Part one: the unusual people in situations of crisis and danger.
Survivability is a human phenomenon, but it seems that only 10% of the population belong to this minority.
A person who studied the subject is Al Siebert, PhD in his book: “The personality of the survivor”, the subtitles is: Why Some People are Stronger, Smarter, and More Skillful at Handling Life’s Difficulties… and How You Can Be, Too.
Whenhe was a paratrooper in Korea in 1953 he was in an Airborne Division number 503, he remembered meeting survivals from a parachute unit 11, this unit took part in most difficult battels, so much so that only one soldier out of 10 remained alive. Few people Attributed it to luck, coincidence, or other circumstantial reasons. He got interested in their personality structure, He was fascinated by common characteristics he found in all, if not in most, of them.
He found out that psychologists and psychiatrists did not know much about people that can cooperate very well with pressures. And the survivals do not fit to any psychological category. Therefore he read many autobiographies and interviewed hundreds of people: survivals of concentration camps, prisoners of war, veterans of Vietnam War. People who survived illness such as cancer, head injuries. Men and women who survived rape, abuse, alcoholism and addictions. Parents of children who were murdered, people who were bankrupted, people who got fired and more.
How does he defines them: he defines them as people who had an incredible ability to survive difficult crisis's and that after that they regained an emotional balance, and not only that, but after the crisis they get stronger.
One of the questions about this phenomenon is this: is survivability inborne or acquired? Siebert had a definite answer: people are born with natural talent for survival, others had to work hard on it, consciously.
Those who got used to act, think and feel according to instructions, are not coping with the unpredicted challenges of life with same successes as the ones who developed this abilities by themselves.
He discovered in them several characteristics: they have got what could be called: 'a relaxed awareness', which a quiet consciousness, that might even look half sleepy, (this allows them to live in 'the quiet eye of the storm' and from there to observe what is happening all around them). This 'relaxed awareness' is a sign to quietness in the world of their emotions, the more the emotions are in turmoil because of crisis – the more their consciousness is shrinking and becoming dim, (maybe: 'relaxed awareness means: Brain alpha waves).
But with this relaxed awareness they have a kind of radar which at all times is searching around In the search for threats.
This combination of opposites is a part of many opposites in their character:
Seriousness and humor.
Toughness and gentleness.
Diligence and laziness.
Being introverted and being able to communicate.
Many survivals are pessimistic and optimistic. (Ready for the worst and hoping for the best).
Involved and disconnected.
They have this incredible ability to rise from the ashes of their crisis.
Theoretically speaking, many psychologists will perceive such contradictory and polarized opposites in one person – as characteristics which will cause them to be paralyzed, but not for the survivals.
It seems that those polarities allows them a large variety of possible responses and in general – flexibility or ability to adjust.
This polarities allow the survival to not be fixed just on one frequency, he can behave in one way and when the situation changes he behaves completely the opposite way. He can adopt better to changing circumstance then those who are only this way or that way.
And not only that, this paradoxical polarities are vital for the survival way of life, and the longer is the list of such polarities - the better they are coping with difficult situations. And again, it is not only that they are coping with difficult situations, but they get stronger as a result of it.
Socially they are nonconformists, or outsiders, they do not feel the need to belong to a group, and they have no problem with the fact that they see and think different then other people.
Another trait which is typical in them, is that they possess a kind of six sense that signal to them how things should be when all is ok, and when they feel a deviation from the normal dynamic they activate their emergency situation programing.
Other characteristics:
They do not have any Prejudice about the other, they tend to accept him as he is.
Curiosity is one of his most important characteristics, it causes him to find out to what extent he can stretch the borders, it is a curiosity which stems out of their nonconformity. When they meet a certain rule – they might break it just to see where it would lead.
Another surprising characteristic is their empathy and humanity. It seems that they do not come from their ego, they are attentive to the other, to the needs of others, even when they themselves are experiencing a great difficulty. In situations of uncertainty and threat, they have got the tendency to turn the state of affairs safer for others.
Another quality of them is the synergic ability (wrote about it the American Anthropologist: Ruth Benedict) it is defined as an integrated activity of opposites, which together create a result greater than the sum total of their separate activities.
In fact, actually every kid has got some natural learning process that could bring them to become a survival, but this process is disrupted when parents and teachers try to turn them to be: 'good children', the challenge for the survivals is how to free themselves from the parental and teacher's dictates, that become later on an inner prohibitions which function as unseen emotional limitations. During childhood they learn that it is more important to learn how to get along and succeed in society, and then they have to give up natural potential abilities and this is done on order for them to learn behaviors and responses that will aquiver them a high position in the social hierarchy.
And it appears that the over training and instruction from teachers and parents – will distance the kid from the inborn ability of self-learning and from there to the survival ability.
The self-learning of the future survival is motivated and guided by questions.
But in schools the learning of answers is considered more than the ability to ask questions. And this is the difference between the 10% of the survivals and the rest, for they are not easily get satisfied by answers of convenience or technical answers. They possess a kind of inner knowing when their question is answered for real, and every substitute for real answer, doesn’t satisfy them, it has to feel right, and they can differentiate between an answer which is the one answer which fits the question from the substitutes.
In regular schools you learn first and then go to the examination, but for the survivals it happens in the reverse order – first they go to the examination and only then learn the lesson.
Most parents want their children to be decent likeable and responsible, in other words they want: 'good children', but this efforts to create a good child brings him, in his adulthood, to be a person that cannot cope with unexpected and difficult situations in life.
The greatest hinders on the way to become a survival, is the education 'to be good'.
A person that was educated in the conventional way – when he is out of the ordered environment in which he grew up in (unexpected difficulties, extreme crisis's) he gets lost.
In the day to day life, their 'engine' works slowly, they are being perceived as
Nonchalant and with little involvement about what happens around them, but if there is a serious problem, at once they are there, with all their might.
Problems for them are an incentive for a change of direction and not as something that could lead to a failure.
And failure and the attitude towards it, constitutes an important ingredient in the personality and the attitude of the survival, it seems, from researchers (done by Carol height and Linda Gotlib) that the common denominator to all survivals is that most of them experienced a great failure.
Part two: the non-survivals.
When there is a situation of threat, danger or crisis – people in general, tend to get into one of the following states:
Become paralyzed in front of the situation.
Others get into panic (and therefore behave in a way which could engender them further).
Others become emotional and believe that the end or defeat is near.
In contrast to them, the survivals could accept that the situation might be fatal but they do not lose their coolness and usually try to do something about it.
And again about the connection between the survivals and empathy; they have an empathy and humanity towards others in the same or similar situation.
How the survival does prepares himself to extreme and emergency situations?
The next characteristic is the questions they ask themselves in emergency situations.
The questions of the non-survival majority almost hardly exist in situations of emergency, for mostly they are in a state of shock. But if they do have questions they are like the followings:
Why does it has to happen to me?
What is wrong with me that this situations happen to me?
Whose fault is it that it happened?
What is wrong with me that I somehow invite this things into my life?
What is the point to stand against it, for all is lost anyway.
In contrast to them the survival asks completely different questions:
What happens, what does not happen?
What do I need to do now?
What should I chose from the variety if the possibilities which are in front of me?
How much time I have for response?
Should I act or refrain from acting?
What others who are with me in this situation, are doing, or not doing, and why?
How serious the emergency is?
Does anyone is in need for help and support?
Generally, his is alert, aware, empathic and able to recognize the patterns of his situation. All of this signify a high state of consciousness, an open an alert state.
One of the more interesting researchers on the subject were done by the psychiatrist james-antony. Ph.D he wanted to know if psychotic parents are influencing their child to become psychotic as well, and it is indeed believed that there would be such an influence, and he found out that 90% of the children became psychotic in one way or another, but the 10% that were saved, developed and flourished much above a child which grew in a healthy home.
Gabriel