever go into space on SpaceX's first private flight.

Sol

David Duncan discusses how several individuals faced trauma and overcame it - he discusses elements of behavior and personality that help build resilience. In the examples he gives, he includes being able to reexamine the contexts and situations that originally caused the trauma and reframing them and recreating positive experiences.

Duncan, D. (2018, March). Helping Survivors of Trauma Overcome [video]. TEDxMissouriS&T. https://www.ted.com/talks/david_duncan_helping_survivors_of_trauma_overcome