Liana Chaouli SITTING SOMEWHERE ON a hard time getting going DESIGNED a self-invented spectrum most days. Little Liana between image consul- wanted only to go to the tant and psychotherapist, park and play with other FOR Liana Chaouli dresses kids. Pleading with her people for a living, inside mother to get out of bed, and out. With a soft voice she’d go to her mother’s SUCCESS and a firm eye, she strips closet, pull on something Resilience is in human nature. off “the armor people hide until the hanger broke, lay behind” and sends them the dress on the bed, along Persevering through adversity is not out into the world men- with shoes and a scarf, a bug in our software but a feature tally freer, more confident, trying to “get my mother and a lot better looking. back.” And so, even before of the hardware. “I smuggle consciousness she had the words, Chaouli BY NOAM SHPANCER, PH.D. into people’s lives one knew: “If it’s to be, it’s up garment at a time,” she to me,” a principle that still says. It isn’t just the way guides her life. “My mother she saves other people. was my first client,” is how It’s how she came to save Chaouli charitably puts it. RE YOU FEELING herself. Born in Hamburg, Little Liana learned to size vulnerable? If so, you’re Germany, 61 years ago up people's mood quickly, certainly not alone. One to a father whose plans because she never knew thing the current coro- to attend the Sorbonne when her mother would navirus pandemic has were interrupted by a hit her. Her father taught done is to heighten our Resilience is the rule, death in the family back her things too—like how to sense of vulnerability. home in Iraq and a mother lay electrical lines. "He also Suddenly we are all too who was his wealthy first taught me that everything A aware of how fragile not the exception. We are cousin, imported to help I carry in my heart and in everything is—our health, our jobs, our insti- him start a family, Chaouli my head, no one can ever tutions, our way of life. ¶ The pandemic has was engaged at 15, mar- take from me. I have no forced us to contemplate difficult and scary designed to overcome, ried at 16, pregnant by 17. problem plucking myself eventualities. In doing so, it has wormed its The man turned out to be out of any situation with- way into a deep groove in our psychological emotionally and physi- out support and starting architecture. We are, it turns out, biologically not to succumb. cally abusive, especially something from nothing. predisposed to notice threats and to home in whenever others compli- I trust my willingness to on trouble. The brain’s so-called negativity mented her. She escaped go into the unknown.” At bias has evolved because to our evolution- the marriage, but needed 25, Chaouli moved herself ary ancestors the costs of missing a threat (I a way to support herself and her daughter to Los failed to notice the approaching predator) and her daughter. At 22, Angeles, where she now were higher than the costs of a false alarm (I having taught herself six runs Image Therapists thought it was a predator, but it wasn’t). languages, she became a International, showing In a dangerous environment, the vigilant survive. And translator, guiding visit- clients from all over the while technological and medical advances have made our ing officials around the world how to present modern environment markedly safer than our ancestors’ bustling German port. themselves and be more was, our brains have retained the old wiring. She didn’t take them just authentic. “Your closet is Even without a global pandemic to prime our sense of to cultural sites, she took the vault that holds your dread, the supply of bad news in our time of information them shopping as well. second skin. For most overload is incessant, and thus our feelings of vulnerability Chaouli’s education in people it’s a trash can they are intensified. To be sure, such feelings are not without the art of dressing began shove things into. I seek justification. The world holds danger; we are indeed quite early. Her mother, likely people’s greatness. That’s vulnerable to many threats. And, as the pandemic has re- severely depressed and what makes me a good minded us, the sense of control we labor to cultivate in our with “heart trouble,” had image therapist.” day-to-day lives is, to a meaningful extent, illusory. Photograph by AMANDA FRIEDMAN September/October 2020 I Psychology Today I 45 Yet our vulnerability doesn’t tell the whole story. In fact, psychological research over the last few decades has shown convincingly that our default mode under adverse Marie Mokosso Nutter conditions is not vulnerability but resilience. The term WAS IT MURDER? A snake 72 hours, the two were on resilience refers to the experience of undergoing adversity bite? A fall? Disorientation their way. They met with without suffering debilitating effects. The psychologists by dehydration? Marie the country’s president Ann Masten and Norman Garmezy, pioneers in the study Mokosso Nutter, 40, will but refused a palace of resilience, defined it as “the process of, capacity for, or never know how her twin visit because the possi- outcome of successful adaptation despite challenging or brother died the day—or bility of Mark's survival threatening circumstances.” For example, resilience is at the day after, or the day diminished with every play when at-risk children achieve school success, when after that—he went hiking second. Christmas was people maintain their poise in an emergency, or when in the vast and desolate no different from the days survivors heal from trauma. Brandberg Massif hug- around it—too long, too Resilience is in our nature. The central processes ging the western coast of hot, too hard, too mission- underlying human existence—think pregnancy, child Namibia. All she knows driven for Nutter to feel development, parenting—are what psychologists call is that Mark Mokosso, anything but exhaustion. “well-buffered processes.” That is, they are designed to a fit and experienced Only on the long flight succeed and are difficult to disrupt, derail, or decimate. hiker, never made it to home did the pain kick This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective: Sur- the next destination on in, compounded by guilt vival on earth is hard. If our basic processes were fragile his vacation in Africa in and shame. “We couldn’t and easily disrupted, our species would have devolved mid-December 2017. When even bring him back home into extinction. she first got the call, she for a real funeral.” The Psychological research has demonstrated repeat- wasn’t overly worried. bizarre circumstances of edly the human tendency toward resilience. For example, “My brother has military the death had the effect of Lisa Butler of Stanford University and her colleagues fol- training, he is athletically emotionally isolating her lowed over 1,200 individuals for six months after the 9/11 built, and he often goes in grief. And then there attacks, measuring changes in their overall psychological on rigorous hikes on solo was the sheer magnitude well-being, levels of distress and emotional suppression, trips to foreign countries. of the loss. The twin bond and cognitive outlook (positive or negative worldview). My initial reaction: Give is hard to describe. It is an The researchers found that most of those exposed, it a day or two, he’ll show understanding that lies directly or indirectly, to the collective trauma were not up.” But Nutter is a pediat- beyond the reach of words Those who are good at keeping severely traumatized, instead exhibiting “remarkable ric operating room nurse, because it came before resilience.” Another post-9/11 study tracked a sample and she began calculat- words. She’s learned to their cool, keeping their friends, of over 2,700 New Yorkers for six months following the ing how long a person live without answers. Nut- attack, observing resilience (defined as the absence of any could live in mountainous ter had done some yoga PTSD symptoms) in over 65 percent of the sample. conditions without water. before but afterwards and keeping their word are more Summarizing decades of research on resilience in She and her older brother discovered healing proper- children, Ann Masten, in a widely cited 2001 article in made contact with the ties she'd never realized likely to survive adversity. American Psychologist titled “Ordinary Magic,” noted: U.S Embassy in Namibia, it had. “It’s really about “The most surprising conclusion emerging from studies where military search how you interact with of these children is the ordinariness of resilience. An ex- teams and experienced yourself.” It softens the amination of converging findings…suggests that resilience trackers were on the case. uncertainty, too: ”You’re is common and that it usually arises from the normative Despite the risks and the able to figure out just what functions of human adaptational systems.” unlikelihood of finding you can appreciate in each Persevering through adversity is not a bug in our Mark in difficult terrain in moment and direct your software but a feature of the hardware, yet we may fail a foreign country where perspective. And once you to readily appreciate this truth for two main reasons. local experts were com- start looking for at least First, we are continuously bombarded with bad news that ing up with nothing, the one positive, it trains the activates our negativity bias and inflames our anxieties.