Resilient or Responsive?
Relax: this dimension is not about psychopathology. Both sides are normal, and represent two different ways people handle stress.
Resilient types are the stoic folks in society. Nothing seems to ruffle them. They take everything in stride ("steady as she goes, Mr. Sulu"). Set off a nuclear bomb in their back yard, and they'll think, "Well, guess it's time to rebuild the world." Their strength is their ability to remain solution-focused. Their weakness is that others may think them more robotic than human. ("If you can keep your head while all around you people are losing theirs, it's just possible that you don't understand the situation.")
Responsive types are the labile people in the world. Life for them is a roller coaster -- lots of ups and downs, highs and lows. They react to things -- a valuable trait if an early warning indicator is needed (the "canary in the coal mine"), a dangerous one if level-headedness is important. (For this reason, Responsives would make poor airline pilots: "This is your captain speaking. Commence panicking.")
Technically, Responsive people are prone to experience anxiety (worry, self-doubt, and so forth) directly and consciously; Resilient people "bind" their anxieties, experiencing them in some other way (such as somatic symptoms). Are you a flatliner, or is your life one of peaks and troughs? For Resilients, change tends to happen discretely (predictably, one change at a time, with few if any crises); for Responsives, changes tend to pile up or occur all at once (in "quantum leaps", seemingly out of the blue, with crisis a normal part of life). Do you recognize yourself in one or other of these portraits?
The more stress a Resilient is experiencing, the less it shows: he or she is "battening down the hatches" or preparing to "ride out the storm". (Responsives can view this style as downright robotic or as annoyingly superhuman.) But the more stress a Responsive is experiencing, the more it shows: he or she is "letting off steam" or coping by means of "venting". (Resilients can view this style as dangerously reactive, erratic, or needlessly worrisome.) Again, neither style is pathological (though extremes in either direction can sometimes cause problems), but both sides have difficulties understanding and relating to the other.
Professional assessment tools are available through Business Development Group if you want a formal evaluation of where you fall on this or the other dimensions explained here. But many people can make a reasonable guess about whether they are more Resilient or more Responsive, even if they fall close to the middle of this dimension. Which are you?
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