People often wonder about how to approach difficulties or cope with stress during hard times or after something challenging has occurred. How do I cope? How can I be more resilient or feel a sense of resilience?
I always go back to coping and resilience in The Martian as a great example. Matt Damon’s character, Mark Watney, approaches multiple stressful situations head-on with humor and openness to challenges. He even seems to thrive on those challenges!
How can someone face such adversity and handle it so well? How does he have such amazing coping skills in adversity? This gets into the idea of what happens to us in life. There is a key concept to understand about coping and resilience before we jump into The Martian. This concerns two important and related ideas: things that happen to us and how we deal with them.
Locus of Control and Resilience
Influential research in both clinical and social psychology has found that there are different ways people view how much power we have to influence the inevitable stressors that occur in our lives. People often refer to this as “locus of control”.
External locus of control refers to the belief that external forces (things outside of ourselves or our own behavior) have complete control over our lives. “Bad things just happen and I can’t do anything about it.”
On the other hand, internal locus of control refers to the belief that we have the ability to influence our world using resources or behaviors inside (“internal to”) our control. Internal locus of control understands that things can happen outside of our control, but that there are many things we can control or at least influence over time. “Bad things happen but I can do things to make them better.”
One locus of control is not better than the other in a moral sense. Each locus simply has different effects on our lives. Having an external locus tends to make it hard to get out of difficult situations. This is because it supports the belief that there is nothing that can be intentionally done to deal with those situations.
Internal locus is associated with more purposeful action and effort. Often those actions involve more effort or “work”, but they contribute to feeling more in control. We also get more sense of reward from our own actions and generate more of a life we want to live over time.
Life is often said to be approximately 50% chance and 50% a result of our own actions. This means we have a good amount of control over many aspects of our lives!
Internal Locus of Control and Resilience in The Martian
So back to coping and resilience in The Martian. Matt Damon’s character, Mark Watney, can’t control that he is stranded on Mars, but he can control how he responds to being stranded on Mars. This is within his control.
So, how does Mark Watney respond to the adversity he is experiencing? What does he do in the situation that makes him so resilient? He demonstrates a strong internal locus of control – he uses his own resources and intentional behaviors to influence the situation he is in. He is hit with so many stressors. Often life-threatening ones! However, he just keeps facing each stressor head-on.
First, he approaches all the challenges he encounters. At any point, he could say “This is too much!” and simply avoid what he is facing. There is no doubt his situation is stressful for him, especially at first. However, he makes a concerted choice that “I am not going to die here.”
This choice does not eliminate his stress. He still experiences stress but he examines what steps he needs to take to tackle each stressful event he encounters. He then follows through with each step and task until he completes it.
Click or tap to view The Martian, starring Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain
The Martian and Hardiness
Second, Watney exhibits what social and personality psychologists refer to as “hardiness”. Not only does he approach tasks and complete them (instead of avoiding them, for example), he views challenges as interesting or even thrilling puzzles to be solved. While some may experience severe stress or even posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in response to extreme challenges, Watney seems to thrive on problem-solving.
(If you’re more interested, check out this new book I recommend on resilience from high stress or traumatic events by George Bonanno. Also, if you have an interest in PTSD, check out our post on PTSD to learn more about traumatic stress and possible causes of PTSD following highly stressful events.)
As an astronaut, Watney is obviously an intelligent guy with specific skills he can use. But his willingness to face challenges is the key ingredient that aids him. This problem-solving approach also likely provides a sense of control to continually approach problems to solve, even if he doesn’t always solve them perfectly.
Coping Skills Strengthen Each Other
Third, these coping skills reinforce themselves. When people begin to approach challenges in this way, they often want to continue to approach challenges in similar ways in the future. This is because taking actions to solve things can provide a sense of accomplishment, a sense of control over stress, a thrill for a challenge, the sense of ability to effectively influence life, and/or other positive experiences (depending on the individual). Mark Watney seems to demonstrate this reinforced pattern of coping and resilience in The Martian.
Applying This to Your Life
Much of how someone responds to adversity has been shown to be influenced by a combination of learning history and genetics. The good news is that you can learn or train the tendency to approach challenges at any time. A person can get a sense that they really effectively handled something stressful and a sense of thriving on challenges, so they are more likely to approach challenges in the future.
Life is half chance. A sense of control comes from taking intentional steps to influence the other half – those things we can control. That’s exactly what Matt Damon’s character does in The Martian.
Stress is legitimately hard to deal with. There’s no doubt about it. Some stressors are much harder than others and can make us feel like we have no control. Things like depression and anxiety can make coping even more difficult. Our efforts to influence the situation can even be thwarted at times. Nothing is perfect.
However, research from the past few decades has found that those who experience more internal locus of control experience a greater sense of control, more resilience, less depression and anxiety, more positive emotions, and other beneficial effects. This is the case even in the face of difficult and stressful situations.
Which locus do you want to experience? Neither answer to this question is right or wrong. Really! It’s simply that one choice will lead to one outcome and the other another outcome. So either answer truly is legitimate – and you get to decide.
–Dr. Matt B
