What Makes People Resilient? Feeling Loved As A Child

Not every human trait is primarily genetic, and human resilience to psychological stresses (that could otherwise cause post-traumatic stress disorder, a.k.a. PTSD, for example) appears to be largely a matter of nurture. 

An individual’s resilience is dictated by a combination of genetics, personal history, environment and situational context. So far, research has found the genetic part to be relatively small.

“The way I think about it is that there are temperamental or personality characteristics that are genetically influenced, like risk-taking, or whether you’re an introvert or extrovert,” said Karestan Koenen, professor of psychiatric epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 

Professor Koenen studies how genes shape our risk of post-traumatic stress disorder. “We all know people that are just very even-tempered,” she said. “Some of that is simply how we’re built physiologically.” Yet it isn’t true that some people are born more resilient than others, said Professor Koenen, “That’s because almost any trait can be a positive or negative, depending on the situation.”

Far more important, it seems, is an individual’s history.

The most significant determinant of resilience — noted in nearly every review or study of resilience in the last 50 years — is the quality of our close personal relationships, especially with parents and primary caregivers. Early attachments to parents play a crucial, lifelong role in human adaptation.

“How loved you felt as a child is a great predictor of how you manage all kinds of difficult situations later in life,” said Bessel van der Kolk, a professor of psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine who has been researching post-traumatic stress since the 1970s.

From the New York Times.