The Nuance of Adaptability

The Nuance of Adaptability

“People are adaptable.”
It’s one of the most common refrains in rehab and performance. We lean on it—sometimes rightfully—to buffer against nocebo, to nudge someone out of learned helplessness, to replace fragility with possibility.

And it’s not wrong. From an evolutionary standpoint, adaptability is how we’ve made it this far. From a tissue standpoint, it’s how load drives remodeling. From a behavioral standpoint, it’s how humans continue to grow.

But like all good narratives, it loses power when used indiscriminately.

Not everyone adapts the same.
And not every system has room to.

Constraints—biological, psychological, social—shape how much stress an individual can absorb and transmute into adaptation.
Genetics, past experiences, recovery, mindset, and support all shape the capacity to adapt.
They influence not just if adaptation occurs, but what kind, at what cost, and under what conditions.

So while, “You’re adaptable,” may be true in essence, we’d be remiss not to ask:
Adaptable to what?
At what rate?
With what trade-offs?
And do they have the bandwidth right now?

Sometimes adaptation requires adding stress. Other times, it requires subtracting it. Creating space. Removing threat. Allocating resources. Not just pushing harder, but recalibrating the system so it’s ready to receive.

People aren’t fragile.
But they’re also not limitless.

And honoring both of those truths might be the most respectful—and effective—clinical stance we can take.

-Jarred