Navigating through Resilience: Young Adults in Kuwait

Abstract

Individual’s behaviors, mindset and personality is greatly affected by their social circle and shaped by their past experiences, leading the individual to develop resilience against stressful situations and adversaries. Such situations are mainly experienced during adolescence stage presenting an opportunity to understand how individuals think they will react to stressful times and what measures do they consider if and when crises hit. The inevitable goal of this research is to find out how and if individuals build resilience to negative situations and find themselves to express and feel happiness instead of succumbing to negative emotions and behaviors. For a better understanding of their self-resilience, we created a framework of Internal and External Resilience to guide us with the findings. This research was conducted during the early stage of the COVID-19 spread, which did not present to be a pandemic at the time and had not affected one’s life as gravely. In gathering our research, questions that will be kept in mind but are not limited to, include: how do two individuals who experience similar situations react in different ways, one left negatively affected while the other unaffected? Do past experiences make individuals more resilient to situations that they came into contact with? With those probing questions, we would be able to further understand the relationship between building resilience and experiencing hopelessness in times of crises. Keywords: resilience, adversaries, crises, hopelessness, psychological immune system