The Resilience Portfolio Concept: New Insights into How Sufficient Strengths Can Overcome Even High Burdens of Trauma

Abstract

There have been three great revolutions in trauma science, each driven by a big idea. The first, in the late 20th century, led to the discovery that trauma is a much bigger public health problem than previously recognized. In the second revolution, around the turn of the century, we learned that each dose of trauma adds to our cumulative lifetime burden. Now we are in the third revolution, which shows that the dose-response concept applies to strengths too, and that we can overcome even high doses of trauma with sufficient “doses” of psychosocial strengths. This work uses a multidimensional, process-oriented approach to resilience, in contrast to older formulations that often treated resilience as an innate personality characteristic. A framework called the resilience portfolio model incorporates the dose-response insight of the third revolution in trauma science and identifies four strengths domains for overcoming trauma: meaning making, regulation, interpersonal relationships, and environmental resources. The paper synthesizes existing science, including 16 resilience portfolio studies involving more than 22,000 participants in 9 countries, to identify the most impactful strengths for overcoming trauma. The paper also briefly reviews evidence for interventions that support resilience, including narrative, mindfulness, gratitude interventions, and shinrin yoku (forest bathing).