Pinned beneath an 80,000-pound fire truck with his left leg mangled, SWAT Sgt. Justin Dodge felt shooting pain storming in.
“I knew my course of life had changed in an instant,” he told The Epoch Times.
As he felt every single bone in his foot crushed, he told himself, “If I live to get to the hospital, I’m going to make an epic comeback.”
He was rushed to the hospital and underwent several surgeries, leading to an amputation below the knee. Yet Dodge didn’t let tragedy define his life. Just four days before the incident’s one-year anniversary, Dodge returned to full SWAT duties, stronger than ever.
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That split moment in Dodge’s life between tragedy and comeback reflects the nature of true resilience. It is not about avoiding or yielding to life’s tribulations, but rather what happens in your mind and body when the weight of the world may literally be pressing upon you.
1 Thought Determines the Outcome
Resilience has been conceived as grit, flexibility, and perseverance. An essay published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health likens it to a rock that bears weight without reaction, a spring that bounces back from strain, or a dandelion that flourishes in harsh conditions despite its delicate appearance.
Resilience begins with how we see the world.
Anthony Mancini, a resilience researcher and clinical psychologist, said that the way we interpret an event can have a bigger impact on us than the event itself. To illustrate, he explained one of his experiments to The Epoch Times in which participants watched either a graphic video, such as a motorcycle accident, or a calm video of beavers. Those who saw the disturbing video and interpreted it as frightening were much more likely to experience unwanted, intrusive memories in the days that followed.
The psychological impact was “entirely attributable to that interpretation,” Mancini said. As writer Anaïs Nin once wrote, “we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
Hardship often ignites victimhood. Mancini said that people may think: “Bad things always happen to me. Why can’t I get a break?”
“When we play the victim, we internalize and reinforce a sense of our own vulnerability, and that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Mancini said.
Instead of seeing suffering as targeted persecution, resilient people learn to reframe: “Bad things do happen, and I just happened to be the recipient. Despite that, there are good things in the world, and I’m going to focus on those.” This reframing is particularly powerful. Being able to wrap your mind around the experience allows you to assign it meaning and carry on.
Dodge credits his mindset shift from “Why me?” to “What now?” to fundamentally different life outcomes. Mindset shifts and the benefits incurred are reflected across the board among resilient people.
A meta-analysis of 60 studies found that people with higher resilience experienced less depression and anxiety while enjoying higher life satisfaction and positive emotion. Professionally, resilience is associated with greater job satisfaction and dedication and serves as a buffer against burnout.
Resilience affects your health—and wallet, too. In one study, adults 65 and older with medium and high resilience levels had 30 percent lower annual health care spending—mental strength translates to physical and financial well-being.
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Resilience may begin in the mind, but its consequences are reflected in the body at multiple levels—from the heart to hormones and even neural function.
The Brains and Bodies of the Resilient Elite
At the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Command, researchers followed 117 Special Operations Forces soldiers—including Navy SEALs and Green Berets—the pinnacle of military mental and physical toughness.
Instead of putting the combat service members through combat simulations, scientists gave them a simple test: Hold your breath for 30 seconds. Breath-holding creates a controlled, measurable form of physiological stress. As carbon dioxide builds up in your blood, your brain’s blood vessels dilate and blood flow increases. It’s your brain’s way of trying to get more oxygen and a perfect window into how your brain handles and recovers from stress.
Interestingly, the most psychologically resilient soldiers didn’t necessarily have different stress responses—their brain blood flow spiked just like everyone else’s during the breath-holding. What made them stand out was that they recovered significantly faster. Their brains had learned not to waste energy staying revved up after the threat had passed.
A separate study followed Navy SEAL candidates through the grueling first phase of the Navy’s Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL course, which includes eight weeks of extreme physical and mental stress, including “Hell Week,” during which candidates are allowed only four hours of sleep over five days. With a 65 to 80 percent dropout rate, it’s one of the world’s most demanding selection processes.
Researchers took blood samples from the trainees and found that successful candidates had equivalent, and even higher levels of cortisol—the body’s main stress hormone—than others in the training. The main difference was in their recovery system.
Those who passed the training had significantly higher levels of DHEA, a hormone that helps restore balance after stress. These resilient individuals had a DHEA-to-cortisol ratio 31 percent higher than those who did not complete the task. Akin to driving, cortisol serves as your gas pedal, and DHEA as your brakes. Successful Navy SEALs had both the hormonal engine to deal with the stressors and brakes to reset to baseline.
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The research challenges the myth that tough people just “handle stress better” in the sense of feeling it less intensely. The magic is in recovery. The Navy SEAL candidates’ bodies had developed (or naturally possessed) a more robust bounce-back system. The findings reframe how we view life’s pressures. You don’t need to be someone who “doesn’t get stressed.” Instead, the goal is to become someone who recovers well from stress.
Other research has shown that resilience may be tied to more efficient neural processing of stress. Marines with higher resilience through mindfulness training showed significantly different brain activation in response to threatening situations. Brain areas such as the right insula and anterior cingulate cortex (involved in interoception, emotion regulation, and stress processing) are activated less, and even negatively, in resilient Marines. On the other hand, the control group’s brains remained activated, working overtime, after the stressor.
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Resilience isn’t really about being unbreakable, Mancini said. It’s the minimal, or even positive, change to normal functioning after adversity.
Building Your Recovery System
How do we develop lasting resilience?
Dr. John D. Kelly, orthopedic surgeon, professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and writer on resilience, told The Epoch Times that resilience begins with focusing on the positive.
“What is still good? What do I still have? Look for the gift in all that besets you,” he said.
The shift from victimhood to agency and gratitude represents what researchers call regulatory flexibility, the dynamic behavioral adjustment in the face of high stress. It’s the courage to revalue stress itself.
Alyson Zalta, a resilience researcher and associate professor of psychological science at the University of California–Irvine, told The Epoch Times that people who are more flexible in their thinking are naturally more likely to be resilient.
Researchers have identified specific and practical techniques that build mental flexibility, enabling resilience to be developed. A meta-analysis found that one of the most efficient methods is cultivating optimism via the “best possible self” technique, in which people envision themselves in a future where everything has turned out optimally.
Motivational self-talk is another powerful tool. Rather than the spontaneous negative chatter that often fills our minds, such as “I’m an idiot,” intentional self-talk increases effort, focus, and executive control. Resilient people learn to say “The future will be OK” and “I will do what is necessary.”
The confident and north-star framing can be seen in the NAVY SEAL Ethos: “I will never quit. I persevere and thrive on adversity … If knocked down, I will get back up, every time.”
Furthermore, Zalta noted that there are more basic yet equally important measures to cultivate resilience. She said that life is like a woven fabric, and adversity pulls at and stretches the fabric. The more you engage in positive routines, such as good sleeping habits, nutrition, and exercise, the tighter and more resilient the weave. In this way, when adversity strikes, your habits allow you to bear without impediments.
Resilient people also break the facade of self-sufficient heroism.
“Only the strong ask for help,” Kelly said. “When we embrace the truth that we are all wounded and broken, we can see the inherent need we all have for others.”
Similarly, Christina Cipriano, associate professor of applied developmental and educational psychology at Yale School of Medicine, agrees that resilience is built around communities.
“We do better together,” she told The Epoch Times. “We’re not meant to develop in silos. Positive, healthy, productive, supportive relationships are really critical to enduring and long-term skill building.”
Dodge, after losing his leg, would struggle to climb up even his own home stairs. His new normal required a vulnerability to be open with those around him. He would often lie on the floor, exhausted, crying, while his children surrounded him, cheering him on.
Those moments of frustration and support fueled his determination and willingness to ask for help.
“I realized that asking ‘Why me’ doesn’t do anything to help me in my situation,” he said. “Instead, I’ve asked God, my family, [and] my medical staff: What can I do to get better?”
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A Preventative Medicine
Mancini’s previous resilience studies, including research in the aftermath of 9/11 and school shootings, consistently show that 60 to 80 percent of people demonstrate resilient outcomes after major adversity. The capacity is already within us—the question is whether we cultivate it before crisis strikes.
Cipriano said: “We don’t need to have adversity to have a reason to learn the skill [resilience]. Actually learning the skill prior to the experience of adversity is better protection to set yourself up for success.”
Dodge said to view resilience as preventative medicine, which may require putting aside the “magic pill mentality.”
“We want everything to be an easy button,” he said. “But that’s just not the reality of how life works.”
“You can’t eat an elephant in one bite,” he said. “By finding small victories and then building on those consistently, when you look back weeks or months later, it’s incredible where you’ve come.”
Thus, Dodge says that the question isn’t whether challenges will come. The question is: “What are you doing today that’s making tomorrow better?”
Someday, when the weight of the world is pressing down on you, your recovery won’t depend on how strong you are at that moment. It will depend on your preparation, how quickly you can find your way back, and how you decide to grow from the difficulty.
In the space between tragedy and comeback, failure and success, resilience is up for grabs.
