"I am Dorothy, the meek and mild."
So says Dorothy when she meets the Wizard and he demands an explantion of who she is and why she requires his assistance. Meek and mild certainly seem to be Dorothy's impression of her self at the outset of
The Wizard of Oz but as she encounters the obstacles provided by the witch, her demeanor changes so that by the next encounter with the Wizard she stands up to him for frightening her friends and chastizes him, "Shame on you for scaring people who have come to you for help," when the lion faints from fear.
Have you ever considered if you have a survivor personality or disposition? When I read about the Donner party, I remember thinking I would survive that, but later on after going through some upsetting issues in my life as an adult I looked back and thought, "No, I would have probably been eaten as an appetizer and been one of the first to die."
In the June 9, 2008 issue of Time magazine there is an article regarding who survives disaster and who does not. The interesting thing is that so called normal behavior is no predictor of survival as a disaster situation creates a totally different response in people than what might be considered the norm for them. The author, Amanda Ripley provides 5 characteristics you can incorporate to improve your "disaster" personality. These steps involve making ourselves more consciously resilient in not only surviving the immediate disaster by the immediate fall out as well.
1. events can be impacted on by people-specifically themselves
good and bad events in life can hold meaningful purpose
events -good or bad-provide opportunities to learn
2. even a small amount of accurate information can be helpful in finding the means to elicit a survival response
3. coping with fear and anxiety can help prevent over reaction to a situation and thus panic and choosing bad responses
4. Physical fitness helps improve mental and emotional responses to disasters of any kind
5.anticipating potential disasters and practicing for them can help create what soon becomes an "automatic" response to threat as exemplified in teaching children to Stop-Drop-Roll should their clothing catch fire
In the end no one saved Dorothy or her companions in the face of threat and disaster, they saved themselves through a combination of heart, brains, courage, and friendship.
1 comment:
“I am Dorothy the Meek and the Mild”
How Dorothy was meek and mild and stood up to the wizard, and how people respond and react to disasters, disappointments, and people who experience other types of catastrophic trauma makes an interesting story. This is a great comparison with the social service industry and how people do not stand up for themselves, and how social workers stand up for them just like Dorothy did, and made friends a family. To some social workers are their family and they build a trusting relationship.
Looking at how people survive different trauma, disasters, and catastrophic events within the developmental stages of the life course perspective one begins to question the differences of “how one can survive and one cannot survive disasters” which was an article in Time magazine. The author gives tips and or suggestions on how to improve disaster personality and that affects the survivor personality. The survival personality of when someone has gone through something horrendous tends to have different perceptions, different perspectives, and different views within the life course perspective. There are many ways to improve a disaster personality, and the author of the article did an outstanding job of explaining great ways to improve a disaster personality. It was great for me to read, and very introspective at looking within self to see how to improve as an individual and was mending to the soul.
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