Beyond Resilience: Transforming Disaster by Transforming Our Selves and Our Systems

1. Beyond Resilience: Transforming Disaster by Transforming Our Selves and Our Systems Dr Theresia Citraningtyas (Citra)

2. Resilience Most recent definition: Responding to perturbations by changing, within limits, while retaining essential functions, structures and “identity” Steven Cork, p.4 Responding? From defensive to initiative: Resilience as the capacity to respond Changing in order to retain? Becoming more of who we are Essential functions, structures, and “identity”? Who we are at our core

3. Focusing on our core, on being Identity Essential course of action Essential bonds/relationships Connection with the bigger picture Andre Rochais, 1968 (PRH International, 1997)

4. Centred and aligned Individuals  Families, teams  Organisations  larger systems Identity Identity Essential course of action Essential course of action Essential bonds Essential bonds Connection with bigger picture Connection with bigger picture

5. Are we helping individuals, families, and communities be more centred and aligned with what is essential for them? Depersonalisation: • Work vs. life? • Formal systems made up of professional roles, job descriptions, mandates and hierarchies rather than people • People may feel subjected to or limited by the system rather than being part of or supported, particularly in the face of the unexpected

6. Transformative power of adversity • Disaster as 'life changing’ • Changes can be simultaneously negative and positive (e.g. Aldwin 1994; Kessler et al. 2006) • Disaster NOT a positive experience, but highlights: • Adaptive responses to disaster (Mawson, 2005) • Strength to overcome difficulties  most profound in difficult circumstances (Ryff & Singer, 2003) • Capacity to draw out positive from difficulties (Tennen & Affleck, 2005) • Capacity make positive events happen (Lazarus, 2000) • Posttraumatic Growth (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2004)

7. Transformed by adversity • Greater appreciation for what we have • Reminder of true priorities  help to reorient life goals accordingly: return to core, alignment of doing with being • Greater awareness of the bigger picture - realisation that we are subject to greater forces/part of something greater than ourselves • More realistic sense of mastery and limitation • Capacity to accept , prepare for and face subsequent adversities • Awaken potentials that we never knew existed

8. True resilience: capacity to transform Systems controlled by people, not people controlled by systems • Power throughout the system • Sharing and negotiation of authority • Sense of autonomy • Permission and capacity to make quick, crucial decisions and take actions otherwise institutionalised/ delegated • Courage and accountability

9. Transforming our systems • Identifying and strengthening the essential/our core • Communication and alignment at the core between the different levels of the system • Action as actualisation/manifestation of the core • Strengthening essential bonds/relationships • Fitting the system with the bigger picture

10. References Aldwin CM (1994) Stress, Coping, and Development. The Guilford Press. New York. Calhoun LG and Tedeschi RG (2004) The Foundations of Posttraumatic Growth: New Considerations. Psychological Inquiry 15, 93–102. Camilleri P, Healy C, Macdonald E, Nicholls S, Sykes J, Winkworth G, and Woodward M (2007) 'Recovering from the 2003 Canberra bushfire: A work in progress'. Australian Catholic University, Canberra. Kessler RC, Galea S, Jones RT, and Parker HA (2006) Mental illness and suicidality after Hurricane Katrina. Bulletin of the World Health Organization 84, 930–939. Lazarus RS. (2000). Toward Better Research on Stress and Coping. American Psychologist, 55(6), 665-673. Mawson AR. (2005) Understanding mass panic and other collective responses to threat and disaster. Psychiatry 68, 95–113. PRH International. (1997) Persons and their growth: The anthropological and psychological foundations of PRH Education. Personnalité et Relations Humaines International, Poitiers, France.

11. References Ryff CD & Singer B. (2003). Flourishing Under Fire: Resilience as a Prototype of Challenged Thriving. In J. Haidt & C. L. M. Keys (Eds.), Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived. American Psychological Association. Washington, D.C. Tennen H, & Affleck G. (2005). Benefit-Finding and Benefit-Reminding. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of Positive Psychology. Oxford University Press, New York. Tedeschi RG, Park CL and Calhoun LG (1998) Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual issues. In Posttraumatic Growth: Positive Changes in the Aftermath of Crisis. (Eds RG Tedeschi, CL Park and LG Calhoun) pp. 1–23. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc, New Jersey. Walker B, Carpenter S, Anderies J, Abel N, Cumming GS, Janssen M, Lebel L, Norberg J, Peterson GD and Pritchard R (2002) Resilience management in social–ecological systems: a working hypothesis for a participatory approach Conservation Ecology 6, 14 [online] <http://wwwconsecolorg/vol6/iss1/art14/>.

12. Presentation related to Citraningtyas T (2010). Beyond resilience in the face of disaster – transforming adversity by transforming ourselves and our systems. In Cork S & Reeder L, ed. Resilience and Transformation: Preparing Australia for Uncertain Futures. CSIRO Publishing, Canberra. With reference to: Cork S. (2010) Introduction and synthesis of key themes. Cork, S. & Reeder L, ed. Resilience and transformation: Preparing Australia for uncertain futures. CSIRO Publishing, Canberra.