It was while watching a news report in the aftermath of a devastating hurricane off the Florida coast a fews years back, that a light bulb illuminated for Dr. Michael Ungar.
A global leader on social and psychological resilience, Ungar, also a family therapist, admitted to being quite struck. He shared his revelation during an interview with Lianne Castelino of Where Parents Talk.
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Welcome to where parents talk. My name is Lianne Castelino. Our guest today is a globally renowned researcher in the area of social and psychological resilience. Dr. Michael Ungar is Canada Research Chair and Child Family and Community Resilience. He’s a family therapist and director of the resilience research center at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Dr. Unger has authored more than a dozen books on resilience. His latest book is called the limits of resilience, when to persevere, when to change and when to quit. Dr. Unger is also a father of five. And he joins us today from just outside Toronto. Thank you so much for being here.
Oh, real pleasure. Thank you.
You’ve been on the frontlines of resilience research. Now for decades, resilience itself seemingly has really become part of our vernacular in the last few years, you could say, what has led to it becoming such a buzzword that it currently is?
I think what people have done is they’ve been searching for a balance to our conversation about trauma. As you know, given world circumstances were there, we’re talking about refugees, the climate crisis, we’re talking about our greater awareness of racism, a greater awareness of domestic violence, these are all issues, I think, that have focused on the on, if you will, the pathology that disorders in our society. But with that, I think has also come this desire to say, well, well, what’s next? How do we protect ourselves from some of those tragic moments? And in fact, you know, I defer to folks, you know, George banana uses the phrase, potentially traumatizing event, which I think opens up a conversation that says, you know, just because we’re exposed to these things, doesn’t mean that within that realm of human experience it, it’s always debilitating for a long period of time. And that, you know, within us, we have these with built in protective mechanisms, that all kinds of different systemic levels, but we also live inside communities and cultures. That, you know, there are things that lift us up and get us through a crisis. And I think that’s been the conversation that people are also looking for.
So along those lines, then when you talk about trauma, and certainly we’re exposed to more of that today than we ever have been, it seems like anyway, are we misusing or abusing the word resilience in your estimation? Well,
when something becomes popular, you love it, because you know that the conversations happening. But with that is also comes some definitional slippage, if you will, the limits of resilience actually started with, I mean, I think the idea of being there in my mind, but when I really put pen to paper or computer, I guess, typed it was after hearing about the after effects of one of the hurricanes that devastated the Florida coastline. I mean, this is horrific, to any community to experience that sort of dramatic onslaught from nature. And we have them where I live in Halifax as well. But it was the way the the commentator on the newscast kind of talked about that, you know, the folks who have very expensive, very expensive homes, right, right on the sand practically on the sandbars right next to the ocean. And he said, you know, these communities are resilient, because people will rebuild. And I thought to myself, whoa, have we misunderstood that concept, because resilience wasn’t about, in a sense, just doing the same thing over and over again, resilience really refers to a system of learning of growth and adaptation, and ultimately transformation as well. And so my advice to that community, where people were rebuilding their homes, exactly in the same space that the hurricane had wiped them out, was that that’s not resilience. That’s in fact, perhaps a sign of vulnerability or persistence, when more information should have maybe informed people that look like it or not deny if you want, our climate is dramatically changing. And those coastal communities are going to be in a much more, you know, in dangerous state for the coming decades. So that rebuilding maybe a little more inland, or, you know, changing our lifestyle slightly to accommodate that is this is the actual resilience. Simply rebuilding on the floodplain, where your home is going to be devastated yet again, is probably not a sign of resilience, but in fact, maybe, you know, sort of distorted thinking or you know, that that somehow you’re impervious and if Like there is this kind of toxic positivity, which has taken over the field of resilience, where we just overestimate our ability to bounce back, when in fact, what we fail to see is that our capacity to recover or bounce back is tied up with other systems, as well. And that’s where the field of resilience actually is going. Now,
it’s such an interesting example that you provide, because, you know, we hear those similar examples all the time these days. Right. And so, the more you say, it doesn’t make it more, right. But it’s just a really interesting example. I’m curious, Dr. Ungar, as a family therapist, you know, in your clinical practice, what have you seen in terms of trends with the families, the children, the parents that you are dealing with, as it relates to how they address resilience in their own homes as parents or not.
So this is you can take almost exactly the same parallel of so a family where they sometimes forget that, you know, it’s a dynamic between, we need the right amount of risk in our lives, and we need the right solutions. So it somewhat differently, but we also see now in families, I see this a common this over protective parenting, where we have taken away all risk exposure to our kids, we’re making our every decision for our child. And what that’s done is that’s removed the opportunity for children to again to learn if you know, if those homeowners had to, in a sense, learn from the experience, we learned, we need our children to also integrate into their lives a certain amount of I don’t know if this is a family oriented show, but can I use the four letter F word, because it’s a it’s a, it’s the F bomb, and when it comes up to you, because we need children to fail. There, I said it, you know, that that’s the thing, we occasionally need our children to actually fail and integrate that learning, especially when we’re available to, you know, scaffold the experience and build them up again, with the skill set, they need to overcome the problem. So what I’m really what we’re really getting at from a family point of view also is integrating learning, helping children, you know, develop the skills and and you know, that they need to cope with future stressors so that we can address the fact that what we’re seeing is this huge spike in anxiety disorders and depression amongst our children. And part of that has to be attributed not not just to the lingering after effects of COVID and social isolation. But I do think there’s also something about how we’re parenting are we, you know, giving kids the building blocks, they need to develop real resilience, that ability to, you know, to integrate experience, learn from mistakes, move forward and develop new coping strategies? And sadly, I don’t know, if we’re doing that enough.
What should we be doing more than as parents? Well, I
think what we should be doing with kids, of course, is giving them opportunities to have age appropriate stress in their lives. So you know, when the when the eight year old, we’re taking them to, you know, soccer practice or something? Why are we packing? Their their bag? Why aren’t you know what, why are we asking them to sort of get their kit together? Why aren’t we giving them genuine responsibilities with a pet in the home? Why aren’t we asking them to, you know, when, when a 13 year old says, you know, something’s happened with my teacher? Why aren’t we helping them to, you know, coaching them on what to say, but letting them deal with the teacher? Why, you know, in a sense, why aren’t we giving our kids the building blocks, so that they can move easier towards independence and eventually cope well with some of the stressors that they’re bound to occur later in their lives? It’s
interesting, because helicopter parenting and that protective parenting that you’re talking about, just seems to be continuing to trend upwards. I’m not a researcher. But, and then you add all the traumas that you just discussed and outlined with respect to, you know, the pandemic, the global epidemic of youth mental health and mental health in general, you know, war, geopolitical instability and volatility, economic uncertainty, there’s a litany of things for all of us to worry about, and then to talk about being resilient for or as a result of, so why are we doing this as parents still do you think?
Well, I think it’s a little bit from the parents I talked to, it’s often about our own insecurities, that somehow we’re just so set on our child, you know, being an extension of us and being successful, that we forget that actually, you know, for all of that mania that we’re putting on our children, we might be missing the key thing that they actually need, which is to develop the competencies that they need to be, you know, caring contributors to their communities and good citizens. And that comes with, you know, making them sometimes feel uncomfortable. I think we’ve as parents, I think we’ve kind of said, well, I don’t want to feel uncomfortable, and I certainly don’t want my child to ever feel that way. But this comes back to rather than focusing on the long term objective of a child that understands and experiences resilience, what we’re so focused on is the moment of you know, that, that that immediate moment where, oh my gosh, we don’t want them to ever have a threat to their self esteem. But actually, we want them to have threats to their self esteem. We don’t want to be there. You know, when they’re five years old, and they’re a practice for soccer, staying on that one for a second. We don’t want to be their cheerleader in the in the stands every time they touch the ball going crazy. Oh, look at that. Yeah. Oh, no, well, no, that’s in disproportion out of proportion to what the child has actually done, you want to go, okay, it was a good game, or a good practice, you know, you’re learning your skills, and let’s go home, you know, now, if it’s the final game of the season, and they actually score the final goal, you go, you know, Yay, it’s great. But I think somehow, you know, we have created a vulnerability in our children. And I think sometimes this, this notion of endless talk about resilience kind of goes against actually what the term is supposed to be about, it’s supposed to be when we are stressed in a way that’s not normal. It’s about recovering from that or growing from that experience. And that opens up a very different conversation about what kids need, they don’t just need a constant Hurrah. They need sometimes an opportunity to be reflective, and realize that they’ve made a mistake, and get together the skills they need to actually get through that.
Your book is called the limits of resilience. And I wonder, why do you believe it is important to consider the limited limits of resilience? Yeah,
so when when when one actually looks at the research, you do see pattern, different kinds of ways that societies and families and individuals show resilience, I mean, everything from, you know, if you’re, if you’re protected, if you’re in a system, where everyone around you is kind of just, you know, coddling you like an overprotective child, then you can just persevere with very odd behaviors, you can be very anxious child, what we sometimes refer to as a orchid, you know, very delicate creature, because everyone around you protects you from any adversity, you never, you know, you know, you don’t like to stand up in public speak. So your teacher is given a note from your parent and said, Well, you never have to be in front of the class, you never have to have a question, call it upon you. And that works as long as the world is a constant cotton wool around you, and nobody ever, you know, gets you flustered. But that is not a long term strategy for success, nor is sort of we see another pattern where people resist, we, you know, you get these people who their, their pattern of resilience is just to constantly be negative and pushing back. And it’s not necessarily constructive. It’s just like, I’m going to just constantly fight back to anyone who wants to make me change. I’m only good at this, we see this in communities and sometimes families, right, that, you know, we’re, we’re, we’ve always done this for 100 years, Mark generations have done this, and Gosh, darn is going to be like that forevermore. And you kind of go well, you know, that’s not really a good strategy. If the world is changing, you can keep resisting it. But at some point, maybe you want to integrate some of what’s new. And then of course, you know, we get people talking to just about recovery, which is getting back to where how they were, which isn’t always possible. But then, of course, in a more productive way. We also know that individuals, families, communities, they adapt, they begin to sort of see new realities and new technologies, and they begin to integrate those into their lives. And of course, they also transform, you know, we literally change the systems around us to better accommodate us so that we can have new ways of thriving. And each of those strategies people use depending on how they feel and the resources they have. But I do think sometimes that we we persist too long. We, we, you know, the homeowner who keeps building in exactly the same spot, rather than looking for a more transformational way of thinking about our housing or land, or maybe I know it’s very political. But do you begin to, you know, maybe say, well, these once in 1000 year, storms are now happening every five years, maybe something has shifted, and we need to revisit our belief systems, what’s sometimes referred to as second order thinking, we need to revisit what the way we think about this and maybe the problem isn’t just my house, it’s actually the climate or something like that. So so suddenly, you know, our resilience is tied up with a lot of other systems, whether it’s the municipal council that’s voting whether or not to build a three foot dike, or you know, a seawall or a 18 foot seawall one is very expensive is going to influence our taxes on our house. But one is probably a little more in tune with what’s actually happening. If we’re if we’re willing to admit that there are other changes going on in other systems is the same thing for a parent that says, you know, I want my kid in 12 activities, so they can go to some ivy league school, when in fact, what they might have as a child who just would like one activity. And again, I constantly in trying to get people to understand that the resilience of any single individual is really wrapped up with the the resilience of the other systems around them, and how those systems interact. So a child that needs a lot of calm, isn’t going to do very well, in a family that’s hyperactive about 12 activities. And vice versa, the highly active, you know, the active child, that’s just go, go, go go go isn’t going to do well with the with a family that says we’re not into formal activities at all. And so we’re always in this constant dance, our resilience is tied up to the resilience of, well, other systems around us. And if I might, that opens up opportunities. So if I want to improve my resilience, maybe I can stop beating myself up. Oh, I didn’t get to the gym. I didn’t die. It I didn’t, you know, finish that exam? I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t. Because maybe part of the reason why I didn’t succeed at that was because some of the other, you know, these other sources of support around me, weren’t functioning very well, either.
It really does change the whole approach when you put it that way, in terms of how you think about it, certainly. So Dr. Ungar, when is persevering or being persistent, or being resilient, not optimal? Can you give us some examples, and certainly as they pertain to parents and kids? Well,
you know, even Angela Duckworth and her work on grit years back now, you know, she never beat up the people who dropped out of some elite, you know, military force training, she kind of saw that as integrating learning people, you know, some of our studies were based on these soldiers that would go through some sort of elite, you know, training to be special ops or whatever it was. And, you know, the idea of perseverance was the folks that could get through that training. But but but people who dropped out were in some have a lesser individuals, they hit just simply understood that that pathway wasn’t really great for them. And I in the limits of resilience, I do give lots of examples. But I mean, you know, you do hear stories about like, you know, I had, I was working with someone who was there, you know, they were going to go to medical school no matter what, and they just kept persevering and they kept not getting into medical school. Now, once you try and you fail, you retool, you go, that’s good perseverance, maybe a third time. But after your third time not getting in, you might want to say, what is it about medical school that I’m trying so desperately to have? Is it the status is that the helping others what is the same person might have done very well, in maybe as a physiotherapist if they still wanted to be in medical, where maybe that credentialing isn’t quite so you know, that it’s not that the gatekeeping isn’t so harsh. Maybe they wanted to go into a nursing which is probably a little bit easier to get into, maybe they’ve wanted, maybe they would have been come very good at something, using a biology degree to become a farmer, a farmer, pharmacy rep or something like, you know, there’s so many, there’s lots of other options. But when you just pursue at some point, persistence, is not serving you well. And change or even transformation in your values or your belief systems may have actually led to more happiness. So that’s when persistence, despite all our extolling the virtues of grit, at some point, persisting into something that might not even make you that happy, or bigness fit or leave you vulnerable is not necessarily where persistence is a good idea.
So building on that point, what types of behavior then can somebody get locked into if they persevere for too long? Or blindly?
I think what happens is that people sometimes fail to acknowledge the other systems that are operating this hyper individualism, we sometimes have that all well, if I just persist and somebody is going to take me kind of, you know, ignores the fact that out there, there are other systems, whether they’re, you know, it’s racism, it’s structural violence, it’s the economy. We’ve been doing a lot of work, for instance, in oil and gas communities where there is, you know, where the green revolution of the way we’re moving towards, you know, carbon neutral energy sources, is going to have a dramatic impact on communities that had previously relied on coal and oil and gas production. Now, that’s, you know, there’s the beta About this a 10 year or 50 year transformation, but something eventually is going to happen. And inside those communities, you’re really talking about, can a community or can individuals in those communities begin to make decisions? With some understanding of the world price of carbon production of oil and gas world prices or, or whether or not Tesla stocks are going up and down and electric cars are getting adopted or not adopted? I mean, these made up, I don’t care about individuals. And now I’m talking about macro economic factors. It’s like, what is this guy talking about? But what we actually saw in our own research was that people were making decisions at a family at an individual level about career paths. But whether or not a child is in is in a sporting activity at the local rec center, largely based on something like macro economic conditions that were then affecting the job prospects for our family, and whether or not a parent was even going to be at home to take their kid to that hockey practice. Because whether or not they’re actually having to change communities and move away, and all the money that it takes to have a kid in these activities. So on one level for us to sit here and say, you know, I want my kid to play hockey, belies the fact that I also have to think about some of these other things that are going on. And indeed, so the diversification of the economy in a community like that is actually going to somehow protect the value of my home is going to protect my job. So suddenly, our municipal council making decisions about things like sea walls, and whether or not we invest in some different industries in our town, those things have a direct impact on what kids experience in a home. This, I know, it sounds a bit complicated. But what it does is it takes away that responsibility for us to individually be resilient. And now suddenly, we’re embedded in other systems, and maybe we can stop blaming ourselves for our situation. And maybe we can begin to see that our choices, our incense, our resilience is tied up with the resilience of our politics and our communities and our neighbors. And you know, that we’re all sort of linked more together. And maybe that opens up more possibilities for us to be successful rather than fewer.
You’ve talked about, you know, doing something maybe once twice or three times and not succeeding. And then maybe it’s time to adopt a new path. How can one discern when it is time to quit entirely and just move on to something completely different?
I think generally speaking, if you’ve, if you’re experiencing repeated failures, where it feels very much beyond your control to fix, then you might need another pathway, right. And that’s as applicable, again, to a business. I mean, you know, Kodak, believe or not had a camera digital camera, decades before they became popular, but it was stuck in that rut of persevering with one product line, it made film, it saw itself just as that identity as a film producing company. And I think people do the same thing. You know, we get so stuck in well, everyone in my family was a doctor. So I’m going to become a doctor, even if the kid really would rather be an artist, or maybe a plumber, or a carpenter have something with, you know, their hands using their hands in a very different way. But families develop cultures of you know, expectations. So I always say that when something doesn’t feel quite right, or it continuously creates stress or problems, it’s probably time to maybe think not just about persevering, but maybe quitting is a better strategy to make, keep our mental health, you know, feeling better about who we are, and what we do, I’ve worked with so many children, especially if, say families have recently all newcomers were the first generation is almost forced, like, you know, you are going to become NZG finished with some professional identity, right? Because the parents are so wrapped up in, you know, taking advantage of the opportunities in you know, in the societies that they’ve migrated to. And that can be great, and kids need to be motivated. And it’s nothing wrong with that. But sometimes, you know, it, it’s out of touch with a particular child that would be better off rather than a university education, they might be better off with a trade and in fact, might earn more money in the long term. If they opened up a small, their own business as a you know, a bricklayer or a plumber or an electrician, given what electricians are in these days, it might be a good choice rather than getting a Bachelor of Arts. So we forget that that that you know the as the world changes, and maybe the biz a bad fit. That’s usually a good time to think about quitting. And indeed, maybe changing moving into something completely new
Is there anything that you uncovered in the course of the research for the limits of resilience that struck you in particular?
Yeah, I’d say that the one conversation that we have failed to have is the cost of resilience. There is an emerging body of research that actually shows that, you know, when we persist for too long, and we, you know, we, we accommodate our way to stress, there are studies of people who are exposed to constant, you know, bombardment, say, in a war situation. or, indeed, families who are, you know, growing up amid racism in us to other countries, as well have shown that, that, that, that resilience, that ability to keep persisting, and going and succeeding and getting on to college or whatever, what people like Jean Brody have described it as skin deep resilience. In other words, it’s on the surface, but it’s taking a terrible toll. It’s, it’s literally eating away deeper inside. And there’s so many examples of this, that have shown that epigenetically, or indeed, just, from a physiological point of view, some of this idea that our resilience, our persistence, has no consequences. I think if parents understood that the long term consequences of having a child persist, when it’s, you know, it just is taking so much effort. At some point that child risks breaking down. And we see that at universities, sometimes with these, you know, the high flyers or come in, you know, they beat the odds, as we say, they get to university, and then after the a year or two, they just crash and burn, they self harm, they suicide, God forbid, I don’t want that to happen. But even just diabetes, heart problems, nervous anxiety disorders, they sort of, they just sort of overwhelm. And I think sometimes again, we we forget that our resilience is tied up with the resilience of the systems around us. So if you’re going to push a child that far, or you’re going to come out of that kind of poverty or that kind of background, you’re going to need the supports as well of a community of concern. And to be fair, universities have realized this, because now we have often, for populations that demonstrate this, you know, pattern of, you know, excessive toil to get where they are, we now have a lot of extra supports there to flood people with with extra help, so that when they finally get into the stressful context, we don’t just leave them to, you know, to sort of swim on their own. We understand that maybe getting there used up a lot of personal resources. And I found that thought kind of different than the way we normally think about resilience, you’re resilient, rejoined forever. But that’s actually maybe not the case.
So along those lines, then what does a healthy or balanced approach to resilience, especially for parents trying to teach this to their kids? What should it include? What does it look like? Well,
I think what it looks like is understanding that your child’s resilience has caught up with the resilience of others around them. So, you know, a good teacher is going to help your child a lot. So making sure that you know this, if you have any influence on the school community, and that teachers are well compensated, that they don’t have to buy markers and coloring supplies for their students. And that, you know, we adequately resource those kinds of spaces, and that we adequately resource our communities and we encourage our children to have contact not just with us, but a network of aunties and uncles, and, you know, and neighbors and other resources. And we, we, we, you know, we negotiate with a child, how much activity they want, and what is good about them. And while we encourage them, and we do set structure and expectations for homework and for you know, that they practice, the piano and all those other things that we shouldn’t do. But then we also read the room a little bit when they’re super resistant to that, that we understand that sometimes maybe we’re pushing too hard. And that may be that very product that we’re trying to get, we’re going to undermine and destroy, unless we also understand that sometimes different children need different pacing, and different expectations. So what can we do, we can kind of negotiate a bit with her child, we can open up lots of opportunities, and we can make sure that the systems other systems besides just us are helping our child become the best possible person that they can be.
Dr. Ungar, what would you like readers of the limits of resilience to leave with from your book?
Maybe just a little more conceptual, like a little more clarity that when they use that word resilience, they are talking about a process, they’re talking about systems, and maybe we we get away from just this individual conversation about you bounce back, and we much more say, you know, I give an example I’ve, um, you know, I was doing some work with one of the large fortune five hundreds that has one of the superstars of soccer that came out of incredible poverty. And just to get away from the idea that you know that that soccer star did it all on his own, he came out of the favelas, and he, you know, he somehow succeeds all on his own, and much more understanding that somebody gave him a soccer ball, probably gave him a second soccer ball after you destroy the first one. And somebody helped him get to a special training camp and some community and some family members, you know, coalesced around and saw something special in that child. Those are the things I think that are actually going to make it incredibly important for a child to be successful.
Lots of certainly important food for thought for the days in the lives of that we’re living right now in our current world. Dr. Michael Ungar, resilience researcher, therapist and author of the limits of resilience. Thank you so much for your time and your insight today. Really appreciate it.
You’re very welcome. A real pleasure
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“It was the way the the commentator on the newscast kind of talked about the folks who have very expensive homes on the sand practically on the sandbars right next to the ocean, and he said, ‘you know, these communities are resilient, because people will rebuild’, Ungar recalls. “And I thought to myself, whoa, have we misunderstood that concept, because resilience wasn’t about just doing the same thing over and over again. Resilience really refers to a system of learning, of growth and adaptation, and ultimately transformation as well.”
That comment morphed into the catalyst for Ungar’s latest book, The Limits of Resilience: And the example of the hurricane response strategy, served as both a visceral and relevant proof point. “…my advice to that community, where people were rebuilding their homes, exactly in the same space that the hurricane had wiped them out, was that that’s not resilience,” continues Dr. Ungar, Canada Research Chair in Child Family and Community Resilience.
“That’s in fact, perhaps a sign of vulnerability when more information should have maybe informed people that our climate is dramatically changing. And those coastal communities are going to be in a much more dangerous state for the coming decades.”
And, he adds, “Simply rebuilding on the floodplain, where your home is going to be devastated yet again, is probably not a sign of resilience, but in fact, maybe sort of distorted thinking that somehow you’re impervious.”
Ungar has been at the forefront of resilience research for more than three decades. He is the director of the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University in Halifax and has authored more than a dozen books on the topic.
The theme of his latest work would seem a departure from the focus of his decades of study.
Dr. Ungar explains it like this, “there is this kind of toxic positivity which has taken over the field of resilience, where we just overestimate our ability to bounce back, when in fact, what we fail to see is that our capacity to recover or bounce back is tied up with other systems, as well. And that’s where the field of resilience actually is going.”
A father of five, Dr. Ungar further explains that resilience isn’t just about persevering in the face of adversity but knowing when to adapt—or even quit.
He illustrates the limits to resilience in the context of parenting.
“It’s a dynamic between, we need the right amount of risk in our lives, and we need the right solutions,” he says. “…over protective parenting, where we have taken away all risk exposure to our kids, we’re making our every decision for our child —- what that’s done is that’s removed the opportunity for children to learn. We need children to fail. We occasionally need our children to actually fail and integrate that learning, especially when we’re available to scaffold the experience and build them up again with the skill set they need to overcome the problem.”
Ungar suggests parents should allow their children to experience age-appropriate stress, whether it’s packing their own soccer bag or resolving conflicts with a teacher. These small challenges build the skills necessary for future resilience. “We’ve created a vulnerability in our children,” he says. “Are we giving kids the building blocks, they need to develop real resilience, that ability to integrate experience, learn from mistakes, move forward and develop new coping strategies? Sadly, I don’t know, if we’re doing that enough.”
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