Quotidian resilience: Exploring mechanisms that drive resilience from a perspective of everyday stress and coping

Resilience is often associated with extreme trauma or overcoming extraordinary odds. This way of thinking about resilience leaves most of the ontogenetic picture a mystery. In the following review we put forth the Everyday Stress Resilience Hypothesis where resilience is analyzed from a systems perspective and seen as a process of regulating everyday life stressors. Successful regulation accumulates into regulatory resilience which emerges during early development from successful coping with the inherent stress in typical interactions. These quotidian stressful events lead to activation of behavioral and physiologic systems. Stress that is effectively resolved in the short run and with reiteration over the long-term increases children's as well as adults’ capacity to cope with more intense stressors. Infants, however, lack the regulatory capacities to take on this task by themselves. Therefore, through communicative and regulatory processes during infant–adult interactions, we demonstrate that the roots of regulatory resilience originate in infants’ relationship with their caregiver and that maternal sensitivity can help or hinder the growth of resilience.

► Resilience is not simply a trait inherited at birth. ► Rather, it develops from coping with everyday, typical stressors. ► Reparation of stress builds resilience while failure leads to vulnerability. ► Reparation hinges on the infant's as well as the mother's regulatory capacity. ► Thus, maternal sensitivity is a factor affecting the early development of resiliency.