Survival Mode

I teach damaged children.  For the most part, they are children who did not get their needs adequately met.  These are the babies who cried in the crib and stopped crying when they realized that no one was going to come.  In healthy relationships, the mother or the father tend to the child and the child realizes that all of their needs are going to be met.  In the damaged child, they realize that their parents will not meet their need and they begin to try to meet their own needs in primitive ways.  A child cannot earn money, so they steal.  A child does not have power, so they manipulate.  A child cannot create their own reality so they fantasize.  A child also tantrums.  They go into panic mode and if not attended to properly, can do things that are absolutely ridiculous because they panic.  I have met adults in the same cycle.  They spend their whole lives in survival mode.  Extreme poverty, unsafe environments and lack of parental support have left some people still trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents.  Survival living is living on the most basic level in life.  The standard is not what is best for me or even what is good for me.  The standard is just what will keep me alive.  Unfortunately, these people then feel like they have the best on the most basic of levels because they are not starving.  They are in panic mode most of the time.  Most people are in their thinking brain and they move to the emotional stage for only a moment before they return to thinking.  The damaged person stays emotional and moves to panic when they think that they will have to live without their needs being met.  When the need is met, they don't come back to the "thinking" brain, they come back to the emotional brain.  That is the part of them that remains slightly "pissed" because they know they don't have paradise, but it sure ain't hell.  Heaven is called unrealistic and never achieved when you are in.............................survival mode.