Biological and cultural narrative of resilience

Resilience is a process that makes us capable of another kind of development after a trauma. A psycho-ecological perspective of resilience could be described with three sensorial niches. The first sensorial niche takes place in the womb where the mother’s stress is transmitted to the fetus by cortisol and catecholamines, consequently, the baby has some factors of vulnerability imprinted in its biological memory. The second sensorial niche lays in the mother’s arms where the main figure of attachment is expressed through low frequencies of her voice and eye contacts, a maternal figure may be surrounded with a second parent, once called the “father”. The third sensorial niche is rooted in the family’s words and its cultural narratives. When the internal working model is congruent with surrounding narratives, the child feels a coherent protective factor. However, when there are discrepancies between these narratives, the child will develop a split-mind which is a factor of vulnerability It is therefore necessary for clinicians to give up linear explanations and to think in terms of beneficial or harmful integrated causalities

Conference

English

Boris Cyrulnik

Cyrulnik, B. (2023, June). Biological and cultural narrative of resilience. Presentation at the EMDR Europe Conference, Bologna, Italy