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Our capacity to recover our resilience after traumatic events is a normal feature of being human.

The trauma-healing industry says that trauma may haunt us forever; research shows we are reliably resilient.

Resilience research helps us understand the flexible mindsets and sequences that lead to healing.

This is the concluding post in a 3-part series.

Decades of research into human resilience after potentially traumatic events have shown repeatedly that two-thirds of us regain our resilience without any interventions required.

No matter the type, duration, or severity of potentially traumatic events, we are twice as likely to return to resilient functioning as we are to require extended support.

In part 2 of this series, we explored the flexibility mindset that resilience researchers have identified in the 66.6 percent of us who regain our resilience after traumatizing events:

"At the core of the mindset are three interrelated beliefs: optimism about the future, confidence in our ability to cope, and a willingness to think about a threat as a challenge" (Bonanno, 2021).

"At the core of the mindset are three interrelated beliefs: optimism about the future, confidence in our ability to cope, and a willingness to think about a threat as a challenge" (Bonanno, 2021).

In part 2, I shared my concern that much of today's trauma-healing industry, with its outdated concepts and neuromyths, tends to interfere with all three of these protective beliefs.

However, the flexibility mindset can be cultivated, and George Bonanno's book, The End of Trauma (2024), focuses on this mindset and the related flexibility sequence that can help us restore our resilience.

From the flexibility mindset to the flexibility sequence

Bonanno describes resilience as: "a pattern of continued good mental health after potential trauma, or, more precisely, a stable trajectory of healthy functioning across time" (Bonanno, 2021).

This healthy functioning looks different for each of us, but follows a reliable sequence that........

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