+A WORD ABOUT “RESILIENCY” – A CONCEPT MISAPPLIED AND MISUNDERSTOOD?

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Sunday, April 5, 2015.  Easter day among Christians.  A day of resurrection, of hope and healing.

Speaking of which, I feel very fortunate to have just received a comment on this blog today about this reader’s new blog entitled “Guiding Hope – Let Hope Rise” – and it is BEAUTIFUL!!

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My life is very intense these days.  I am not left with much inner time or space for writing here, so this will be a rather indirect and short post.  There is a picture on Facebook by EARTHWORKS’s Page I am posting the specific link to RIGHT HERE.  It shows two pictures of a California reservoir and lake side by side.  On the left is the full lake and on the right is a pitiful remnant of water as drought and fracking have dangerously depleted this water supply.

I notice that even those supporting the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) research and findings are still using the concept of “resilience” and “resiliency” AS IF someone knows what this means in reference to survival of severe early trauma.

Briefly, I am opposed to this concept.  Most simply put in today’s writings I refer to the reservoir image at the above link to Facebook if you can access it to illustrate what I deeply feel and believe.

Those people who come out of a dangerous, malicious, malevolent, abusive, traumatic early life – and without safe and secure attachment — in essence have little access throughout their lifespan to an array of essential resources that non-survivor “people” recognize and take for granted so that high ACE-score people’s reservoir matches the image of the pitiful depleted lake.

With those depleted essential resources survivors MAXIMIZE their lives!  Not only do we survive what should not be survived most often from birth but we exist as caring, compassionate, giving people who sacrifice greatly to help OTHER people – including those we love most dearly – MAXIMIZE their resources.

But we often do this by depleting our inner resources in ways we do not detect often until way, way down the road of our lives.  We give and give and love and love and help and help and sacrifice and sacrifice until finally  – if we are not very, very astute and careful – we make it to the ending stretches of our life being left with nearly next to NOTHING.

On top of this predicament very few low-ACE score (safely and securely attached people) EVER know who we are, what happened to us, what it took to survive, and how we sustain our ever-giving willingness to share even our scarce, rare and precious resources with others.

“Regular people” need to become willing to LISTEN to us.  Yes, the power being provided by the CDC ACE research is finally making its way as ripples into the awareness of the public on many important levels.  But, from my point of view, bandying about the concept of “resiliency” is not all that helpful to survivors.

We have done incredible things with our depleted reservoir of resources.  If that is not “resiliency” that we have had and developed and used heartily ALL of our lives, I can’t begin to imagine what “others” are thinking that concept means.  WE DO NOT NEED MORE RESILIENCY.  That is “blaming the victim” mentality.

What WE need, what everyone who is unjustly suffering needs – is for those people who DO have full reservoirs, plenty of resources, to wake up to the truth!!  In this world of haves vs have nots, in this world where terrible conditions are allowed to threaten infants and children and even their caregivers, what we have is ignorance that can foster bias and prejudice against those who suffer most.

Education is a must!  Many non-survivors have no tolerance when it comes to investigating what the suffering of others really is.  The truth makes those others too uncomfortable.  “Get some resiliency going, folks!  Toughen up, learn the truth, put your efforts into the work of truly healing this world!  Ignorance does not set you free, and getting “more and better resiliency” is NOT going to make a high ACE-score survivor have anything like a magically better life.  What we need is the added resource of YOU!”

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Here is our first book out in ebook format.  Click here to view or purchase –

Story Without Words:  How Did Child Abuse Break My Mother?

It lists for $2.99 and can be read by Amazon Prime customers without charge.

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NOTE:  I am stuck with a new version of the blog’s posting page that I do not like and cannot get out of.  It has refused to post or include my chosen tags:

adult attachment disorders, adult reactive attachment disorder, anxiety disorders, borderline mother, borderline personality disorder, brain development, child abuse, depression,derealization, disorganized disoriented insecure attachment disorder, dissociation,dissociative identity disorder, empathy, infant abuse, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),protective factors, PTSD, resiliency, resiliency factors, risk factors, shame