Source of Resilience: A Phenomenological Study

Abstract

This dissertation explored resilience and the ability to overcome adversity and thrive. Using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis, six resilient participants were interviewed to analyze resilience, where resilience derives, and how to access resilience. The six participants included a Holocaust survivor, a NASA rocket-scientist raised in poverty, a university professor diagnosed quadriplegic as a teenager after a car accident, a Hall of Fame wrestler and world-record holding mountain climber born without arms and legs, a Civil Rights leader who headed the nonviolence movement with Martin Luther King, Jr., and an acclaimed humanitarian photographer triple amputated after stepping on an explosive when photo-journaling the Afghani war. The findings indicated: (1) resilient people gain mentorship from an external support system, embrace a full range of emotions, make a decision to overcome adversity, and find opportunities in adversity for personal and societal transformation; (2) resilience appears to derive from an ineffable source expressed in active engagement rather than passive reflection; and (3) resilience has a universal dimension accessed through various approaches such as imagination and storytelling. This study introduces “source of resilience” as a term to communicate the tacit dimension of resilience as an integration of cognition, behavior, environment, neurobiology, and soul.