Resilience – Interdisciplinary Analysis and Future Competency

1. Understanding Resilience: A Dynamic Concept

From Static Trait to Dynamic Process

Resilience is not an innate personality trait, but the result of a dynamic adaptation and development process in the interplay between person and environment. This insight has far-reaching consequences: resilience is learnable and changeable, develops throughout life, and often grows through successfully mastered challenges – similar to how an immune system learns through survived infections.

Paradigm Shift: From Deficit to Resource Perspective

Resilience research marks a fundamental shift in perspective in psychology. Instead of only asking "Why do some become ill?", it focuses on the question: "Why do some stay healthy, despite equal stress?"

This salutogenic perspective was significantly shaped by Aaron Antonovsky's studies on Holocaust survivors – about 29% of the women examined remained mentally and physically healthy despite concentration camp experiences. This observation led to systematic research on protective factors and coping resources.

2. The Architecture of Resilience: Multi-Level Model

Biopsychosocial Interaction

Modern resilience research works with a multi-level model that integrates biological, psychological, and social factors. What matters is not the isolated consideration of individual elements, but their interaction: genetic dispositions interact with life experiences, neurobiological processes are modulated by social support, individual coping strategies unfold in cultural contexts.

Important: Protective factors can overcompensate for risk factors such as violence, neglect, or chronic stress – the weight of protective factors is decisive, not merely the absence of risks.

Neurobiological Foundation

Neuroscience shows: resilience is not an abstract concept but measurable in the body. Resilient people exhibit specific physiological patterns:

• Their HPA axis regulates stress hormones more efficiently
• The prefrontal cortex dampens amygdala activity more effectively
• They show lower inflammation markers in blood
• Increased neuroplasticity enables learning from crises

This underscores: resilience promotion must also consider physical aspects such as exercise, sleep, and nutrition.

3. Lifelong Development: Critical Phases and Intervention Windows

Childhood Foundations: The Attachment Paradox

The most important source of childhood resilience is stable, loving relationships with caregivers. But crucial is an apparent paradox: children need both protection and the opportunity to fail.

Overprotected children often develop less resilience than those who, within a secure framework, may tackle their own challenges. Emmy Werner's Kauai study showed: often a single consistently available caregiver made the difference between vulnerable and resilient developmental trajectories – even under adverse conditions.

Resilience in Adulthood: Lifelong Plasticity

For long, resilience was considered largely fixed in childhood. Today we know: it remains a lifelong, dynamic process. Even in adulthood, protective factors can be learned and strengthened.

Core Dimensions of Adult Resilience:

• Social embeddedness: Sustainable networks in various life areas – ideally at least three reliable contacts
• Active coping: Problem-oriented coping, physical activity, relaxation techniques
• Cognitive flexibility: Interpreting stressors as challenges rather than threats
• Adaptive adjustment: Mental flexibility enables post-traumatic growth

4. Resilience in Prevention and Crisis Management

Trauma: Vulnerability and Healing

Resilience does not mean immunity to trauma. Even highly resilient people can be psychologically injured by extreme stress. However, research shows: resilient people often recover faster and develop long-term disorders like PTSD less frequently.

Three factors are decisive: a repertoire of coping strategies (problem-solving, emotion regulation, meaning-making), social support as buffer, and maintaining self-efficacy.

Addiction: Resilience as "Psychological Immune System"

Addiction development and recovery strongly depend on available coping resources. Resilient people tend to have better coping strategies and turn to substances less frequently under stress.

• Prevention: Life skills programs teach problem-solving abilities, stress management, and social competencies – especially important for children from addiction families
• Therapy: Resource-oriented approaches focus on strengths, teach constructive coping strategies, and help manage relapses without self-deprecation

Pandemic and Collective Trial: COVID-19 as Case Study

The COVID-19 pandemic offered a global natural experiment for collective resilience. Societies that could draw on strong social cohesion, trustworthy institutions, and adaptive governance structures tended to manage the crisis better.

At the same time, it showed: long-term isolation, uncertainty, and socioeconomic stress led to a dramatic increase in mental health problems – especially among adolescents. WHO data documents a 25% increase in anxiety disorders and depression in the first pandemic year.

This experience underscores: Individual and collective resilience are intertwined. Societies need resilient systems to give individual resilience any space at all – and vice versa.

5. Resilience and Digital Society: New Challenges

Information Overload and Digital Stress

Digital transformation creates specific demands on resilience. Information overflow, permanent availability, and algorithmically curated realities require new coping strategies.

Resilience in digital society means: ability for selective attention, conscious handling of digital media, and maintaining analog relationship spaces.

Social Comparison and Algorithmic Uncertainty

Social media intensifies social comparison processes and can undermine self-worth – especially among adolescents. At the same time, algorithmic systems create new forms of uncertainty and loss of control (e.g., in job markets through AI-based selection processes).

Digital Resilience Literacy as Independent Field of Action

Cultivating digital resilience deserves special attention as a strategic intervention field:

The challenge lies in the balance between digital networking and real connection.

6. From Individual to Collective Resilience

Community Resilience

Resilience is not limited to individuals. Community resilience refers to the ability of communities, groups, or societies to collectively manage crises.

Core characteristics of resilient communities are: social cohesion, adaptive governance structures, decentralized problem-solving capacities, and a "progressive sense of we" – not from nostalgic retrospection, but from jointly shaping the future.

System Resilience: Infrastructures of Resistance

Resilient societies need resilient systems: health systems that can buffer overload; educational institutions that respond adaptively to crises; administrations that remain capable of acting under uncertainty; media structures that maintain trust.

The COVID-19 pandemic, energy crisis, and climate change reveal: System fragility limits individual resilience. People can be as resilient as they want – when supply systems collapse, their coping resources are exhausted.

Cultural Diversity and Context-Sensitive Approaches

Resilience is a universal concept but manifests culturally differently. What counts as resilient in Western societies – such as individual problem-solving ability or direct emotional expression – appears different in collectivist cultures: there, embedding in community, fulfilling social roles, and preserving harmony take center stage.

Michael Ungar's socio-ecological understanding of resilience emphasizes: resilience emerges in the interaction between person and culturally shaped environment. What counts as successful adaptation depends on societal expectations.

For practice this means: resilience promotion must be culturally adapted – especially when supporting refugees, migrants, or in transnational contexts.

7. Practical Resilience Promotion: Evidence-Based Approaches

Core Exercises for Daily Life

Resilience training follows a simple principle: continuous practice instead of one-time intervention. Like physical fitness, psychological resistance also needs regular training.

Proven Practices:

• Cultivating positive experiences: A gratitude or happiness journal – noting three positive moments daily – anchors positivity in memory and promotes optimistic basic attitude
• Making resources conscious: The "resilience sources" exercise uses biographical reflection: create a life timeline, mark mastered crises, and identify protective factors at the time (people, qualities, strategies)
• Investing in relationships: Consciously spend time with people who do you good – real personal contact instead of just digital communication. Helping others strengthens one's own resilience
• Setting boundaries: "Learning to say no" and perceiving own needs protects against overload
• Activating the body: Exercise biologically breaks down stress hormones; even daily walks show measurable effects

Therapeutic and Organizational Approaches

Structured programs integrate cognitive behavioral techniques (reframing negative thoughts), mindfulness exercises (self-awareness), and social competence training.

In organizations, resilience promotion means: establishing error-friendly culture, enabling participation, building mentoring structures, and creating reflection spaces. Resilient organizations are characterized by psychological safety – employees can express uncertainties without fearing sanctions.

8. Implications for the Alexander Forum: Resilience as Strategic Guiding Principle

Bridge Function: Reflection and Resilience

For a forum that carries resilience AND reflection in its name, their connection is central:

• Reflection enables resilience through making resources conscious, learning from crises, and identifying protective and risk factors
• Resilience enables reflection: psychological stability creates space for constructive self-reflection; distance from stressors enables analysis; confidence promotes openness to new perspectives

Interdisciplinary Think & Do Tank: From Knowledge to Action

As a progressive, interdisciplinary Think & Do Tank, the Alexander Forum for Reflection & Resilience can take a pioneering role:

• Knowledge integration: Bringing together biological, psychological, social, and technological perspectives
• Practice orientation: Not just researching resilience, but developing, testing, and scaling interventions
• Policy advice: Evidence-based recommendations for resilient systems (health, education, infrastructure)

Core Fields of Action

9. Resilience Agenda 2030: Five Guiding Theses

1. Resilience as educational mandate – systematically anchor, not as add-on
2. System resilience before efficiency optimization – strategic redundancy instead of fragility
3. Collective before individualization – strengthen communities and structures
4. Digital resilience as cultural technique – sovereignty in the information age
5. Culturally sensitive globalization – local, culturally appropriate responses

Sources & Further Materials

Core Scientific Foundations

• Antonovsky, A. (1987). Unraveling the Mystery of Health: How People Manage Stress and Stay Well. Jossey-Bass.
• Bonanno, G. A. (2004). Loss, trauma, and human resilience. American Psychologist, 59(1), 20–28.
• Southwick, S. M., et al. (2014). Resilience definitions, theory, and challenges. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 5, 25338.
• Feder, A., Nestler, E. J., & Charney, D. S. (2009). Psychobiology and molecular genetics of resilience. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 446–457.
• Ungar, M. (2011). The social ecology of resilience. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 81(1), 1–17.
• Werner, E. E., & Smith, R. S. (1992). Overcoming the Odds: High-Risk Children from Birth to Adulthood. Cornell University Press.
• World Health Organization (2022). World Mental Health Report: Transforming Mental Health for All.

Complete Dossier as PDF

The complete foundation dossier with all references, endnotes, and in-depth analyses is available as PDF:

License: CC BY-NC 4.0 (non-commercial) · Citation: Alexander Forum for Reflection & Resilience (2025). Resilience – Interdisciplinary Analysis and Future Competency. Vienna. Version 1.1.