Between a Rock and the Hardest Place (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine August 2003

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Between a Rock and the Hardest Place (Cont.)

IN THE DAYS AND WEEKS after the accident, more than 500 articles worldwide and hundreds of TV and radio news segments recounted the gruesome details of Ralston's self-rescue. His story held us spellbound.

Why?

Because it was real. It trumped the repulsive sensationalism of Fear Factor, the voyeurism of Survivor, and the improbable terrors of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. It was life-or-death. No safety net. No film crews. No prizes but the biggest: life.

But there was something else.

A friend and I were discussing the story when he confided, "You know, I guess I have doubts. I don't know if I could do that." This from a man who recently had climbed six peaks in Peru in six weeks. And he wasn't the only one. I had dozens of conversations like this after the story hit the press. Aron Ralston, through simple courage and cool self-appraisal, had cut through all the feckless fakery of "reality" TV and prompted us to ask ourselves the inescapable question: Could I do that?

Al Siebert, ex-paratrooper, founder of the Resiliency Center, an outreach program in Portland, Oregon, and author of the 1996 book The Survivor Personality, has studied hundreds of stories of survival and has found that, in many cases, the answer may lie in a handful of specific behavioral traits.

"Survivors rapidly read reality," says Siebert. "When something horrible happens, they immediately accept the situation for what it is and consciously decide that they will do everything in their power to get through it." That is, they have the ability to rationally accept dreadful circumstances without becoming angry or passive, two common responses to extreme stress.

"Getting angry is just a waste of precious energy," says Siebert, "and playing the victim dramatically increases your likelihood of dying."

After adjusting to the new circumstances, survivors start looking very hard, but also very imaginatively, for solutions. "I call it integrated problem-solving behavior," says Siebert. "By that I mean it's a mixture of left-brain thinking—logical, linear, Mr. Spock—and right-brain thinking—intuitive, creative, lots of leaps of faith."

One of Siebert's most intriguing discoveries is that survivors tend to exhibit "biphasic personality traits," which means they have oppositional, counterbalancing behavior. "It is to be proud and humble, positive and negative, selfish and unselfish, cooperative and rebellious, spiritual and irreverent," Siebert writes in The Survivor Personality. In other words, Hollywood has it wrong: Survivors are not brutish, one-dimensional Rambo types or combustible Scarface maniacs; rather, they are complex, compassionate, and, most important, open-minded.

Peter Suedfeld, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of British Columbia, who has researched survival psychology for more than 40 years, puts it this way: "Beyond the fundamental will to survive, the foremost character trait of a survivor is intellectual flexibility.

"People under high stress are more likely to become rigid, which only decreases their chances of survival," he continues. Even in a jam, "survivors are extremely adaptable people. They know how to improvise. If one solution doesn't work, they try another. They don't fixate on one answer. They keep an open mind, searching for options, developing strategies."

And there are two other important survivor indicators: optimism and unflappability. True optimists recognize that their predicament is temporary, isolate the problem, understand that even if they haven't found a solution yet, it doesn't mean there isn't one, and recognize that they do have a modicum of control over their fate.

To be unflappable, meanwhile, is to be able to "tolerate bizarre experiences without freaking out." It's the old cliché: Panic kills. There are only three ways to cope in a tough situation—leave the environment, change the environment, or change your attitude. According to Suedfeld, "survivors are capable of recognizing which one, or which combination, will best increase their chances."

So, considering the psychological profile of survivors, if you tend to react to dicey situations with impatience, intolerance, panic, pessimism, passivity, pigheadedness, anger, or any combination thereof, you may not make it out alive.

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