Resilience and neurosciences to face current adversities

Resilience allows us to overcome difficulties, neuroscience teaches us how our mind works. Together we can learn from them, resilience and neuroscience, how our mind works in the face of a traumatic process.

1. Introduction

By its own definition, the subject makes it seem a bit confusing, based on its analysis and at the time of approaching it, by virtue of the fact that we have to understand that we are daily exposed to face a series of events that can confuse our lives, This monograph's approach will allow me to understand how my mind works when faced with a traumatic process, which identifies non-verbal signals, allowing people to adapt more easily to these situations that can drastically change our lives.

I will address the issue of resilience and duality neurosciences, allowing the reader to generate different alternative solutions to specific cases and allowing them at the same time to believe in their adaptive capacity to overcome adverse events in a more real and conscious way, understanding what things they want to know. and listen to the mind.

All throughout our lives we have experienced sadness, pain, anguish, misunderstanding, despair, heartbreak, disappointment, since these are just some of the characteristics of the same adversities to which we are exposed every day, neuroscience will allow me to understand how The mind works and how the mental gears work when facing an adversity, focusing it on the decision to know to solve without confusion.

2.- Resilience

2.1.- What is resilience

In psychology, the ability of a person to overcome traumatic circumstances such as the death of a loved one, an accident, etc. "Resilience enhances happiness"

Al Siebert describes resilience as “an essential skill in any workplace, in the company, in the family, public agencies, professional services and the self-employed, especially in times of confusion. It is important to know that when you are swept up in an adverse event, you will never do the same again. Either adapt, or succumb; it becomes a better person or a more bitter person; it comes out strengthened or weakened ”.

Stefan Vanistendael, in his book Resilience and Humor, defines resilience as; "The ability to grow when faced with very difficult circumstances."

Gloria Laengle: "It is the ability of human beings to overcome their difficulties and at the same time learn from their mistakes"

I consider then that resilience depends on the ability of each of the people to be able to face and get out of certain traumatic events and circumstances that mark people's lives, where you always have two options, face your fears, fears and confusions to get out Go ahead or dive deep into your thoughts and beliefs.

2.2.- Non-resilient causes

When changes exceed our adaptive capacity, the brain and body can suffer consequences at the level of physiological, psychological and behavioral functions. In resilient people, biological and genetic variables interact with environmental variables and learned behaviors to solve certain adverse situations. In other words, resilience is a complex function of biological systems, which operates at different levels of organization of living beings. It allows the body to adapt to permanent situations and changes, to maintain the homeostasis of the main biological functions and to make it possible for the system to return to a previous state of physiological and adaptive functioning, when a stressor causes damage or alteration.

This happens when people cannot or do not want to face and decide to suffer, accepting an emotional weakness related to hereditary factors and sometimes, it is related to the moods of people who let themselves fall and their organism adapts to this state. Lemark in 1809, expounded his explanatory theory and spoke of use and disuse:

The influence of the environment. Environmental changes cause new needs in organisms.

Law of use and disuse. To adapt to the modified environment, organisms must modify the degree of use of their organs. Continued use of an organ produces its growth (hence the phrase "the function creates the organ"). Prolonged disuse causes its decline.

Law of acquired characters. The modifications created by the different degrees of use of the organs are transmitted hereditarily.

This means that in the long run, highly used organs will develop a lot, while those that are not used will tend to disappear.

This is that if an organ is not used it atrophies and this is what happens with certain people who believe that the adversities they are going through have no alternative solutions and prefer to fall into disuse than face the adversities of current life.

Where family and friends can, as external agents, minimize the damage to reintegrate these people and as internal agents, we can refer to the reinforcement of self-esteem, self-worth and self-control to confront these disadvantages with greater security in times of crisis.

Fritz Thompson, who successfully faced very traumatic moments after being paraplegic after an accident, through this very inspiring talk, teaches us the seven habits that this life experience forced him to learn and through which his amazing resilience was forged:

2.3.- Consequences of resilience

Research carried out by Walter Bradford Cannon establishes that human beings, like animals, react to adverse situations in different ways, always putting them on alert, there are situations that we have to assume and not just run away from extreme danger, the thinking human being it has to adapt and react instantly where it considers that its life and safety are threatened, the nervous system works and reacts momentarily and immediately.

The contributions of Richard Lazarus, professor psychologist at the University of California at Berkeley, postulates the existence of two evaluative mechanisms involved in the response process to danger:

Primary evaluation, in which it is established whether the stimulus is dangerous or harmless. In this process, the amygdala (the set of neuron nuclei located inside the temporal lobes of the brain) is responsible for detecting, generating, maintaining and responding to fear and anger. Its function is fundamental for the survival of the individual. Secondary evaluation, which seeks to establish the availability of resources of the organism to face the threat.

Faced with such situations when not wanting or being able to face them, he prefers to leave them unresolved, they tend to sometimes generate stress, muscle pain, back pain, intestinal pain, fatigue or bad mood.

José Ramón Díaz Martínez describes some circumstances that people face and that put them to the test, where psychologists have forgotten and underestimated the capacity that some people have after a mishap or trauma, their ability to resist or rebuild, experiencing various changes in person:

Changes in oneself: when faced with a traumatic situation, many people develop an increase in confidence in their own abilities to face any adversity that may occur in the future. When faced with an event of this type, the individual creates a great confidence in himself through which he feels capable of facing anything. Change in interpersonal relationships: faced with traumatic events, people realize and value the help they receive from other people, thus we have thoughts of the type "Now I know who my true friends are." Changes in spirituality: When a person goes through a traumatic experience, many things go through his head, one of them is to appreciate the value of things that he previously took for granted without really valuing them, such as believing in the existence of a higher power in which could be supported.

Consequently, in the face of any traumatic experience, people, according to the above, have two options; They face the adverse process or learn to live with it by resisting, with the consequences that it produces in the body.

2.4.- Resilient approaches

The American Psychological Association presents ten tips for addressing resilience in a more satisfying way:

Build good relationships. Have and develop the ability to adapt to new social environments to live together and make new friends that allow us to develop empathy, feel the pain of others, to face and talk about disappointments, opposite feelings and emotions and even turn to our divinities to reinforce the resilience.

Practice support and self-help. Participate and encourage group work allowing to cooperate with those people who have not yet developed certain capacities or skills, helping to help.

Maintain a daily routine. The repetition of a task generates dexterity and ability for its development.

Take a break. Learn and teach how to clarify doubts and misunderstandings, which help to understand the true meaning of things by supporting resilience, it is always good to stop along the way and take time to reason the meaning of words, facts and consequences.

Teach yourself to take care of yourself. Highlight what is most important about ourselves and give ourselves time to have fun, disconnecting from adversity allows us to balance ourselves to face opposite events in a better way.

Move toward your goals. To develop better resilience, we must focus on simple and short goals and not on adversities, allowing ourselves to generate challenges to face them and once these goals are overcome, generate new ones.

Nurture a positive self-esteem. Fostering confidence and self-assurance will help us make the right decisions, identifying our strengths more than our weaknesses, while at the same time allowing us to laugh at our own mistakes.

Keep things in perspective and a positive attitude. An enthusiastic and purposeful attitude will help to see and analyze that adversities or failures are not forever since these challenges of uncertainty generate learning if they are faced.

Look for opportunities for self-discovery. You have to understand that adversities have already happened and you cannot return to how they were before and especially when facing difficult times, it is important to do an introspection to highlight how much we learned and that we can improve.

Accept that change is part of life. Being resilient helps us understand that adversities help us change to evolve and be better and understand that adversities never remain static where physical and emotional changes are part of daily growth and that in turn generate new learning.

In view of the above, we can understand that resilience is not a special gift for certain privileged people, but rather an acquired and developed capacity, where we are all resilient and is based on the behaviors, thoughts, actions, knowledge, understandings, aptitudes and attitudes that we learn during the development of our life.

To complement the concepts presented on this interesting topic of resilience, we invite you to listen to the following episode of Understand Your Mind, a podcast in which topics related to psychology are dealt with. Two basic questions are answered: How to be more resilient? and Can resilience be worked on?

3.- Neurosciences

We are now addressing an issue that has a scientific nature that helps us understand and know how our mind works to empower it when making our decisions.

3.1.- What is neuroscience

The Medical Dictionary defines it as "A set of disciplines that study the nervous system from different points of view: neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neurochemistry, neuropharmacology and neurology"

The Journal of Psychology and Mind describe it as “The set of scientific disciplines that investigate the function, structure and biochemistry of the nervous system, the effect of drugs and pathologies associated with the nervous system and the brain. The biological bases of human behavior are achieved through the systematic study carried out by Neurosciences ”.

The ISEP Blog considers it as “The set of scientific disciplines that study the nervous system, in order to get closer to understanding the mechanisms that regulate the control of nervous reactions and brain behavior. There are multiple disciplines such as neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, neuropharmacology, neurochemistry… etc. That is why neuroscience must be studied in an integrated and complementary way in order to understand the complexity of the brain ”.

We can say then that Neurosciences focus on the study, qualities, characteristics and behaviors of the brain, and how this organ influences the thinking and behavior of people, to better understand how the nervous system and the brain act.

3.2.- Structure of neuroscience

We will only address the most essential elements within the structure, functioning and development of the nervous system which are the sensory, conduct and behavior, which does not mean that they are the only ones.

3.2.1 Sensory Systems:

Sensory systems are highly specialized sets of organs that allow organisms to pick up a wide range of signals from the environment. This is essential so that these organisms can adapt to that environment.

But, for organisms it is equally essential to collect information from their internal environment, thereby effectively regulating their homeostasis. For these purposes there are also detector systems that represent different forms of receptors, with a different morphofunctional organization and that we can call sensitive receptors.

Both groups of receptors are linked to sensory / sensitive systems that present a similar plan of functional organization and both are capable of transforming the energy of the stimuli into the information language that organisms handle (chemical signals, local and propagated potentials). That is, both groups of receptors are capable of transducing information.

In each sensory or sensitive system the receptor cell is fundamental. It is the transducer cell, that is, the one that is capable of translating the energy of the stimulus into recognizable and manageable signals (information processing) by the body. Those signals are carried by specific nerve pathways (axon bundles) for each sensory modality to the nerve centers. In these, the arrival of that information causes the sensation and its subsequent analysis, through these nervous centers, will lead to perception. Sensation and perception are then, processes closely linked to the function of the receptors

3.2.2 Behavioral and Behavioral Systems:

Behavior is the behavior that each individual develops in the different environments with which they are faced. This characteristic depends on genetic factors and environmental factors that begin to exert their influence from uterine life and that take on great relevance after birth.

The behaviors are divided into instinctive and learned.

3.2.2.1 Instinctives:

Instinctives depend mainly on genetic heritage and their study has focused, then, on the so-called instincts. In a first stage and thanks to the work of K. Lorenz and N. Tinbergen, this type of behavior was investigated in a comparative way, from the point of view of mechanisms, ontogenesis and evolution. This focus on the study of behaviors generated a new science, ethology.

Among the instinctive behaviors are considered:

Sexual behavior Emotional behavior Motivations Behaviors related to homeostasis.

3.2.2.2 The Learned:

Learned behaviors have a high meaning not only of survival but also of social adaptability.

In these behaviors they have great importance:

Language Learning Memory.

Whose importance is given in ensuring the survival of the individual and the species.

Among the behaviors that ensure the survival of the individual are those related to the regulation of temperature, food and thirst. They are based on interactions between environmental stimuli and homeostatic mechanisms that regulate body temperature, glycemia, osmolarity and the volume of the internal environment.

Among the behaviors that ensure the survival of the species are those related to cognitive development and language

These structures that we consider the most relevant and that we can adapt and relate to Resilience, taking into account the characteristics and variables of each individual, where we can define following Skinner's recommendations:

Conduct.- It is a psychic event conditioned by internal and external factors. Behavior.- It is the maximum fulfillment of the person who acts in an Intentional way and free of all conditioning.

We can summarize that any relationship of social coexistence is translated into the conduct and behavior that we assume before different adverse situations, where the behavior can focus the state of mind of a person caused by internal factors, for example, what he ate in the Tomorrow he is generating a discomfort which affects his behavior. In the case of behavior, the person can express their ideas and thoughts free of all prejudice since "I am like this whether people like it or not."

The management and knowledge of the nervous system and the brain can more efficiently understand these sensations and emotions that allow people to face, analyze and take advantage of traumatic situations, in order to generate resilient solutions.

3.3.- Neuroscience and its application

Master César Andrés Monroy Fonseca, an expert in Neuroscience, establishes that this is “a comprehensive discipline, which focuses on the study of the human brain and serves as a tool for a company to apply it in the areas of sales, marketing and human resources. With this tool, studies and measurements can be carried out to answer questions regarding human behavior and reaction ”.

For Francisco Mota Turel “Neuroscience, in an increasingly accelerated way, is providing a new vision of man and the world that surrounds him and, with this, creating - perhaps it is too early to tell - a new cycle of culture. The key to this cycle is the man himself and his brain and the recognition that their existence comes from a long process of chance and readjustments. Neuroscience is unraveling, in the light of evolution, the mechanisms that make the brain work and thus getting to know how it perceives and "builds" the reality that surrounds us.

Consequently, neurosciences are devoted to the study of the brain and how it works, which can be applied to various current fields of study such as; neuromarketing, neurocoaching, neuro-sales. Allowing to be a valuable tool to guide the states of Resilience that allow, at the same time, to improve their learning outcomes based on the science of knowledge.

3.4.- Decision making

Every second of our lives we subject the brain to make decisions and these can be very simple such as what shirt to wear, what transport to take, but others are very complex that require a great effort, knowledge and evaluation when making a decision such as a city change.

Nestor Braidot, describes the decision-making process in Neurosciences and this occurs. “When very important decisions are made, the consumption of brain energy increases due to the demand that falls on the executive functions, which are what we need to solve problems of different complexity and choose one of two or more options. This causes an effect that is transferred to the rest of the body: we end up exhausted, as if we had carried out an activity that requires physical effort "

Consequently, knowing the functioning of our mind helps us when making any type of decision, so that these are the most successful possible, by virtue of the fact that some scholars of the subject such as Jurgen Klaric establish that only 15 percent of our Decisions when making a purchase are made with the conscious brain and the other 85 percent with the unconscious brain. This means that most people buy to buy and only a part of them know they want to buy.

4.- Conclusions

In preparation for future generations, it is important to know that no person, boy or girl, young people and adults, are exempt from experiencing adverse and traumatic moments throughout their lives and most of them go unnoticed and without knowing the term resilient and still achieve overcome and overcome these circumstances.

This will depend on the capacity, attitude, aptitude, knowledge, experiences and support of family and friends and the self-responsibility, self-esteem, self-worth, self-control and capacity of each one, to be able and want to face their own fears, fears and confusions and to be able to get out of certain traumatic events and circumstances, and not just dive into the depths of their thoughts and beliefs.

Consequently, before any traumatic experience, people have two options; face the adverse process or learn to live with it and resist, with the consequences that it produces both physical and emotional in the body.

We can say then that Neurosciences constitute a valuable tool, which allows us to know the qualities, characteristics and behaviors of the brain, and how this organ influences the thinking and behavior of people, to better understand how the nervous system acts and the brain and thus be able to face in a faster way the adverse processes that are part of our experiences, beliefs and development itself.

Since to confront in a conscious and safe way any traumatic or contrary process, neurosciences will help us to know and handle in a more adequate way our behaviors and behaviors derived from said bitter processes, where being resilient and aware, will teach you that it The only thing that limits and traps you are your beliefs and not your thoughts.

We can summarize that the Resilience and Neuroscience concepts must not be handled separately, but in parallel and with full knowledge of their benefits when facing an adverse situation. In addition to the fact that children, youth and adults at the time of knowing its meaning, I am convinced that they will be able to handle these sensations and emotions much more efficiently. By being able to face, assume and analyze any traumatic situation, with the self-help of themselves, their friends and family.

The proper management of resilience and neuroscience will help girls, boys, youth and adults, allowing them to be more and better prepared to face current adversities, by making more resilient decisions and solutions and at the same time managing, regulating, reason and understand what makes you want to know, listen and feel.

To end this interesting monograph, we invite you to carefully watch the following video in which Dr. Rafaela Santos, psychiatrist at the Spanish Institute of Resilience, teaches us how the brain works and its connection with resilience.

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