Resilience Through Stress

Resilience is the capacity of individuals or systems to successfully navigate and adapt to changes and challenges in their environment that can induce stress. Repeated or ongoing exposure to stress is typically associated with adverse health and relational outcomes. However, some relationships withstand the weight of chronic stress and even grow from it. The theory of resilience and relational load (TRRL) was created to explain why some relational systems (e.g., couples, families) are resilient to or thrive under repeated stress while others crumble in the face of it. This chapter elucidates the tenets of the theory and overviews research where they were tested. Relational maintenance and communal orientation (related to a sense of unity) are proposed as central to the process of building relational and personal resilience to stress by fostering more security-based appraisals. Throughout, the authors emphasize the significance of physiology to research on risk and resilience to stress, the physiological mechanisms (e.g., activation of the HPA, oxytocin activity) accounting for the predictions of the theory, and the role of physiological measures in testing the theory.