So I was watching Nature on PBS on a show about monkeys and they were tracking two baby monkeys in the mountains in Tibet. One monkeys had a helicopter mother and the other was ignored by it mother and had to live on its own, and the show mentioned Stress Induced Resilience and it peaked my ears.
So I headed over to Google Scholar and found some research on the topic. An article Frontiers in Human Neuroscience defined Stress Induced Resilience.
Resilience means “the ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions” (Fletcher and Sarkar, 2013; Robertson et al., 2015). However, in the context of recent biological and psychological research, resilience has gained a more specific meaning. The idea of resilience as resistance to stress (Figure 1) originated in the 1970s when researchers began to study children capable of normal development despite a difficult upbringing (Masten, 2001).
Since this is a blog about trans topic what does Stress Induced Resilience have to do with us?
Well I added “gender dysphoria” to the search criteria,
Resilience in Individuals with Gender Dysphoria: Association with Perceived Social Support and Discrimination
The study found that having a support network improved the outcome of transitioning and I think that it supported my observations.
What I have noticed in my years in the trans community is that there are two distinctive groups of trans people one that shows resilience and can roll with the punches that nature give us and the other group have a chip on their shoulder.
The first group when they get knocked down gets up and tries again, and again, and again. While the second group blames others and continues with the same behavior. They didn’t get fired for being drunk on the job but because they are trans. They couldn’t get a lawyer to sue the company not because they didn’t have a case but because of discrimination by the lawyers. They mean-mouth the LGBTQ legal organizations for not taking their case.
I think that resilience has a lot to do with our transition and living with gender dysphoria, we under go a huge amount of stress when we transition and how we handle that stress determines how well we do our transition and blame everyone but themselves. Those who have developed coping strategies are a lot better off than those whose coping strategies is to blame others.
Oh, and the monkeys.
Well the monkey who had the helicopter mother is very neurotic and runs to his mother when challenged by other males, while the one that had to fend for itself was very self-sufficient and could fend off attacks by rival males.
That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
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