A person's character can be recognized in an extreme situation. In a stressful situation, we are capable of miracles.

06.05.2020

Introduction

The history of studying the psychological, medical-psychological and psychosocial consequences of the impact on a person of various emergency circumstances has more than one decade. Well-known psychologists and psychiatrists W. James, P. Janet, Z. Freud, W. Frankl dealt with this topic one way or another. Psychoemotional states that develop in a person who has been in an extreme situation are also studied in domestic science within the framework of extreme psychology and the branch of psychiatry dealing with the problems of psychogeny8. However, most of the publications on this issue are thematically scattered.

An emergency situation is a situation in a certain territory that has developed as a result of an accident, natural hazard, catastrophe, natural or other disaster that may or have caused loss of life, damage to human health or environment, significant material losses and violation of the living conditions of people.

An extreme situation can be understood as changed, unusual and unusual conditions of a person's existence, for which his psychophysiological organization is not ready. IN social science there is still no unified theory that would describe the features of mental activity and human behavior in unusual conditions existence.

The emergency situation is:

functioning condition: external determination;

property, the state of the social systems themselves: internal determination.

To understand the mechanism of action of extreme situations, it is important to have a clear idea of their types and varieties. There are several approaches to identifying types of emergencies:

by the scale of the scope: local, municipal, intermunicipal, regional, interregional and federal;

by the dynamics of development and the time of elimination of consequences: strategic, leading quickly to catastrophic consequences, slowly developing, operational with a local nature of consequences;

by types of damage: with human casualties, with material damage;

according to the source of occurrence: natural, man-made, biological-social and military.

space and aviation flights;

deep sea diving;

stay in hard-to-reach areas of the globe;

stay deep underground (in mines);

natural disasters: floods, fires, hurricanes, snow drifts, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, rock falls, mountain snow avalanches, landslides and mudflows;

testing of new highly sophisticated equipment;

transport, industrial, ecological disasters;

war activities;

epidemics;

domestic disasters such as fires;

criminal situations: committing terrorist acts, taking hostages;

reactionary political upheavals;

riots, etc.

The criteria for classifying emergencies by scale are: the number of the affected population, the amount of material damage, as well as the boundaries of the zones of distribution of damaging factors. However, social resonance very often depends not on the number of victims, but on the conditions under which the disaster occurred. An example is the nuclear submarine Kursk, which sank in August 2000 in an accident that killed 118 people. As a result of numerous terrorist attacks committed on the territory of our country, man-made accidents and natural disasters, more people die, but these events do not receive such wide coverage in the media.

With the development of civilization, with the use of more and more new technologies, the progress of scientific research, the threat of man-made disasters is constantly increasing. In the world there are a large number of warehouses with stocks of combustible, explosive, highly toxic and radioactive substances. In addition, there is a huge amount of chemical and bacteriological weapons. All these stocks are stored for a long time, often without proper revision and disposal, the storage facilities are often in disrepair. Wear and tear of equipment often exceeds acceptable standards: for example, 40% of pipelines for pumping gas and oil have served their time. The zone of increased danger is transport communications, electric power facilities. It is believed that 30% of the population lives in dangerous areas, and 10% in extremely dangerous areas. In conditions of low technological discipline, chronic lack of financial and material resources to maintain fixed assets in working order, the likelihood of mass accidents, man-made disasters and other emergencies increases.

Questions of human psychology in emergency situations must be considered in order to prepare the population, rescuers, leaders for action in extreme situations.

When considering the issues of human behavior in emergency situations, much attention is paid to the psychology of fear. In everyday life, in extreme conditions, a person constantly has to overcome dangers that threaten his existence, which causes (generates) fear, i.e. short-term or long-term emotional process generated by real or imaginary danger. Fear is an alarm signal, but not just an alarm, but a signal that causes a person's likely protective actions.

Fear causes unpleasant sensations in a person - this is a negative effect of fear, but fear is also a signal, a command for individual or collective protection, since the main goal facing a person is to stay alive, to prolong his existence.

It should be borne in mind that the most frequent, significant and dynamic are the rash, unconscious actions of a person as a result of his reaction to danger.

The greatest danger to a person is represented by factors that can cause his death as a result of various aggressive influences - these are various physical, chemical, biological factors, high and low temperatures, ionizing (radioactive) radiation. All these factors require different ways of protecting a person and a group of people, i.e. individual and collective methods of protection, which include: the desire of a person to move away from the action of damaging factors (to run away from danger, protect himself with a screen, etc.); an energetic attack by a person of a source of possible damaging factors to weaken their action or destroy the source of possible damaging factors.

The special conditions in which a person may find himself, as a rule, cause him psychological and emotional tension. As a result, for some this is accompanied by the mobilization of internal vital resources; in others - a decrease or even a breakdown in working capacity, deterioration in health, physiological and psychological stressful11 phenomena. It depends on the individual characteristics of the organism, working conditions and upbringing, awareness of ongoing events and understanding of the degree of danger.

In all difficult situations, moral hardening and the mental state of a person play a decisive role. They determine readiness for conscious, confident and prudent actions at any critical moments.

1. The essence and content of the psychology of behavior in emergency situations

The psychology of states combines the vast experience of world psychological science in the field of the study of mental states. The psychology of states also includes the consideration of certain types of states, including those arising in emergency situations. Tension states (stress states) were studied by T.A. Nemchin, L.P. Grimak V.I. Lebedev. Emotional states arising in emergency situations were studied by A.O. Prokhorov, A Kempinski and others.

Among mental phenomena, one of the main places belongs to mental states. At the same time, despite the intensive study of the problem of mental states, a lot of it remains unclear. According to T.A. Nemchin, "successful development of this problem is necessary because mental states significantly determine the nature of human activity."

I.P. Pavlov believed that psychology is the science of our states, and that thanks to it one can imagine the whole complexity of the subjective.

Against the backdrop of controversy and a wide variety of opinions about the definition, composition, structures, functions, mechanisms, classifications and other problems associated with the mental state, many authors remain unanimous about the great, if not decisive, significance of research on this mental phenomenon for psychology. So, N.D. Levitov, who first put the concept of "mental state" in the status of a psychological category, believed that the solution of this problem fills the existing gap in psychology - the gap between the doctrine of mental processes and the mental properties of the individual. On this occasion, Yu.E. Sosnovikova writes: "It is impossible to understand the psyche as a whole without examining its specific integral manifestations in the form of mental states."

So, let's scroll through the works of different authors. There is a term "tense situations" - M.I. Dyachenko, L.A. Kandybovich, V.A. Ponomarenko, "extreme conditions" - L.G. Wild, "difficult situations" - A.V. Libin, “stress11 situations” - G. Selye, Kitaev-Smyk, “emergency situations - V.V. Avdeev, "emergency situations" - A.F. Maidykov, "abnormal conditions" - V.D. Tumanov, "special conditions" - S.A. Shapkin, L.G. Wild. The term "extreme situations" is used by the following authors: T.A. Nemchin, V.G. Androsyuk, V.I. Lebedev, G.V. Suvorov, M.P. Mingalieva, T.S. Nazarova, V.S. Shapovalenko and others.

Ukrainian scientists M.I. Dyachenko, L.A. Kandybovich, V.A. Ponomarenko also point out the importance of the subjective perception of an emergency (in their interpretation of a difficult) situation: “A tense situation is such a complication of the conditions of activity that has acquired special significance for the individual. In other words, complex objective conditions of activity become a tense situation when they are perceived, understood, evaluated by people as difficult, dangerous, etc. Any situation presupposes the involvement of the subject in it. This applies all the more to a tense situation that combines a certain content of objective activity with the needs, motives, goals, and relationships of a person. Consequently, a tense situation, like any situation, embodies the unity of the objective and the subjective. Objective - these are complicated conditions and the process of activity; subjective - state, attitudes, methods of action in dramatically changed circumstances. The common thing that characterizes tense situations is the emergence of a task that is quite difficult for the subject, a “difficult” mental state.

V.G. Androsyuk in his book "Pedagogy and Psychology" comes to the following conclusion: "an emergency is a state of the life system that is dangerous for life and health, unfavorable for the functioning of the human psyche and can cause tension."

Based on the foregoing, we list the main characteristics of an emergency:

This is an extreme situation, with a very strong impact that goes beyond the range of human capabilities.

These are complicated conditions of activity that are subjectively perceived, understood and evaluated by a person as difficult, dangerous, etc.

The situation causes the emergence of a rather difficult task for the subject, a “difficult” mental state.

An emergency situation leads to the emergence of a state of dynamic mismatch and requires maximum mobilization of the body's resources.

This situation causes negative functional states, violations of the psychological regulation of activity, and thereby reduces the efficiency and reliability of activity.

A person is faced with the impossibility of realizing his motives, aspirations, values, interests.

An emergency situation is dangerous to life and health, unfavorable for the functioning of the human psyche. Factors that generate mental tension can in some cases have a positive mobilizing effect on a person, and in others - a negative, disorganizing effect. Let us consider the positive, mobilizing changes in the emotional, cognitive and behavioral spheres of a person caused by the impact of such situations.

According to V.G. Androsyuk, such changes include:

-decrease in thresholds of sensations, acceleration of sensitive and motor reactions. A person shows the ability to more accurately assess stimuli, quickly responds to all changes in environmental conditions;

-reduced fatigue, -disappearance or dulling of the feeling of fatigue. A person increases endurance and performance, manifests unpretentiousness in uncomfortable situational conditions;

-increased readiness for decisive and bold action. Volitional qualities are manifested, the decision-making stage is reduced, forecasting the development of the situation is optimally combined with sound risk;

-activation of business motives, sense of duty. A person has a business excitement, the final and intermediate goals of activity are defined clearly and unambiguously;

-activation of cognitive activity. A person shows sharpness of perception, actively turns on the reserves of operational and long-term memory. Updated Creative skills, thinking is characterized by dynamism, flexibility, active and successful search for non-standard solutions. Intuition is widely used.

-showing interest and enthusiasm. In solving problems, a person mobilizes his psychological capabilities and special abilities.

The ability to withstand an emergency has three components:

Physiological stability due to the state of the physical and physiological qualities of the body (constitutional features, type of nervous system, autonomic plasticity);

Mental stability due to training and the general level of personality traits (special skills of action in an extreme situation, the presence of positive motivation, etc.);

Psychological readiness (active state, mobilization of all forces and capabilities for the upcoming actions).

Different authors give different definitions of the concept of "mental state". Some of them, for example, James, identify the concepts of "state" and "process", others reduce the concept of "mental state" to the concept of "state of consciousness", others, one way or another, connect the mental state with the characteristics of the emotional sphere.

It seems that the most complete definition of the mental state of D.N. Levitova: "this is an integral characteristic of mental activity for a certain period of time, showing the originality of the course of mental processes depending on the reflected objects and phenomena of reality, previous states and mental properties of the individual." An analysis of the behavior and state of a person in an extreme situation shows that the most powerful stimulus leading to erroneous actions is the incompleteness of information.

P.V. Simonov developed the information theory of emotions, according to which, with a shortage of available information, a negative emotion appears, reaching a maximum in the case of a complete absence of information. Positive emotion occurs when the available information exceeds the information needed to satisfy a given need. Thus, in a number of cases, the knowledge and awareness of the individual remove emotions, change the emotional mood and mental state of the individual, open access to the internal resources of a person.

"Will is a person's conscious regulation of his behavior and activities, associated with overcoming internal and external obstacles." Overcoming obstacles by a person requires volitional effort - a special state of neuropsychic tension that mobilizes his physical, intellectual and moral forces. Will manifests itself as a person's confidence in his abilities, as the determination to perform the act that he considers appropriate and necessary in a particular situation.

Since the state is a multidimensional phenomenon, any state can be described by a wide range of parameters. One or the other parameter can be the leading one. What state parameters come to the fore in an emergency? First of all, tension.

Tension in the Dictionary of Psychology by J. Drever is defined as “a feeling of tension, tension, general feeling imbalance and readiness to change behavior when faced with some threatening situational factor. Such factors can be increased workload, lack of time, lack of information, etc. According to L.V. Kulikov, it is these factors that are the real cause of tension, and not the experiences caused by them, which are a natural reaction to the situation. Therefore, with the interpretation of emotions as a cause of tension, according to L.V. Kulikov, it is difficult to fully agree. The role of emotion is quite accurately defined by A.V. Zaporozhets, who wrote that emotion is not the process of activation itself, but a special form of reflection of reality, through which the mental control of activation is carried out, or, it would be more correct to say, the mental regulation of the general direction and dynamics of behavior is carried out.

2. Mental states of people in extreme situations

Mental states of people in extreme situations are diverse. At the initial moment, the reaction of people is predominantly of a vital orientation, due to the instinct of self-preservation. The level of expediency of such reactions is different in different individuals - from panic and senseless to consciously purposeful.

Sometimes people experience a state of psychogenic anesthesia (no feeling of pain) in the first five to ten minutes after injuries, burns, while maintaining a clear consciousness and the ability to rational activity, which allows some of the victims to escape. In persons with an increased sense of responsibility, the duration of psychogenic anesthesia in individual cases reaches 15 minutes, even with the area of burn lesions up to 40% of the body surface. At the same time, hypermobilization of psychophysiological reserves and physical forces can be noted. Some victims, as evidenced by disaster medicine, are able to get out of an overturned car with a jammed compartment entrance, literally tearing apart the roof partitions with their bare hands.

Hypermobilization in the initial period is inherent in almost all people, but if it is combined with a state of panic, it may not lead to the salvation of people.

Extreme situations are characterized by a number of significant psychogenic8 features that have a destructive, devastating effect on the human somatics and psyche. These include the following psychogenic8 factors:

Panic is one of the mental states inherent in extreme situations. It is characterized by defects in thinking, the loss of conscious control and understanding of ongoing events, the transition to instinctive defensive movements, actions that may partially or completely not correspond to the situation. A person rushes about, not realizing what he is doing, or becomes numb, numb, there is a loss of orientation, a violation of the relationship between the main and secondary actions, the collapse of the structure of actions and operations, an aggravation of the defensive reaction, refusal to act, etc. This causes and exacerbates the severity of the consequences of the situation .

Altered afferentation is a specific response of the body in dramatically changed, unusual conditions of existence. It is clearly manifested when exposed to weightlessness, high or low temperatures, high or low pressure. It can be accompanied (except for vegetative reactions) by severe disorders of self-awareness, orientation in space.

Affectation is a strong and relatively short-term neuropsychic excitation. It is characterized by an altered emotional state associated with a change in important for the subject life circumstances. Outwardly, it manifests itself in pronounced movements, violent emotions, accompanied by changes in the functions of internal organs, loss of volitional control. Occurs in response to an event that has already occurred and is shifted to its end. At the heart of affectation lies the experienced state of internal conflict, generated by the contradictions between the demands made on a person and the possibilities to fulfill them.

Agiotation is an affective reaction that occurs in response to a threat to life, an emergency, and other psychogenic factors. It manifests itself in the form of severe anxiety, anxiety, loss of focus on actions. A person fusses and is able to perform only simple automated actions. There is a feeling of emptiness and lack of thoughts, the ability to reason, to establish complex connections between phenomena is disturbed. This is accompanied by vegetative disorders: pallor, rapid breathing, palpitations, hand tremors, etc. Agiotia is regarded as a pre-pathological condition within the psychological norm. In emergency situations among rescuers, firefighters, and representatives of other professions associated with risk, it is often perceived as confusion.

Monotony is a functional state that occurs during prolonged monotonous work. It is characterized by a decrease in the general level of activity, loss of conscious control over the performance of actions, deterioration of attention and short-term memory, a decrease in sensitivity to external stimuli, a predominance of stereotypical movements and actions, a feeling of boredom, drowsiness, lethargy, apathy, loss of interest in the environment.

Desynchronosis is a mismatch between the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness, which leads to asthenia of the nervous system and the development of neuroses.

A change in the perception of the spatial structure is a state that occurs in situations where there are no objects at all in a person's field of vision.

Restriction of information, especially personally significant, is a condition that contributes to the development of emotional instability.

Solitary social isolation (for a long time) is a manifestation of loneliness, one of the forms of which is the “creation of an interlocutor”: a person “communicates” with photographs of loved ones, with inanimate objects. The allocation of a "partner" for communication in conditions of loneliness is a defensive reaction within the framework of a psychological norm, but this phenomenon is a kind of model of a split personality in the conditions of a prolonged extreme situation.

Group social isolation (for a long time) is a state of high emotional tension, the cause of which may also be the fact that people are forced to constantly be in front of each other. Women are especially sensitive to this factor. Under normal conditions, a person is used to hiding from other people his thoughts and feelings that overwhelm him at one time or another. In conditions of group isolation, this is either difficult or impossible. The lack of the opportunity to be alone with oneself requires a person to have increased composure and control over his actions, and when such control weakens, many people can experience a kind of complex of physical and mental openness, nakedness, which causes emotional tension. Another specific psychogenic factor that operates under conditions of group isolation is the information exhaustion of communication partners. To avoid conflicts, people limit communication with each other and go into their own inner world.

Sensory isolation - the absence of human exposure to visual, sound, tactile, taste and other signals. Under normal conditions, a person extremely rarely encounters such a phenomenon and therefore does not realize the significance of the effects of stimuli on receptors, does not realize how important its workload is for the normal functioning of the brain. If the brain is not loaded enough, then the so-called sensory hunger, sensory deprivation,10 occurs, when a person experiences an acute need for a variety of perceptions of the world around him. In conditions of sensory insufficiency, the imagination begins to work hard, extracting bright, colorful images from the arsenals of memory. These vivid representations to some extent compensate for the sensory sensations characteristic of ordinary conditions, and allow a person to maintain mental balance for a long time. With an increase in the duration of sensory hunger, the influence of intellectual processes also weakens. Extreme situations are characterized by unstable activity of people, which affects their mental status. There are, in particular, a decrease in mood (lethargy, apathy, lethargy), sometimes replaced by euphoria, irritability, sleep disturbance, inability to concentrate, i.e. weakening of attention, deterioration of memory and mental performance in general. All this leads to the exhaustion of the nervous system.

Sensory hyperactivation is the impact on a person of visual, sound, tactile, olfactory, gustatory and other signals, in their strength or intensity significantly exceeding the sensitivity thresholds for this person.

A threat to human health and life itself through deprivation of food, water, sleep, infliction of grievous bodily harm, etc. Great importance has a study of the mental state of people who have a life-threatening factor. It can cause various mental reactions - from acute anxiety to neurosis and psychosis. One of the conditions for a person's adaptation to a situation associated with a threat to life is readiness for instant action, which helps to avoid accidents and disasters. The state of mental instability under these conditions arises as a result of asthenization2 of the nervous system by various shocks. This condition is often manifested in people whose previous activities did not differ in mental tension. In life-threatening conditions, two forms of reaction are clearly distinguished: a state of agitation and a short-term stupor (a short-term stupor is characterized by a sudden stupor, freezing in place, while intellectual activity is preserved). In some cases, these factors act in combination, which greatly enhances their destructive impact. Usually, extreme situations are characterized by mass manifestations of psycho-emotional stress.

3. External manifestations, characteristics and classification of psycho-emotional states

If we consider psycho-emotional states from a physiological point of view, it should be noted that they have a reflex nature. Although the vast majority of their conditioned reflex origin. For example, an operational officer on duty who is accustomed to working in a certain mode, before taking over the shift, has a state of optimal readiness for activity, he enters the rhythm of work from the very first minute.

The basis of mental and psycho-emotional states is a certain ratio of nervous processes (from episodic to stable, typical for a given person) in the cerebral cortex. Under the influence of a combination of external and internal stimuli, a certain general tone of the cortex, its functional level, arises. The physiological states of the cortex are called phase states. After the cessation of the actions of the stimuli that caused this or that state, it persists for some time or affects the formation of new or the actualization of old conditioned reflex connections in the cerebral cortex. These states of the cortex, in turn, can be conditioned stimuli, signaling any changes that are important for the adaptation of the organism to the environment and subsequently, in similar situations, accelerate the adaptation of the psyche to non-ordinary conditions.

Mental states are outwardly manifested in changes in breathing and blood circulation, in facial expressions, pantomime, movements, gestures, intonation features of speech, etc. So in a state of pleasure there is an increase in the frequency and amplitude of breathing, dissatisfaction causes a decrease in both; breathing in an excited state becomes frequent and deep; in tense - slow and weak; anxious - accelerated and weak; in a state of fear - sharply slowed down, and with unexpected surprise, breathing instantly becomes frequent, but retains normal amplitude.

In an excited state or a state of intense expectation (often caused by situations of an extreme nature), the frequency and strength of the pulse can increase, the value of blood pressure in a very wide range (depending on the strength of the impact of the situation that has arisen). The change in blood circulation is usually accompanied by blanching or reddening of the human body.

An indicator of a person's emotional state is often his movements and actions (we judge fatigue by uncertain or sluggish movements, and cheerfulness by sharp and energetic ones). Facial expressions are also capable of expressing very subtle shades of feelings. The speaker's voice can also provide significant data on his psycho-emotional state.

Psycho-emotional states are complex, integral, dynamic formations that largely determine the originality of all mental activity (the course of processes, the manifestation of properties) of a person in a given period of time. Psycho-emotional states have the following features:

Integrity. Although the states relate mainly to a certain area of the psyche (cognitive, emotional, volitional), they characterize mental activity in general for a certain period of time.

Mobility and relative stability. Psycho-emotional states are changeable: they have a beginning, an end, dynamics. They are, of course, less constant than personality traits, but more stable and measured in larger units of time than mental processes.

Direct and immediate relationship with mental processes and personality traits. In the structure of the psyche, psycho-emotional states are located between the processes and properties of the personality. They arise as a result of the reflective activity of the brain. But once having arisen, psychoemotional states, on the one hand, affect mental processes (determine the tone and pace of reflective activity, the selectivity of sensations, perceptions, the productivity of a person’s thinking, etc.), on the other hand, they are " construction material"for the formation of personality traits. Psycho-emotional states serve as a background that contributes to the manifestation of personality traits or their disguise. For example, the state of expectation of a battle experienced in pre-combat conditions is characterized in the field of sensations and perceptions, memory and thinking, disordered volitional activity, which is not characteristic of them in At the same time, mental states are influenced by previous states and personality traits.

Individual originality and typicality. The psycho-emotional states of each person are unique, since they are inextricably linked with the individual characteristics of the personality, its moral and other features. Thus it is common for a person of a sanguine temperament to exaggerate successes and interpret everything in a bright light, because an elevated state is typical of him. Personality traits and experienced psycho-emotional states do not always, but often correspond to each other. What is sometimes taken as a personality trait turns out to be atypical for a given person, a temporary state. For example, depression can be not only a stable personality trait of a melancholic temperament, but also manifest itself as a condition caused in a person by troubles at work or in the family.

Variety of psycho-emotional states. There is an incredible variety of personality states of a psycho-emotional nature. Not even a complete list of them allows us to judge this: surprise and bewilderment, confusion and concentration, hope and hopelessness, despondency and cheerfulness, enthusiasm and excitement, indecision and determination, tension and calmness, etc.

Polarity. As could be understood from the description of the previous quality, each state corresponds to the opposite. Thus, activity is opposed by passivity, certainty by uncertainty, decisiveness by indecision. The polarity of psycho-emotional states, the rapid transition of a person from one state to the opposite is especially pronounced in unusual (extreme) situations.

All states of a psycho-emotional nature are grouped for various reasons. According to the correspondence to the main states of higher nervous activity, one can distinguish between the optimal, excited and depressive state. For example, a "normal alert state" with a balance between the processes of excitation and inhibition can be taken as the basis for an optimal psycho-emotional state in which a person's activity is active and most productive.

Currently, it is customary to distinguish between states:

Active and passive;

Creative and reproductive;

Partial (partial) and general condition;

Conditions caused by selective excitation and inhibition in the cortex and subcortex of the brain (activity of the subcortex and inhibition of the cortex gives rise to a hysterical state6, and, conversely, inhibition of the subcortex when the cortex is excited - asthenic3, etc.).

On a purely psychological basis, psycho-emotional states are classified into intellectual, volitional and combined.

Depending on the occupation of the individual, the states are divided into states in combat, educational, labor, sports and other types of activity.

According to the role in the structure of the personality, the states can be situational, personal and group. Situational states express the features of the situation that caused a person to react uncharacteristic of his mental activity. Personal and collective (group) are states that are typical, inherent in this particular person or team.

According to the depth of experiences, they distinguish between deep and superficial. For example, passion is a deeper state than mood.

According to the nature of the influence on the individual, the collective state is divided into positive and negative. Conditions that negatively affect a person and a team are often the cause of a psychological barrier between people. Conditions that positively affect mental activity increase the effectiveness of communication.

According to the duration of the course, the states are long-term and short-term. The homesickness of people traveling on long business trips can last up to several weeks until they get used to the new conditions.

According to the degree of awareness, states can be more or less conscious.

4. Post-traumatic stress disorder

The psychological aspects of experiencing traumatic stress11 and its consequences are studied, as a rule, in the context of general problems of human activity in extreme conditions, studies of the adaptive capabilities of a person and his stress tolerance12.

The results of such studies, as it were, focus the social, natural, technological, individual psychological, environmental and medical aspects of human existence in modern world.

The history of research in this area dates back several decades, but their intensity has especially increased due to the problems of adaptation of American veterans of the Vietnam War, soldiers of the Soviet Army who participated in the hostilities in the territory of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, military personnel of the armed forces and specialized units of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, who took part in countering illegal bandit formations on the territory of the Chechen Republic.

The results of numerous studies have shown that the condition developing under the influence of psychological traumatic stress11 did not fall into any of the classifications available in clinical practice. The consequences of an injury could appear suddenly, after a long time, against the background of the general external well-being of a person, and over time, the deterioration of the condition became more and more pronounced. Many different symptoms of such a change in condition have been described, but for a long time clear criteria for its diagnosis have not been developed. Also, there was no single name for its designation.

Only by 1980 was accumulated and analyzed enough to generalize the amount of information obtained in the course of experimental studies. The complex of symptoms seen in those who have experienced traumatic stress11 has been termed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The criteria for diagnosing this disorder were included in the American National Diagnostic Psychiatric Standard (Diagnostical and Statistical Mannual of Mental Disorders) and are still preserved in it. Since 1994, these criteria have been included in the European diagnostic standard ICD-10.

The main symptoms of PTSD are grouped into three criteria groups:

Obsessive experiences of a traumatic event (illusions, delusions, nightmares);

The desire to avoid any events and experiences associated with traumatic events, the development of detachment, alienation from real life;

A high and increasing level of emotional arousal, manifested in a complex of hypertrophied psychophysiological reactions.

In addition, the presence of a severe traumatic event is a prerequisite for making a diagnosis. The duration of manifestation of each of the above symptoms should be at least a month from the moment of their initial appearance.

In psychology, the consequences of the impact on a person of such traumatic events as various industrial and natural disasters (fires, floods, earthquakes) are quite well studied. A wealth of material has also been accumulated on the study of victims of various forms of violence against a person. All these types of psychic trauma have a similar etiology - they are all based on the impact of the so-called "acute" stress11, which has an eventful nature, similar characteristics also have effects on the human psyche and other extreme situations (for example, fighting).

The source of psychological traumatization of the personal is various events that take place in the course of service, which can be classified as critical. The definition of a critical incident, accepted by many authors, is given by the American researcher J. Mitchell (1991). "A critical incident is any situation encountered in practice that causes unusually strong emotional reactions that may adversely affect the performance of duties either immediately on the spot or later."

Critical incidents include such and only such events that expose a person to physical (and, or psychological) danger and are capable of causing negative psychological consequences requiring the adoption of special measures to assist their participants or eyewitnesses.

Often this concept is identified with the concept of "psychological trauma", which has a somewhat broader content. But nevertheless, speaking of the experienced critical incident, they mean the fact that the person has undergone psychic traumatization.

Psychological trauma is usually understood as a relatively short-term powerful stress11 impact of an external force on an individual, or his prolonged stay in extreme conditions. It is distinguished by the following characteristics:

the cause is always outside the individual, in external circumstances;

the impact is accompanied by an experience of intense fear, even horror;

circumstances violate the usual life stereotype, contain a real threat to life itself or health;

the individual may feel his own helplessness in the face of external circumstances.

The psychological reaction to trauma includes three relatively independent phases, which allows us to characterize it as a process deployed in time. The phase - the phase of psychological shock contains two main components:

Inhibition of activity, disorientation in the environment, disorganization of activity;

Denial of what happened (a kind of protective reaction of the psyche). Normally, this phase is rather short-term. The phase - the impact phase is characterized by pronounced emotional reactions to the event and its consequences. It can be strong fear, horror, anxiety, anger, crying, accusation - emotions that are characterized by immediacy of manifestation and extreme intensity. Gradually, these emotions are replaced by a reaction of criticism or self-doubt. It proceeds according to the type: "what would happen if ..." and is accompanied by a painful state of the inevitability of what happened, the recognition of one's own powerlessness and self-flagellation. A typical example is the feeling of "survival guilt" widely described in the literature, often reaching the level of deep depression. A similar reaction was observed by members of the emergency psychiatric care team of the Ministry of Internal Affairs among the police officers in Spitak and Leninakan during the period of liquidation of the consequences of the earthquake in Armenia. It is quite typical in combat situations or during special operations in cases where subunits have suffered heavy losses.

The phase under consideration is critical in the sense that after it either the process of rehabilitation begins (reaction, acceptance of reality, adaptation to newly arisen circumstances), i.e. Phase III - the phase of normal response, or there is a fixation on the injury and subsequent chronification of the post-stress state. The dynamics of the psychological state of the affected person is determined both by the totality of his individual psychological characteristics, and by the influence of microsocial, socio-psychological factors, and specific life circumstances.

According to the observations of specialists, in the event of a particular crisis situation, among those affected by it and who have not undergone special training, reactions such as apathy, lethargy, poor understanding of what is happening and the speech addressed to them, helplessness, panic behavior, little predictable behavior, flight from danger, loss of orientation in the environment. After the events in about 80% of cases, people are able to independently cope with the post-stress state, overcome it, while the rest need special psychological or psychiatric assistance.

The severity of psychological trauma and the post-traumatic state is determined by a number of factors, primarily by the very scale and severity of the events experienced, the number of victims, the presence of dead friends or relatives, and the amount of material damage. In addition, it depends on:

Features of a personal warehouse - resistance to stress;

Previous experience of experiencing crisis situations, preparedness for their occurrence;

The presence of social support (from family, friends, colleagues, management, social workers, psychologists, psychotherapists, etc.)

The fact that some of these factors can be controlled and purposefully modified, and therefore the occurrence of severe post-stress conditions as a result of trauma is not fatal, determines the expediency of timely psychological assistance to those affected by the impact on the psyche of an extreme situation.

Foreign authors usually distinguish between two types of conditions that arise as a result of the activities of rescuers with a high probability of causing psychological stress, other forms of psycho-emotional maladjustment: situations of professional stress and the "burnout phenomenon".

It was noted among employees who have been in extreme situations and participated in the liquidation of catastrophic events that as a result of this emotionally intense and sometimes physically difficult activity, they often develop a special psychological state, which is described in special literature as a "burnout phenomenon". It manifests itself in the form of a kind of emotional exhaustion, a temporary loss of a person's sense of his integrity and value, a decrease in the level of emotional and physical activity. The reason for the emergence of such a state is the impact of a number of situational, personal and professional stresses11 inherent in activities in emergency conditions. At the same time, many of them subsequently noted increased motivation for this kind of activity, including within the framework of their professions and services, that is, some people who experienced a state of stress11 in an extreme situation expressed their readiness to subsequently take part in risk-related actions again. and high psycho-emotional stress.

5. Psychosomatic manifestations of the impact of an extreme situation

.1 Influence of emotions on physiological processes

The term "psychosomatics" was first proposed by the German physician Johann Heinroth in 1818. He used this term to refer to the relationship between the physical ailments of patients and their mental suffering.

Heinroth's followers believed that all bodily diseases have psychological causes. Psychosomatics was originally presented precisely as "psychosomatic medicine".

The history of psychosomatics, as a branch of science, begins with the psychoanalytic concept of Z. Freud. The study of psychosomatic phenomena was carried out by such scientists as F. Alexander, A. Lowen, W. Reich, M. Feldenkrais, G. Selye, M.E. Sandomiersky, S.A. Kulakov, psychotherapist N. Pezeshkian and others.

Psychosomatics (from the Greek Psyche - soul + soma - body) is a bodily manifestation of emotions (the imbalance of which results in psychosomatic illnesses), as well as a reflection of other subconscious processes, a bodily channel of conscious-subconscious communication. In this context, the body is presented as a kind of screen onto which the symbolic messages of the subconscious are projected. The relationship of the body ("soma") and the psyche is always two-way. Healing of bodily ailments can be achieved by working through the psychological causes that gave rise to them, and the reverse is equally true.

Psychosomatics, as a branch of science, explores the influence of emotions on physiological processes and behavioral responses associated with diseases, psychological mechanisms that affect physiological functions.

Psychosomatic manifestation is an approach that takes into account the diversity of the causes that led to the disease. Hence the variety of methods and techniques that allow you to work with a person holistically. The psychosomatic9 approach begins when the patient ceases to be only a carrier of a diseased organ and is considered holistically.

Psychosomatic disorder - means a somatic disease that is caused by psychological factors or whose manifestations have become aggravated as a result of their influence.

The founder of the method of positive psychotherapy, Doctor of Medical Sciences N. Pezeshkian, believes that psychological problems are the basis of somatic diseases. In his book Psychosomatics and Positive Psychotherapy, he describes 40 diseases that are directly related to psychological causes.

Bronchial asthma;

Skin diseases and allergies;

Hypertension and hypotension;

Headache and migraine;

Schizophrenia and depression;

Sleep disturbance;

Swallowing disorders and coughing, etc.

A number of people experience fear for their state of health (hypochondria), fear of cancer (carcinophobia), etc.

With depressive disorders, patients often complain of heart and headaches, pain in the shoulder girdle and back, digestive problems, sleep disturbance and appetite. As well as complaints about disorders in the sexual sphere.

Stress is one type of emotional state.

As Perova E.I. writes, initially the concept of stress arose in physiology to denote non-specific reactions of the body (“general adaptation syndrome”) in response to any adverse effect.

Stress reactivity includes an increase in the level of cholesterol in the blood serum, an increase in respiratory and cardiac rhythms, an increase in muscle tension, blood pressure, etc.

Zolotova T.N. considers that the following manifestations of stress are characteristic at the physiological level:

increased blood pressure;

pain in the region of the heart;

pain in the abdomen;

heartbeat;

back pain;

pain in the neck and head;

spasms in the throat, swallowing disorder;

numbness and tingling in the arms and legs;

the occurrence of cramps of the calf muscles;

short-term visual impairment, etc.

R. Naydiffer describes the reaction of people with a high degree of anxiety at the physiological level. In some, the muscles of the neck and shoulders reflexively tighten, in others, the muscles of the back or legs. Very often observed with a high degree of anxiety, discomfort in the stomach. Some people feel an increase in heart rate, while others, on the contrary, slow it down. In some cases, drowsiness appears.

Franz Alexander, author of "Psychosomatic Medicine", described seven psychosomatic diseases, explaining their occurrence by hereditary predisposition, lack of emotional warmth in the family and strong emotional experiences of adulthood.

In his opinion, the sympathetic reactions of the nervous system lead to high blood pressure, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, thyroid disease and headaches. The parasympathetic response leads to ulcers, diarrhea, inflammation of the colon, and constipation. He drew attention to the fact that diseases of the heart arteries most often occur in doctors, lawyers and employees of executive bodies.

Currently, a number of psychosomatic disorders that are of psychogenic8 origin have been identified: obesity, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, bronchial asthma, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, hypertension, cardiac neurosis, gastroenteritis, etc.

Age-related psychosomatic manifestations and children's response to various inadequate relationships with their mother are also highlighted. These can be stomach cramps, eating disorders, sudden violent crying that occurs in the presence of a person who may show pity for the child and react to the child's behavior.

The causes of painful symptoms in middle-aged people are very closely intertwined with conflict situations that people had over a long period of life before the onset of the disease. These can be both macrotraumas and microtraumas, which can be at the level of everyday problems, such as the accuracy or punctuality of a partner, a trip in crowded transport, financial difficulties, etc.

5.2 Classification of psychosomatic consequences of exposure to extreme situations

It is of interest to classify the psychosomatic consequences of the impact of extreme situations on a person in terms of the main dynamic stages. These steps are the following.

Non-pathological psychophysiological reaction.

Usually lasts for several days. At the psychological level, it is characterized by emotional stress, decompensation (sharpening) of personal accentuations, sleep disturbance. At the social level, it is characterized by a critical assessment of what is happening, purposeful activity. The reaction is transient.

Psychogenic8 adaptive response. Lasts up to six months. At the psychological level, it is characterized by a neurotic level of disorders, asthenic, depressive and hysterical syndromes. At the social level, it is characterized by a decrease in the critical assessment of what is happening and the possibilities of purposeful activity, the emergence of interpersonal conflicts.

neurotic state. Lasts three to five years. At the psychological level, it is characterized by neuroses, exhaustion, obsessive-compulsive states, hysteria6. At the social level, he is characterized by the loss of critical understanding and the possibilities of purposeful activity, a high degree of inconsistency and mismatch of the values of the personality structure, and interpersonal conflicts. The neurotic state is transformed into the neurotic development of the personality.

Pathological development of personality. Manifested through three to five stable neurotic disorders. At the psychological level, it is characterized by acute affective-shock reactions, a twilight state of consciousness, motor excitation or, on the contrary, lethargy, and mental disorders. At the social level, this leads to a general disintegration of the personality structure, to a personal catastrophe.

6. Consequences of extreme situations for victims

.1 Forms of behavior of victims of an extreme situation

behavior extreme situation affectation

Behavioral strategies are revealed in various forms of adaptation, which are closely related to the problem of health versus disease. This continuum is integral to the individual's life path. The multifunctionality and multidirectionality of the life path determine the interconnection and interdependence of the processes of somatic, personal and social functioning. Thus, the adaptation process includes various levels human life activity. The variety of events in the modern world contributes to the complexity of the behavior of the individual in them and increases the likelihood of their pathogenic impact.

Personally oriented forms of behavior of victims in extreme situations include the following:

Suicide is a conscious act of elimination from life under the influence of acute psychotraumatic situations, when one's own life as the highest value loses its meaning for a person. The meaning of life - as a basic motivational tendency is aimed at understanding the essence of one's own personality and its place in life, its life purpose. The meaning of life is the most important engine of personality development; on its basis, the personality chooses and forms its own life path, plans, goals, aspirations in accordance with certain principles. Suicide is an act of suicide committed by a person in a state of severe mental disorder or under the influence of mental illness. The causes of suicides are diverse and rooted both in the personality deformations of the subject and the psycho-traumatic environment surrounding him, and in the socio-economic and moral organization of society.

Apathy is a state characterized by emotional passivity, indifference, simplification of feelings, indifference to oneself and loved ones, to the events of the surrounding reality and the weakening of motives and interests, a sharp weakening of attention. Apathy occurs against the background of reduced physical and psychological activity and can be short-term or long-term. Formed mainly as a result of fatigue, exhaustion, or a long-term mental disorder, this condition sometimes occurs with certain organic brain lesions, with dementia, and also as a result of a prolonged somatic illness. Outwardly similar state of depression in neuroses differs from apathy. At present, the problem of social apathy arising as a result of a personal crisis in an era of social crisis and covering the widest strata of the population is relevant.

Autism is an extreme form of psychological alienation. It is expressed in the removal, "withdrawal", "escape" of the individual from contacts with reality and immersion in the closed world of his own experiences. In a state of autism in an individual:

the ability to arbitrarily control one's thinking, to disconnect from painful thoughts is reduced;

there are attempts to avoid any contact;

the need for joint activities disappears;

the ability to intuitively understand others, to play the roles of others is lost;

there is an inadequate emotional response to the behavior of others.

Other forms of behavior of victims in extreme situations are as follows:

Unmotivated vigilance. The victim is closely watching everything that happens around him, as if he is constantly in danger.

Explosive reaction. At the slightest surprise, the victim makes rapid movements: throws himself to the ground at the sound of a low-flying aircraft or helicopter, turns around sharply and assumes a protective pose if someone approaches him from behind, etc.

Dullness of emotional manifestations. Completely or partially the victim loses the ability to emotional manifestations. He has difficulty establishing close or friendly ties with others. Joy, love, creativity, spontaneity, fun and games are not available to him.

General anxiety. The victim has constant anxiety and preoccupation, paranoid phenomena, for example, fear of persecution. In emotional experiences - a constant feeling of fear, self-doubt.

Outbursts of rage. It is attacks, even outbursts of rage, that occur in the victim, and not bursts of moderate anger.

6.2 Periods in the dynamics of the development of post-traumatic mental disorders

In the dynamics of the development of an extreme situation and, as a result, post-traumatic mental disorders, there are three periods that are closely related to the organization of rescue operations and the provision of material, medical and psychological assistance to the victims.

The first period is acute. It lasts from the beginning of the impact of the situation to the organization of rescue operations. The main traumatic factors:

a sudden threat to one's own life;

physical injury to the victim;

physical injury or death of close relatives;

severe damage or loss of property and other material values.

non-pathological neurotic; it is based on fear, mental tension, anxiety;

appropriate behavior is maintained;

acute reactive psychoses in the form of affective-shock states with motor excitation or lethargy;

loss of control over their actions among victims;

a change in the state of "petrification", inactivity with aimless movements, flight, screams, a state of panic.

The second period is the organization of rescue operations, the establishment of a relatively normal life in extreme conditions from the beginning to the end of rescue operations.

The main traumatic factor is the expectation of repeated physical and mental impacts due to the loss of relatives and friends, family separation, loss of property, the need to identify dead relatives, and the discrepancy between what was expected and the results of rescue operations.

The main mental reactions of the participants:

maintaining adequate self-esteem and the ability to purposeful activities;

gradual weakening of affective-shock states and a decrease in the depth of their manifestations;

inadequate behavior of the victims;

inappropriate motor actions;

a state of numbness;

manifestation of phobic neuroses13, for example, fear of enclosed spaces (the victims refuse to enter the car, the tent).

The third period is the evacuation of victims to safe areas. The main traumatic factors:

change in life stereotype;

fear for the state of their health and the health of loved ones;

experiencing the loss of loved ones, separation of families, material losses.

The main mental reactions of the participants:

psycho-emotional stress;

sharpening of character traits;

phobic neuroses;

neurotic personality development;

increased use of alcohol, tobacco, medicines, drugs;

activation of interpersonal contacts;

normalization of the emotional coloring of speech, restoration of dreams;

an increase in conflict situations.

People who escaped in an extreme situation for a long time experience certain pathological changes in their mental sphere(post-traumatic syndrome). Among the psychopathological changes after trauma in people, the following are most common:

Violations of memory and concentration of perception. Victims have difficulty concentrating or remembering something.

Unwanted memories. Terrible scenes associated with a psychotraumatic situation suddenly pop up in the memory of the victim. In reality, these memories arise in cases where the environment is somewhat reminiscent of what happened "at that time", i.e. during a traumatic event. These signals can be smells, sights, sounds that seem to have come from “there”. Unwanted traumatic memories are accompanied by intense feelings of anxiety and fear.

Nightmares. Dreams of this kind are usually of two types:

some, with the accuracy of video recordings, convey the traumatic event as it was imprinted in the memory of the person who survived it;

others only vaguely resemble the traumatic event. A person awakens from such a dream completely broken, with tense muscles, in copious sweat.

hallucinatory experiences.

A special kind of unsolicited memories of traumatic events, when what happened is so vivid that the events of the current moment seem to recede to the periphery of consciousness and seem less real than memories. In this detached state, a person behaves as if he is re-experiencing a past traumatic event: he acts, thinks, feels like at the moment when he had to save his life.

Insomnia. Difficulty falling asleep and interrupted sleep. It is believed that a person himself involuntarily resists falling asleep when he is visited by hallucinations. He is afraid to fall asleep, so as not to see a terrible dream again. Insomnia can also be caused by very high levels of anxiety, a person's inability to relax, or a persistent feeling of physical or heartache.

Survivor's Guilt. The feeling of guilt arises from the fact that the victim survived in an extreme situation that cost the lives of others, especially relatives or close relatives, friends that were extremely important to him.

It is believed that this condition is typical for those who suffer more from "emotional deafness", i.e. inability to experience joy, love, compassion after a traumatic event.

A strong sense of guilt provokes bouts of auto-aggressive behavior.

In extreme situations, different social groups are involved - the actual victims of situations and their rescuers, each of these groups has somewhat similar, and in some ways different personality-oriented forms of behavior.

7. Forms of behavior of rescuers in extreme situations

The psyche of rescuers is also subjected to serious tests during and after rescue operations. People experience fear and horror from what they see (according to some estimates, up to 98% of participants):

nightmares, insomnia at night, daytime sleepiness, depressed mood (50%);

dizziness, fainting, headaches, nausea, vomiting (20%).

Other, specific, forms of reaction among rescuers have also been noticed:

Irritability. It occurs when one feels one's powerlessness, the inability to do something. The effectiveness of efforts (often subjectively) falls. A person begins to get angry for no reason at someone or at anything around him, swears, falls into a rage.

Failure to act correctly. Suddenly, a person finds that he cannot work normally, and he himself does not know why this is happening. He is unable to remember what his tasks are, he does not know where to start this or that business. He asks others for help and at the same time does not want to show that he is not able to do a good job.

Anxiety. The person is extremely busy and cannot stop working. He takes on everything, not understanding what is really important and what is not.

Escape. A person suddenly stops doing something for himself. He wants to run away from all the terrible disasters and misfortunes that appear before his eyes. Sometimes he still has enough strength to control himself enough to hide from his place of work unnoticed.

Despair. Suddenly, a person notices that he can no longer cope with his feelings. He doesn't understand why this is happening. He experiences a complete breakdown, the absence of any feelings, hides somewhere in a quiet place, devastated and desperate. He feels dizzy, he staggers, he wants to sit down.

Exhaustion. Suddenly one feels unable to take even one step. He wants to sit up, he tries to catch his breath. All his muscles ache, any "thinking" is too hard for him.

Typical psychovegetative reactions of rescuers in extreme situations are as follows:

Palpitation. Suddenly a person feels pain in his chest, and although he knows that everything is in order with his health, nevertheless he is really scared and worried. He thinks that he might have a heart attack, and he tries to sit somewhere in a calm place.

Nervous chill. Just as suddenly, the rescuer begins an uncontrollable nervous tremor, so strong that he cannot even light a match or pour a cup of tea. He does not know what to do.

Sudden tears, crying. For no reason, a person has
tears, although he tries to hold them back. He is ashamed of what is with him
happening. He tries to retire, pull himself together and restore disturbed mental balance. Conclusion

The normal state is the most important part of the entire mental regulation, plays an essential role in any kind of activity and behavior. However, the theory of mental states is far from complete; many aspects of mental states have not been studied with the necessary completeness. According to the doctor psychological sciences L.V. Kulikova, “personal potentials that allow regulating the state remain little explored”.

The analysis of the influence of emotional stress on the body is devoted to the research of authors - specialists in the field of sociology, psychology and physiology. First of all, in such situations it is necessary to take into account the possibility of normal positive adaptation to frustrations. "Frustration is an emotionally difficult experience by a person of his failure, accompanied by a feeling of hopelessness, the collapse of hopes in achieving the desired goal." A person who often has to be in emergency situations is able to develop the skills of the most adequate reactions, the most correct mobilization of his functions. It is possible to learn different ways to eliminate fear. Significant and the role of positive experience, a sense of satisfaction in connection with the task. All this leads to an increase in self-confidence, which contributes to better adaptation to extreme situations that may arise as a result of emergency situations.

In conclusion, it is also possible to draw a conclusion on how to proceed in order to avoid the depressed state of people in an emergency.

Firstly, it must be taken into account that a person who has suffered a severe mental trauma restores mental balance much faster if he is involved in some kind of physical work and not alone, but as part of a group.

Secondly, in order to weaken the negative impact on a person, constant preparation for action in emergency situations, the formation of mental stability, and the education of the will are needed. That is why the main content of psychological preparation is the development and consolidation of the necessary psychological qualities.

Thirdly, preparation for psychological stress, increased stamina, development of endurance, self-control, a steady desire to fulfill the tasks set, the development of mutual assistance and interaction are of particular importance.

It must be remembered that the level of psychological preparation of people is one of the most important factors. The slightest confusion and manifestation of fear, especially at the very beginning of an accident or catastrophe, at the time of development natural disaster can lead to serious and sometimes even irreparable consequences. First of all, this applies to officials who are obliged to immediately take measures that mobilize the team, while showing personal discipline and restraint.

Glossary

Accentua ?tion (from Latin Accentus - stress) - a character trait (in some sources - personality) that is within the clinical norm, in which its individual features are excessively enhanced, as a result of which selective vulnerability is found in relation to some psychogenic influences while maintaining good resistance to others. Accentuations are not mental disorders, but in a number of their properties they are similar to personality disorders, which allows us to make assumptions about the existence of a connection between them.

Asthenization is a decrease in the functionality of the central nervous system, manifested by a deterioration in performance, mental fatigue, deterioration in attention, memory, increased reactivity with irritable weakness.

3. Asteni? I (from other Greek.<#"justify">Literature

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Sometimes people experience a state of psychogenic anesthesia (no feeling of pain) in the first five to ten minutes after injuries, burns, while maintaining a clear consciousness and the ability to rational activity, which allows some of the victims to escape. In individuals with an increased sense of responsibility, the duration of psychogenic anesthesia in some cases reaches 15 minutes, even with burn lesions up to 40% of the body surface. At the same time, hypermobilization of psychophysiological reserves and physical forces can be noted. Some victims, as evidenced by disaster medicine, are able to get out of an overturned car with a jammed compartment entrance, literally tearing apart the roof partitions with their bare hands.

Hypermobilization in the initial period is inherent in almost all people, but if it is combined with a state of panic, it may not lead to the salvation of people.

Affectation is a strong and relatively short-term neuropsychic excitation. It is characterized by an altered emotional state associated with a change in important life circumstances for the subject. Outwardly, it manifests itself in pronounced movements, violent emotions, accompanied by changes in the functions of internal organs, loss of volitional control. Occurs in response to an event that has already occurred and is shifted to its end. At the heart of affectation lies the experienced state of internal conflict, generated by the contradictions between the demands made on a person and the possibilities to fulfill them.

Desynchronosis is a mismatch between the rhythm of sleep and wakefulness, which leads to asthenia of the nervous system and the development of neuroses.

A change in the perception of the spatial structure is a state that occurs in situations where there are no objects at all in a person's field of vision.

Restriction of information, especially personally significant, is a condition that contributes to the development of emotional instability.

A threat to human health and life itself through deprivation of food, water, sleep, infliction of grievous bodily harm, etc. The study of the mental state of people who have a life-threatening factor is of great importance. It can cause various mental reactions - from acute anxiety to neurosis and psychosis. One of the conditions for a person's adaptation to a situation associated with a threat to life is readiness for instant action, which helps to avoid accidents and disasters. The state of mental instability under these conditions arises as a result of asthenization2 of the nervous system by various shocks. This condition is often manifested in people whose previous activities did not differ in mental tension. In life-threatening conditions, two forms of reaction are clearly distinguished: a state of agitation and a short-term stupor (a short-term stupor is characterized by a sudden stupor, freezing in place, while intellectual activity is preserved). In some cases, these factors act in combination, which greatly enhances their destructive impact. Usually, extreme situations are characterized by mass manifestations of psycho-emotional stress.

1. Psychology of activity safety……………………………………………..3

2. Human behavior in extreme situations………………………………...4

3. Management of the emotional state in extreme situations…………6

4. Threat assessment and diagnostics based on physical data and signs of a person’s mental state……………………………………………………...16

5. Panic………………………………………………………………………………27

List of used literature………………………………...………………...28

1. Psychology of activity safety

While a person is in a familiar environment, he behaves normally, as always. But with the onset of a complex, personally significant, and even more dangerous, extreme situation, psychological stress increases many times, behavior changes, critical thinking decreases, movement coordination is impaired, perception and attention decrease, emotional reactions change, and much more.

In an extreme situation, in other words, in a situation of a real threat, one of three forms of response is possible:

a sharp decrease in organization (affective disorganization) of behavior
sharp deceleration of active actions;
improving the efficiency of actions.

The disorganization of behavior can manifest itself in the sudden loss of acquired skills that seemed to be brought to automatism. The situation is also fraught with the fact that the reliability of actions can sharply decrease: movements become impulsive, chaotic, fussy. The logical thinking is violated, and the realization of the fallacy of one's actions only exacerbates the matter.

A sharp inhibition of actions and movements leads to a state of stupor (stupor), which in no way contributes to the search for an effective solution and behavior appropriate to a given situation.

Increasing the effectiveness of actions in the event of an extreme situation is expressed in the mobilization of all the resources of the human psyche to overcome it. This is increased self-control, clarity of perception and assessment of what is happening, the performance of actions and deeds adequate to the situation. This form of response is, of course, the most desirable, but is it always possible for everyone and always? This requires certain individual psychological qualities and special preparation for action in an extreme situation - there must be an awareness of the causes of what is happening and an adequate choice of real methods of action, forms of response.

2. Human behavior in extreme situations

To demonstrate the significance of this factor in the personality profile, let's give the following example: a timid, modest, insecure person with a sense of guilt and not always aware of his inferiority complex, internally disharmonious, silent and pessimistic, most often indecisive, hired mainly for the qualities of diligence, subordination, analytical mindset, accuracy and thoroughness, pedantry, diligence. He does not get tired when performing monotonous, stereotypical work, and, as a rule, performs the functions of secondary roles. There is no doubt about its decency and reliability.

A person's condition can change up to the appearance of signs of an affectively narrowed consciousness - stress is so unbearable for him. The internal reserve of resistance to any external pressure on his psyche is fragile and short-term. And if we assume that this person is burdened with confidential information and threatening factors are applied to him (in his address, or in the address of his relatives ...), it is not difficult to foresee the fate of this person who has attracted the attention of a competing company or, even worse, criminal elements well versed in human psychology.

In this case, one can unambiguously say about the security of a trade secret: if it is enough to report some “information” to save their loved ones, such a person will certainly take advantage of this, it would not even occur to him to maneuver, gain time, bargain.

When a person is in a state of psychological decompensation and is fixed on the only thought that his vital interests are under threat, information loses its significance.

Evaluation of this act, as well as recognition, repentance, self-flagellation, will come later.

A personality of another plan, in the nature of which there is a high ability to predict the possible consequences of one's behavior, a high ability to choose the optimal behavior in an extreme situation, of course, will not be in a helpless state.

This example leads to the conclusion that, in addition to the reliability factor, personal qualities in the form of resistance to stress play an important role in the "initiation" of a person into the area of trade secrets.

You can also consider a variant of a personality subject to such a phenomenon as increased suggestibility, which, in a hypnotic state, can perform certain actions dictated by interested parties, and without any benefit to itself. This is not a theoretical hypothesis, but a specific negative fact, as well as an adventurous story with writing blackmailing and threatening letters to one's own address by the director of a commercial company in order to justify an imaginary ransom from a blackmailer instead of confessing to the theft committed by him for entertainment in the society of "priestesses of love" ".

Such situations can be avoided if the scientific tools of psychological services are used in time, while at the same time making the work of business security services more efficient and effective.

3. Management of the emotional state in extreme situations

It is impossible to dwell on all aspects of diagnosing extreme situations. Much will depend on the ability to maintain self-control, since only under this condition is it possible to adequately assess what is happening and make an appropriate decision. There are many different methods that make it possible to manage your condition.

Consider not indisputable, but nevertheless effective express relaxation techniques that do not require much effort, special equipment and a long time.

In the event of a sudden occurrence of an extreme situation associated with the threat of an attack or the attack itself, you can look up, while taking a full deep breath and lowering your eyes to the horizon, exhale the air smoothly, freeing your lungs from it as much as possible and at the same time relaxing all the muscles. You can relax the muscles only when the breathing is in order. It is worth breathing evenly and calmly in an extreme situation, as the muscles relax too, and calmness sets in.

You can use another trick. When an extreme situation arises, you should look at something blue, and if this is not possible, imagine a blue background that is very deep in saturation. In ancient India, this color was not without reason considered the color of peace, rest, relaxation.

If you feel that fear is fettering and preventing you from acting according to the situation, you should say to yourself, but very firmly and confidently, any exclamation that is not related to the situation, such as: "Not two!" This will help you get back to normal. In the same situation, you can loudly ask yourself: "Vasya, are you here?" - and confidently answer: "Yes, I'm here!"

If, having assessed the threat as real, and your chances of confrontation as hopeless, but there is still an opportunity to retreat, maybe this should be done as soon as possible.

Most often, one has to communicate with persistent criminal elements, and it is desirable to keep this communication on a verbal level as long as possible. This will either buy time, or smooth out the severity of the situation, and it is not excluded, and completely avert the threat.

The main thing is the choice of tactics of behavior depending on the assessment of the situation. You can choose the tactics of a person who is not afraid of physical attack; in this case, it is necessary first of all to demonstrate to the partner your calmness. If, for example, the attacker is angry, then the calmness with which he is met can somewhat reduce his intensity. At the same time, the best form of response to an attacker who demonstrates contempt is to maintain self-esteem. If the fear of the threat is noticeable, one should show not only calmness, self-confidence, but possibly aggressive intentions.

But in any case, you should talk to the attacker. First of all, it is necessary to find out: the current situation is his initiative or he is fulfilling someone's order. If the threatening person is pursuing some of his personal interests, you need to find out which ones.

For example, an attack on the street. Here, most likely, you can encounter a robber, although it may be a drunk who thought that he was "not respected." If there is only one attacker, then aggressive behavior in relation to it can give a positive result in an extreme situation. The main thing is that he understands that he is not afraid and you can get a rebuff. This has a sobering effect on many, except for those who are drunk or mentally disturbed. A positive result is also possible if, realizing the physical superiority of the attacker, the person begins to actively call for help. Shouting can paralyze the attacker's activity for a moment, and it is possible that it will lead to the refusal of the attack.

If the attack is not spontaneous, but is "custom", then you should try to apply the same little tricks, but in this situation they can not always give a positive result. Still, one should try to talk to the one who threatens in order to establish the reality of the threat. In any case, we must try to maintain composure in order to reduce the negative impact of fear on our own actions. It may be possible to deceive the attacker, convincing him that this is not the one he needs. This approach can work if the attacker was shown a person briefly and long before the attack. By the way, when an unknown person comes up on the street and clarifies the name, one should not rush to answer, it would be more useful to find out why he is asking this.

So, after making sure that the attacker did not make a mistake with the "address", that he is acting on someone's order, and that undesirable consequences are about to occur, you should speak to find out if the attacker has a weapon and what it is. If he reaches into his pocket, perhaps this is a chance, since for a moment one of his hands is already blocked. If a person does not know the techniques of self-defense or did not have time to react in time, then perhaps it is not worth taking active actions for some time, but waiting for the development of the situation, keeping it under control.

It is necessary to try to persuade the attacker to refuse to inflict bodily harm. But this can hardly be achieved by tearfully pleading, and even kneeling. Such behavior will give a positive result if the attacker just needs to humiliate the person and nothing more. The conversation can be conducted on the principle of persuasion: "And what will personally give you good if you hurt me?" Some of these questions can be confusing. Others claim they were paid for it. If so, you should find out who paid and, most importantly, how much; it is possible that by offering a slightly larger amount, it will be possible to get out of the situation.

When communicating with the attacker, you should look into his eyes and not turn your back on him in order to leave yourself a path for retreat; if he pointed the weapon, try to induce him to lower it at least for a while.

When there are several attackers, the possibilities for confrontation are sharply reduced: with several aggressive people it is extremely difficult, if not impossible. That is why it is necessary to determine as soon as possible who is the leader in the group of attackers and concentrate all attention on him.

Everything that was said in relation to the attack of the "loner", in relation to the conversation with the leader, but one should not forget that he will focus not so much on the object of the attack, but on "his own". If one on one he could behave differently, then in a group it is more difficult for him, and sometimes even impossible. But nevertheless, it is necessary to enter into a dialogue, if only in order to determine whether all members of the group are configured in the same way. Any replica of any of the members of the group, even a gesture, movement, nod, can play a big role here. Having noticed sympathy from any of the members of the group, one should start a dialogue with him, or involve him in a dialogue with the leader, or use his remark in the argument addressed to the leader. Of particular note is a member of the group who expressed a "particularly favorable disposition". Perhaps this is a method of lulling vigilance, and it is from him that danger should be expected.

The attacker should be spoken to in his language and in his tone. If he uses obscene language, then often understanding can only be achieved by switching to the language he loves so much. Some people, especially those with a low level of intelligence, are simply annoyed by polite treatment of them in conflict situations, which means that the words "comrade", "respected", "citizen", intelligent floridities such as "would you be so kind ..." should be avoided. etc.

Sometimes it is recommended to divert the attacker's attention to a foreign object. To do this, it is enough to peer somewhere behind the back of a threat or wave invitingly. Most often, an involuntary reaction immediately follows - a turn of the head. Here is a moment that you can use.

It is impossible to give a detailed description of all the options for "street scenes", and therefore we emphasize: success will largely depend on the ability of self-control, flexibility and the ability to communicate effectively in an extreme situation.

Extreme situations can also occur indoors. Here the probability of a pre-planned action is much greater. The room also sharply limits a person's ability to move, and it is unlikely that anyone will respond to a call for help, especially if there is no one nearby.

If the attacker entered the house, then the situation can be sharply complicated by the presence of loved ones - they are also in danger. Measures should be taken in advance to prevent unauthorized access to housing by unauthorized persons. Especially often children are in a hurry to open the door, so it is recommended to explain to the child the need to find out who is behind the door before opening it.

If, despite all precautions, a stranger still entered the house, you should immediately enter into a conversation with him, if there is no direct attack. First of all, find out if he has a weapon, how ready he is to use it, try to persuade him to sit down and talk peacefully, listen to all his demands. As a rule, in such situations, it is important to decide what is really threatening, what specific actions the visitor can take, whether these actions will affect loved ones who are in the room, whether it is possible to give a signal for help and wait for it.

If several people entered the house, the situation escalates many times over. But everything that was said above regarding negotiations with a group of attackers in the street can be used in this case as well.

If the attacker is under the influence of alcohol and demands more to drink, the demand should not be followed, as it is not known how the additional dose of alcohol will affect him. Well, if after alcohol the “guest” has a good mood, he will be drawn to a long conversation, at the end of which he will also fall asleep. But this is unlikely. More often, alcohol enhances aggressiveness and can induce to commit even those actions that the attacker was not going to carry out.

What to do when the attacker is a mentally ill person? Therefore, one must be extremely careful in statements and actions if something in his behavior seemed suspicious. The best tactic is to accept his statements as perfectly true. You should not try to argue or convince such a person, all the more so to argue that he is wrong, on the contrary, it should be emphasized that his feelings and experiences are understandable, but in no case should you "play along" with him - these people are sensitive to falsehood, being extremely suspicious .

If it is necessary to interrupt him, then this should be done as gently as possible, it would be nice to transfer the conversation to the topic of his personal interests, hobbies, about something positive. As soon as you manage to get a direct answer, you should develop this plot and through it reach a positive conclusion to the situation.

And a few more recommendations. If the attack is made in the house, you should protect those present in the house from threats by taking the blow on yourself. If this is not possible, you should reassure them as much as possible so that their statements or, moreover, actions do not provoke the attacker to sharp aggression, try to keep the initiative and anticipate answers to questions addressed to relatives and relatives. This can help them figure out how to respond and what not to say.

You can try to offer the attacker a snack. This is a winning pause and a means of reducing aggressiveness, especially if the attacker is hungry. Well, the very fact of taking food in the house can affect it, since the stereotypes of past generations embedded in the subconscious can work.

If you are sure that you can physically resist the attacker, you should not hesitate. However, under a plausible pretext, it is required to reduce the distance to the partner, to exclude harm to loved ones, to distract the attacker immediately before physical impact on him.

Well, as for whether it is worth waiting for the start of a real attack in order to successfully repel it, we will cite one of the rules of the times of Peter I as an argument: "But you should not wait for the first strike, since it may turn out to be such that you will forget to resist."

In situations where the attacker immediately demands money, it is necessary to convince him of the fundamental readiness to satisfy this demand, but since such an amount is not currently available, the demand can only be fulfilled if a delay is granted. In general, in situations where money is required, it is difficult to predict the course of events.

For example, someone demanding money, it turns out, knows well how much and where it is. If conditions permit, it is necessary to find out the source of his knowledge.

If the threatening person is perfectly informed and attempts to delay or buy time are not successful, perhaps the best option would be to satisfy his "request", no matter how pathetic it may be, because life and health are most precious.

It should be borne in mind that even if the extortionist agrees to give a deferred payment, then he can take someone as a hostage while waiting.

It should be noted that a person who threatens in one way or another may also feel out of place, although he tries to seem like the master of the situation, not experiencing the slightest doubt about a favorable outcome for him. In fact, the extreme nature of the situation affects everyone.

Having noted the emotion of fear in the attacker, threatening or extortionist, it should be strengthened. But the main thing is a sense of proportion. After all, you can intimidate him to such an extent that he will commit an obviously undesirable action.

It may be important not only to increase the extortionist's fear, but also to reduce it. If he has calmed down, therefore, in his opinion, the circumstances that caused this state have disappeared, and he has nothing to fear. You can take actions or statements that may frighten him again, but it is possible that he has made a final decision and it is now that he has become dangerous.

It is not easy to communicate with a person in a state of anger. It is especially important to remain calm and be able to demonstrate this to him. A person in a state of anger is extremely excited, which is reflected in his thinking. Therefore, it is important from the very beginning to try to find out what made him so angry. The dialogue is being conducted carefully. Just talking about it can have a calming effect, similar to the "steam blowoff" effect. The state of the ransomware must be monitored in dynamics. If there is an increase in anger (the face becomes more red, the vessels on the face, neck, hands swell, the volume of the voice increases or it turns into a scream, the fists are clenched tighter, the body leans forward) - he has reached a state of readiness to attack physically. If the muscles relax, the redness disappears, the fists open, the voice becomes normal volume and the threat and hatred disappear in it, then the likelihood of an attack decreases.

When you have to deal with a person who expresses his contempt, one should be very careful - one can expect the worst from him, and he can do this quite calmly, experiencing a feeling of clear superiority over others. If such a person notices even a drop of fear or servility on the part of the "victim" - it is unlikely that he will be able to positively resolve the extreme situation. It would be nice to try to "bring down arrogance" from him - a demonstration of self-confidence and self-esteem, and possibly superiority. True, it may happen that the emotion of anger is superimposed on contempt and the attacker becomes even more dangerous. It is very difficult to start a dialogue with such a person, and it is even more difficult to conduct it. He speaks through his teeth, as if doing a favor by joining the conversation at all. If you find a topic that would allow him to "talk", you can appeal to him as a person, showing that his occupation undermines his human dignity. If you attract the gaze of such a person, and even without contempt, we can assume that the conversation is being conducted correctly.

When the attacker, due to unknown circumstances, shows disgust, it is necessary to determine what is the cause of this emotion, you can even ask a direct question: "Am I somehow disgusted with you?" It is possible that this emotion does not directly concern the "victim" or is caused by the fact that something was said about her to the threatening person, which caused disgust. Sometimes the introduction of clarity in itself dramatically reduces the possibility of aggressive behavior towards you.

In cases where the threat is carried out in the form of blackmail (they threaten to compromise), then, as a rule, they do not proceed to active actions.

First of all, it is necessary to understand the specific content of the information that served as material for blackmail. It is advisable to build a conversation with such an adversary in such a way as to show him that this information is not at all perceived as compromising. If you start to take a detailed interest in the content, form, source of receipt and other details of this information, he will not believe that it is neutral for you. On the contrary, treating this information as some kind of misunderstanding, which is not worthy of attention, you can encourage him to touch on the details in more detail.

If the information is still compromising, then you need to familiarize yourself with its content. Often the blackmailer tries to convey something in words, without documenting it. In this case, the position should be as firm as possible: "Until I see the information in its entirety, I do not intend to continue the conversation." In what form this information will be presented is essential, since there can be no talk of originals, it is necessary to demand a copy, and not someone refereed material. Not knowing how complete information the extortionist has, you, even after fulfilling his conditions, can meet him again after a while and on the same occasion.

It is also necessary to clarify to whom the compromising material is addressed, to what authority. And here the question is also appropriate: "To whom do you intend to transfer these materials in case of my refusal?" This question is subject to receive only a specific answer, that is, the name of this person (people). This will allow you to state that he can transmit these materials and you should not worry about this anymore. If such a technique proves to be ineffective, it is necessary to find out when the blackmailer intends to carry out his plan. This will allow you to evaluate your time resource and decide what can and cannot be done.

After receiving the initial information and evaluating it, you can ask the blackmailer for time to think. With his consent, it is necessary to use it productively: think over all possible options that could give a chance to avoid the onset of harmful consequences, if there is anyone, consult. It should be assessed what losses can be if the blackmailer, in response to a refusal, implements his threat and how significant this is today, since information about the past tends to depreciate.

It should be carefully assessed whether undesirable consequences for oneself will be prevented and whether an agreement with a blackmailer will not be even more compromising evidence. Maybe it's really better to lose something today by refusing the "deal" than to acquire an even more serious threat to one's own security in the future.

4. Assessment and diagnosis of the threat based on physical data and signs of a person’s mental state

In order to make the right decision in an extreme situation, it is necessary, as far as possible, to understand what situation you are in.

For example, in a situation of a threat to use force, one should first of all decide how real it is, whether it is possible to avoid the onset of undesirable consequences, given what is happening. If this is an office or living quarters, then it should be taken into account that the threatening person is much worse oriented in the environment - the owner knows where everything is, how convenient it is to take this or that thing. There may be relatives in the living quarters, and the threat may, under certain circumstances, turn against them. If the action takes place in a room where the threat is the owner, then the initiative is on his side.

Another situation is the street. In the dark, any threat is perceived differently than during the day. Here, the installation may work that violence is committed mainly at night, and the darkness itself can keep a person in increased tension. For the object to which the threat is directed, the presence of people on the street is important, since their absence increases the chances of the attackers and, accordingly, reduces (limits) the capabilities of the defender.

Of no less importance is the number of people "accompanying" the threatening, their organization, and the nature of the relationship between them can orient in who is the leader among them. This makes sense if:

the intentions of the attackers are to "recruit", receive/transmit information (threats) through the victim;
the outgoing threat is of an indirect nature, i.e. "hanging" over the relatives or friends of the victim and their release depends on his further actions.

The nature of clothing to a certain extent may indicate whether the threatening person was preparing for this "meeting", whether it (clothing) corresponds to his intentions (for example, in loose-fitting clothes it is easier to hide the instruments of violence).

It is important to find out in a timely manner how real the possibility of avoiding the onset of undesirable consequences is, whether it is possible to retire without tangible moral, physical and material losses.

Apparently, in a direct attack, one should also take into account one's own physical condition.

When analyzing the situation, you should pay special attention to the following points:

whether the event that the blackmailer uses actually took place. If the information that is used for the purpose of blackmail is not based on real grounds, then you should not immediately notify the blackmailer about this. But sometimes a situation may arise when the event itself took place, but it looked completely different than it is stated in the threat. In this situation, it is necessary to quickly assess whether it will be possible to prove what this event actually looked like;
how real is the compromise in case of refusal to comply with the demands of the blackmailer, what are the consequences, in what way will they try to implement it;
is there time to neutralize possible harmful effects, is it possible to get a delay;
whether the threat hurts relatives or concerns at the moment only a specific person (these are different situations when they are blackmailed by the onset of harmful consequences for a specific person and immediately, or when the threat is directed at the relatives of the victim, but in the future);
whether the blackmail is carried out by phone, in writing or in person with the blackmailer.

It is necessary to analyze not only the situation, but also the blackmailer, who is an essential element of the situation.

Diagnosis of the blackmailer, from whom the threat comes, can be very fragmentary, and maybe quite deep - it all depends on the situation. It is hardly advisable to find out the level of intelligence or the presence of a sense of humor in a person who has swung to strike.

Persons who pose a threat of attack or blackmail can be divided into three large groups:

1. Mentally normal people who are in a state where there are no deviations in behavior.

2. Mentally normal people who are under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

3. People with mental pathology.

If there is a threat of a physical attack or it is already being carried out, then first of all it is necessary to focus on the physical data of the attacker: height, weight, physique, characteristic features that may indicate that he underwent special training.

How this person costs?

the boxer, as a rule, takes an open, but still boxing stance, involuntarily clenching his fists, often tapping the open palm of the other with the fist of the leading hand, as if playing with himself (this way you can get information about whether he is left-handed or right-handed). Often, boxers can observe characteristic changes in the structure of the nose - as a result of repeated injury to the bridge of the nose.
the wrestler usually stands with his shoulders slightly lowered, his arms are along the body or half-bent, his fingers seem to be ready to grab something, his legs are shoulder-width apart or slightly wider, the stance can be perceived as threatening, while the movements are smoother than those of a boxer.
a person practicing karate can involuntarily take one of the stances of this type of martial arts, legs and arms occupy a characteristic position, fingers are not always clenched into a fist, but if they are clenched, then much tighter than boxers do.

As a rule, all these people have a good physique, developed muscles, flexibility in movements, they look at their partner, fixing the slightest changes in his behavior.

By the way, the fixation of external signs of a threatening, attacking, blackmailing is extremely important, since any little thing noticed can be useful in case of further contacts. If time and conditions allow, it is advisable to pay attention to height, body type, hair color and hairstyle features, eye color, shape of the forehead, nose, lips, chin, ears, you should pay attention to what the blackmailer is wearing, but most importantly - special signs that distinguish this person. Special signs include not only moles, scars, tattoos, any physical flaws, but also demeanor, gestures, voice features, pronunciation, vocabulary, and much more that is characteristic only for this person. After the situation is over in one way or another, it is advisable to record everything on paper, without waiting for the arrival of law enforcement officials, while many details are still fresh in memory.

If the threatening person made a phone call, you should pay attention to the nature of the call - local or out of town, how the subscriber introduced himself, immediately spoke about the merits of the case, without asking who he was talking to, or first specified who he was talking to. The characteristic of his speech is fast or slow, intelligibility, the presence of stuttering, accent, clarity and other features of pronunciation. Voice - loudness, timbre (hoarse, soft), drunk. The manner of speaking is calm, confident, coherent, unhurried, hurried, decent, or vice versa. The presence of noise accompanying the conversation is another voice that tells the subscriber what to say, silence or loud noise, the sound of transport (train, subway, car, plane), the noise of machine tools, office machines, telephone calls, music, street noise.

When coming into direct contact with a threatening person, one should also pay attention to the degree of aggressiveness and focus on a specific person, which may indicate personal motives, or this is aggressiveness of a “general” nature, and a specific person is an object over which it is entrusted to produce violence. The reality of the threat should be distinguished from the situation of "taking on a fright."

It is important to determine the emotional state of the blackmailer - the nature and speed of his actions, the degree of aggressiveness, and the possibility of conducting a dialogue with him depend on this. Let us describe some emotional states that are characteristic of the situation being analyzed, and show how, by external signs, it is possible to determine what (what) emotions the threatening person is experiencing.

Fear - sometimes you may encounter a situation where the threatening or attacker is afraid himself.

With fear, as a rule, there is a sharp contraction of the muscles, due to which a person has stiffness, uncoordinated movements, trembling of fingers or hands can be fixed, tapping of teeth can not only be seen, but sometimes heard. The eyebrows are almost straight, somewhat raised, their inner corners are shifted towards each other, wrinkles cover the forehead. The eyes are opened wide enough, the pupils are often dilated, the lower eyelid is tense, and the upper one is slightly raised. The mouth is open, the lips are tense and slightly stretched. The gaze is perceived as running.

There is more active sweating in the following areas: forehead, above the upper and under the lower lip, neck, armpits, palms, back.

Anger is an indicator of the degree of aggressiveness of the blackmailer. His posture becomes menacing, the man looks as if he is preparing to throw. The muscles are tense, but there is no tremor characteristic of fear. The face is frowning, the gaze can be fixed on the source of anger and express a threat. The nostrils dilate, the wings of the nostrils tremble, the lips are drawn back, sometimes so much that they reveal clenched teeth. The face either turns pale or reddens. Sometimes you can see how convulsions run across the face of a person experiencing anger. The volume of the voice rises sharply (the threatening one breaks into a cry), the fists are clenched, there are sharp vertical wrinkles on the bridge of the nose, the eyes are screwed up. With intense anger, a person looks like he is about to explode.

Speech with notes of threat, "through the teeth", very rude words, turns and obscene language can take place. Characteristically, when angry, a person feels a surge of strength, becomes much more energetic and impulsive. In this state, he feels the need for physical action, and the greater the anger, the greater this need. Self-control is reduced. Therefore, the attackers strive by any means to "excite themselves", to quickly bring their state to anger, since the trigger mechanism for aggressive actions is facilitated.

Contempt - unlike anger, this emotion rarely causes impulsive behavior of the threatening, but it is possible that this is why a person demonstrating contempt is in some way more dangerous than an angry one.

Outwardly, it looks something like this: the head is raised, and even if the person demonstrating contempt is shorter than you, it seems that he is looking at you from above. You can observe the posture of "detachment" and a smug facial expression. In posture, facial expressions, pantomime, speech - superiority. The particular danger of this emotion lies in the fact that it is "cold" and a despising person can commit an aggressive act calmly, in cold blood. But if something from the plan does not work out, then anger may appear. The pairing of these two emotions is even more dangerous.

Disgust is an emotion that can also stimulate aggression. A person who is disgusted looks as if something disgusting has entered his mouth or he has smelled an extremely unpleasant smell. The nose is wrinkled, the upper lip is pulled up, sometimes it seems that such a person has squinted eyes. As with contempt - a posture of "detachment", but without a pronounced superiority.

In combination with anger, it can cause very aggressive behavior, since anger "motivates" the attack, and disgust - the need to get rid of the unpleasant.

Often the threat of attack, the attack itself or blackmail is carried out by a person who is in a state of alcoholic or drug intoxication. Alcohol and drugs bring the psyche of the attacker or threatening to a state of increased excitability, sharply reduce the level of self-control. That is why it is sometimes important to determine what "dope" and how much the partner has taken and what can be expected from him.

The most dangerous are the light and medium stages of alcohol intoxication, which often cause an increase in aggressiveness. Some take alcohol "for courage", thereby overcoming the feeling of fear. With alcohol intoxication, the criticality of the perception of what is happening decreases, such a person hardly perceives or does not perceive any argument at all. Movements are activated and can quickly turn into aggressive ones. As a rule, a physical attack in such situations is preceded by swearing, abuse, threats.

A person who is in a state of drug intoxication looks like anyone normal person which makes this condition difficult to recognize.

Drug intoxication is usually characterized by increased activity in movements; fast, excessively lively speech, not entirely adequate response to questions, a kind of "shine" in the eyes, sometimes causeless laughter, high spirits. Some people in this state have reduced sensitivity to pain, lack of empathy for others. You can take responsibility for your actions. All this is typical for mild drug intoxication, which acts excitingly.

In a chronic drug addict, you can fix injection marks, bags under the eyes. By the way, it should be borne in mind that the reaction to a drug can be quite short-term, and the end of its action in an extreme situation for a drug addict can cause him to withdraw, which will result in a sharp deterioration in his condition, he can become depressed, angry, even more excited and aggressive. He may have an irresistible desire to remove the obstacle to the next dose of the drug as soon as possible. For some drug addicts, this period of "activation" lasts a short time, after which a period of sharp depression may set in, up to epileptic seizures, when he becomes practically helpless.

Aggression can come from a person:

suffering from a mental disorder (paranoid schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, and other diseases);
mentally healthy, but with an anomaly of character (psychopathy, especially excitable, epileptoid forms);
with an accentuation of character, when certain conditions there is a disadaptation of the personality according to one of the forms or types of psychopathy;
mentally healthy, but in a state of temporary mental disorder (psychogeny, reactive states, exogeny).

Any person can give an aggressive reaction under certain conditions, but the emphasis is on persons suffering from a mental illness (chronic or temporary), since aggression can be an expression of a mental state, regardless of external factors or any special conditions. Moreover, when an aggressive state is not directly or indirectly dependent on external circumstances or on external motivating motives (it is not provoked by anyone), this means that it is impossible to influence or modify the reaction of others in a non-drug way.

Particularly dangerous are patients suffering from auditory or visual hallucinations, when they lose all connection with reality and subordinate their actions only to their driven motives. Often their actions are completely incomprehensible to others: there is no sequence of actions, they are not subject to the laws of logic, cause-and-effect relationships between phenomena and facts, they cannot be predicted, and most often the true causes of aggressive reactions are hidden by them even from their closest ones (parents, friends, if you can call them friends are criminal elements, in which they enjoy "respect" because of their aggressiveness and cruelty). But, as a rule, such patients prefer criminal behavior alone and aggression can be directed at a completely random person. Due to the lack of logic and the apparent reason that prompted a person to commit a crime, it becomes extremely difficult to detect a criminal.

They do not know the state of fear that a person without mental disorders can experience, a feeling of compassion, pity.

Outwardly, they look tense, their gaze seems to be turned inwards, they "listen" to something, their facial expressions change regardless of external circumstances, most often malicious, as well as the expression of their eyes, a smile is more similar to a grin. Such patients attract attention with slovenliness, the smell of an unwashed body and dirty clothes.

There are options when aggression is directed against oneself, patients consider themselves unworthy of life, but are ready to "take others with them", being sincerely sure that they will render a service, saving a person from the "horrors of earthly existence."

Patients with epilepsy, psychopaths of the epileptoid circle and accentuated personalities according to the epileptoid type are no less aggressive. They also share cruelty. As a rule, they are distinguished by extreme touchiness, vindictiveness, vindictiveness, stubbornness, inability to yield in a dispute, although they themselves are its initiators. Of course, there are differences in these options: if for an accentuated personality there are nevertheless limits that they will not cross in a dispute, in a conflict, then a patient with epilepsy, how slowly, how deeply and deeply gets stuck in the conflict and cannot stop, loses control in his arousal, rage and aggression. If he crossed the line, then the reaction will necessarily be accompanied by destructive actions (multiple and of the same type). For all options, vindictiveness, bearing revenge is characteristic. And before the implementation of revenge - their behavior is distinguished by flattery and obsequiousness, it is not for nothing that they are said about them: "with a bible in their hands and a dagger in their bosom."

Since they are pedantic, thorough and scrupulous, they plan revenge in this vein. Fanaticism in religion, politics and ideology is more often a property of epileptoid psychopaths; most terrorists, under the slogan of "fighting for justice," surround themselves with the same types and ruthlessly destroy a lot of innocent people. Negotiations with them are impossible, they cannot be persuaded, they are not suggestible, they do not love anyone, even themselves - "I will die, but I will not yield."

Psychopathic faces of the hysterical circle are the most common among swindlers, "swindlers" and various "flight" of adventurers. Their distinguishing feature is artistry, high ability to play social roles, the presence of their own rules of the "game" - a complete disregard for generally accepted moral norms, the absence of remorse, which creates the impression of originality and courage. There are very gifted "in their field" types, with good intellect, memory and manners, but character! The character is aimed at achieving (and immediately!) one's needs, whims, often base desires, without stopping at anything. Sometimes among them there are good speakers who know how to control and inspire the whole audience, superbly manipulating people and their destinies. They are more likely than others to use stimulants to enhance their activity and sensations (alcoholism, drug addiction).

5. Panic

Panic (from the Greek panikon- unaccountable horror), a psychological state caused by the threatening influence of external conditions and expressed in a feeling of acute fear, embracing a person or many people, an uncontrollable uncontrollable desire to avoid a dangerous situation.

The psychophysiological mechanism of panic consists in the induction inhibition of large areas of the cerebral cortex, which predetermines a decrease in conscious activity.

Panic is "a very atypical response" and that it is "a statistically infrequent behavior". For the occurrence of panic, several conditions must be met, the main of which is the fear of not having time to leave the premises, the lack of social communication between the participants (panic cases were not recorded in residential buildings), mistakes and failures in attempts to evacuate.

Older people (over 42) show a panic reaction more often than younger people. No differences were found between the responses of men and women. There is evidence suggesting cultural and nationalistic differences in people's responses to panic. About 35% percent of people show a desire to protect themselves at the expense of others.

Bibliography

1. Ardaseneva V.N. "Personal protective equipment" - M .: Profizdat, 1998.

2. Belov S.V. "Life safety" - Textbook, M .: high school, NMC SPO, 2000

3. Devisilov V.A. "Life safety" - Textbook, M .: Higher school, 1999.

4. Litvak I. "BZD". - Tutorial, M., 2000

5. Roik V.D. " Social protection workers from occupational risks "- Publishing House of the Research Institute of Labor of the Ministry of Labor, 1994.

It has been established that the behavioral reactions of a person in extreme conditions, their temporal characteristics, and the psychophysiological capabilities of people in general are extremely variable values, depending on the characteristics of the nervous system, life experience, professional knowledge, skills, motivation, and style of activity.

At present, it is almost impossible to derive an integral form of human behavior in a tense situation. Nevertheless, there is more and more evidence that psychological factors - individual qualities, abilities of a person, his skills, readiness, attitudes, general and special training, his character and temperament - in a difficult environment are not summed arithmetically, but form a certain complex that ultimately realized either in right or wrong action.

IN general view An extreme situation is a set of obligations and conditions that have a strong psychological impact on a person.

Style of behavior in an extreme situation

Behavior in a state of affect.

Affect is characterized by a high degree of emotional experiences, which leads to the mobilization of a person's physical and psychological resources. In practice, quite often there are cases when physically weak people in a state of strong emotional excitement perform actions that they could not perform in a calm environment. For example, they inflict a large amount of lethal damage or plant an oak door with one blow. Another manifestation of affect is a partial loss of memory, which characterizes not every affective reaction. In some cases, the subject does not remember the events preceding the affect, and the events that occurred during the latter.

The affect is accompanied by the excitation of all mental activity. As a result, the person has a decrease in control over their behavior. This circumstance leads to the fact that the commission of a crime in a state of passion entails specific legal consequences.

The Criminal Code does not say anything about the fact that a person in a state of passion has a limited ability to realize the nature of his actions or control them. This is not necessary, since strong emotional excitement is characterized by a limitation of consciousness and will. It is the “narrowing” of the latter that allows us to say that the state of passion has a certain legal significance. “From the position of criminal law, such emotional states of the accused can be recognized as legally significant, which significantly limited his volitional purposeful behavior.”

Affect has a significant impact on a person's mental activity, disorganizing it and affecting higher mental functions. Thinking loses its flexibility, the quality of thought processes decreases, which causes a person to realize only the immediate goals of his actions, and not the final ones. Attention is entirely concentrated on the source of irritation. That is, a person's ability to choose a behavior model is limited due to strong emotional stress. Because of this, there is a sharp decrease in control over actions, which leads to a violation of the expediency, purposefulness and sequence of actions.

A sudden strong emotional disturbance is preceded by one of the following situations described in the law.

Violence, bullying, grave insult, other illegal or immoral actions (inaction) of the victim. Here, the state of passion is formed under the influence of a one-time and very significant event for the culprit. For example: a spouse who suddenly returned from a business trip discovers with his own eyes the fact of adultery.

A long-term psychotraumatic situation arising in connection with the systematic illegal or immoral behavior of the victim. An affective reaction is formed as a result of a long-term "accumulation" of negative emotions, which leads to emotional stress. In this case, another fact of unlawful or immoral behavior is enough for an affect to arise.

According to the meaning of the law, affect arises in connection with certain actions or inaction of the victim. But in practice there are cases when a sudden strong emotional excitement causes illegal or immoral behavior of several people. At the same time, for the development of an affective reaction, a combination of actions (inaction) of two or more persons is necessary, that is, the behavior of one of them, in isolation from the behavior of the other, might not be the reason for the onset of affect.

Behavior under stress

Stress is an emotional state that suddenly arises in a person under the influence of an extreme situation associated with a danger to life or an activity that requires great stress. Stress, like affect, is the same strong and short-term emotional experience. Therefore, some psychologists consider stress as one of the types of affect. But this is far from being the case, since they have their own distinctive features. Stress, first of all, occurs only in the presence of an extreme situation, while affect can arise for any reason. The second difference is that affect disorganizes the psyche and behavior, while stress not only disorganizes, but also mobilizes the organization's defenses to get out of an extreme situation.

Stress can have both positive and negative effects on personality. A positive role is played by stress, performing a mobilization function, a negative role is having a harmful effect on the nervous system, causing mental disorders and various kinds of diseases of the body.

Stress affects people's behavior in different ways. Some, under the influence of stress, show complete helplessness and are unable to withstand stressful influences, while others, on the contrary, are stress-resistant individuals and show themselves best in moments of danger and in activities that require the exertion of all forces.

Frustrated Behavior

A special place in the consideration of stress is occupied by a psychological state that arises as a result of a real or imagined obstacle that prevents the achievement of a goal, called frustration.

Defensive reactions during frustration are associated with the appearance of aggressiveness or avoiding a difficult situation (transferring actions to an imaginary plan), and it is also possible to reduce the complexity of behavior. Frustration can lead to a number of characterological changes associated with self-doubt or fixation of rigid forms of behavior.

The mechanism of frustration is quite simple: first, a stressful situation arises, leading to an overstrain of the nervous system, and then this tension is “discharged” into one or another of the most vulnerable systems.

Distinguish positive and negative reactions to frustration.

Level of anxiety in extreme situations

Anxiety is an emotional experience in which a person experiences discomfort from the uncertainty of perspective.

The evolutionary significance of anxiety lies in the mobilization of the body in extreme situations. A certain level of anxiety is necessary for the normal functioning and productivity of a person.

Normal anxiety helps to adapt to different situations. It increases in conditions of high subjective significance of the choice, an external threat with a lack of information and time.

Pathological anxiety, although it can be provoked by external circumstances, is due to internal psychological and physiological causes. It is disproportionate to the real threat or not related to it, and most importantly, it is not adequate to the significance of the situation and drastically reduces productivity and adaptive capacity. The clinical manifestations of pathological anxiety are diverse and can be paroxysmal or permanent in nature, manifesting both mental and - even predominantly - somatic symptoms.

Most often, anxiety is considered as a negative state associated with the experience of stress. The state of anxiety can vary in intensity and change over time as a function of the level of stress to which the individual is exposed, but the experience of anxiety is inherent in any person in adequate situations.

The causes that cause anxiety and affect the change in its level are diverse and can lie in all spheres of human life. Conventionally, they are divided into subjective and objective reasons. Subjective reasons include informational reasons associated with an incorrect idea of the outcome of the upcoming nature, leading to an overestimation of the subjective significance of the outcome of the upcoming event. Among the objective causes of anxiety, there are extreme conditions that place high demands on the human psyche and are associated with the uncertainty of the outcome of the situation.

Post-stress anxiety develops after extreme, usually unexpected situations - fires, floods, participation in hostilities, rape, kidnapping of a child. Also commonly observed are anxiety, irritability, headache, increased quadrigeminal reflex (reaction to a sudden stimulus), sleep disturbances and nightmares, including pictures of the experienced situation, feelings of loneliness and distrust, feelings of inferiority, avoidance of communication and any activities that may recall what happened. developments. If this whole complex develops after a certain latent period after an extreme situation and leads to significant impairment of life, then a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder is made. Post-stress anxiety is less likely to develop if a person is active during an extreme situation.

emergency behavior

Lecture 8

While a person is in a familiar environment, he behaves normally. But as soon as a difficult, and even more dangerous situation sets in, the most incredible changes can occur to him. In an extreme situation, psychological stress increases many times, behavior changes, critical thinking decreases, movement coordination is impaired, perception and attention decrease, emotional reactions change, and much more.

In an extreme situation, in other words, in a situation of real threat, one of three forms of response is possible:

a) a sharp decrease in the organization (disorganization) of behavior;

b) a sharp deceleration of active actions;

c) increasing the efficiency of actions.

The disorganization of behavior can manifest itself in the sudden loss of acquired skills that seemed to be brought to automatism.

In order to make the right decision in an extreme situation, it is necessary, if possible, to understand what situation you are in.

First, in a situation of a threat to use force, one should first of all decide how real it is, whether it is possible to avoid the onset of undesirable consequences.. Assess the place where the threat is. If this is your office or living space, then it should be taken into account that the threatening person is much worse than you in the environment: you know where this or that thing is. But your loved ones may be in the living quarters, and the threat may, under certain circumstances, turn against them. However, this may be a room in which the threat is the owner, and here the initiative is more on his side.

Another situation is the street. It's one thing - a street on which there are people, another - when there is no one around and the possibility of anyone appearing was very doubtful.

Secondly, the time when there is a threat of the use of force.(day or night) At night, any threat is perceived differently than during the day. Here the installation that violence is committed mainly at night can work. And in general, darkness itself can keep many people in increased tension.

Thirdly, the number of people accompanying the threat. It is one thing if he is alone, it is completely different if there are several people with him. The nature of the relationship between them can guide you as to which of them is in charge, whether they are performing such an act for the first time or acting as a well-coordinated mechanism.

Fourthly, the physical data and equipment of the threat. The nature of clothing to a certain extent may indicate whether the threat was preparing for a meeting with you, whether it corresponds to his intentions. In loose-fitting clothing, you can easily hide the instruments of violence that a person can later use.

When analyzing the situation when they are trying to blackmail you, you should pay special attention to the following points.

First, whether the event that the blackmailer uses actually took place. If what they are trying to threaten you with was not, then it is far from always worth notifying the blackmailer about this immediately. But sometimes a situation may arise when the event itself took place, but it looked completely different than it is stated in the threat. In this situation, you need to quickly assess whether you can prove what this event actually looked like.

Secondly, how real is the possibility of compromising you if you refuse to comply with the requirements of the blackmailer. What are the consequences for you, what way will they try to achieve this.

Thirdly, do you have time to neutralize possible negative consequences, is it possible to delay their onset at least a little.

Fourth, whether the threat affects your loved ones or concerns only you. After all, these are different situations when they are blackmailed by the onset of harmful consequences for yourself now, or when the threat concerns your loved ones, but in the future.

Fifth, whether the blackmail is carried out by phone, in writing or in person with the blackmailer.

Persons from whom the threat of attack or blackmail comes can be classified into three large groups:

1) mentally normal people who are in a state where there are no deviations in behavior;

2) mentally normal people who are in a state of alcoholic or drug intoxication;

3) people with pathological mental disorders.
If there is a threat of a physical attack or it is already being carried out, then first of all it is necessary to orientate in the physical data of the partner: height, weight, physique, characteristic signs indicating that he underwent some kind of special training.

Notice how the person is standing. (stance of a boxer, karateka, etc.) The boxer, as a rule, takes an open, but still boxing stance, involuntarily clenching his fists, often tapping the open palm of the other with the fist of the leading hand, as if playing with himself (here you can get visual information about whether he is left-handed or right-handed) . Often, boxers can observe characteristic changes in the structure of the nose - as a result of repeated injury to the bridge of the nose.

The wrestler usually stands with his shoulders somewhat lowered, his arms along the body, they can be half-bent, his fingers seem to be ready to grab something, his legs are shoulder-width apart or slightly wider. The stance can be perceived as threatening, the movements are more fluid than those of a boxer.

A person practicing karate can involuntarily take one of the stances of this type of confrontation, legs and arms occupy a characteristic position, fingers are not always clenched into fists, and about if they are compressed, they are much tighter than boxers do.

As a rule, all these people have a good physique, well-developed muscles, move well, look at their partner, fixing the slightest changes in his behavior.

By the way, it is extremely important to fix the external signs of a threatening, attacking, blackmailing person, since it is possible that you will have to enter into relations with law enforcement agencies, and then any little thing noticed can come in handy.

If time and conditions allow, it is advisable to pay attention to height, physique, hair color and hairstyle features, eye color, shape of the forehead, nose, lips, chin, ears. Pay attention to what the enemy is wearing, but most importantly, special signs that distinguish this person.

Special signs include only moles, scars, tattoos, any physical defects, but also manners of speaking, gestures, voice features, pronunciation, vocabulary and much more, which in aggregate is typical only for this person.

If the threatening communicated by telephone, pay attention to the nature of the call - local or out of town, how the subscriber introduced himself, immediately spoke about the merits of the case, without asking who he was talking to, or first specified who he was talking to.

The characteristic of his speech is fast or slow, intelligibility, the presence of stuttering and accent, clarity and other features of pronunciation. Voice - volume, timbre, hoarse, soft, drunk. The manner of speaking is calm, confident, connected, incoherent, unhurried, hurried, decent, obscene, embittered, emotional, colorless.

The presence of noise accompanying the conversation - another voice that tells what to say to the subscriber, silence or loud noise, the sound of transport (train, metro, car, plane), the noise of machine tools, stationery machines, phone calls, music, street noise.

When coming into direct contact with a threatening person, one should also pay attention to the degree of his aggressiveness. Is she directed specifically on you, which may indicate personal motives, or is it aggressiveness of a general nature, that is, it is directed at you simply as an object over which it is instructed to produce violence. Try to assess how real the likelihood of violence is, or whether they are trying to “take you for a fright”.

It is important to determine the emotional state of the enemy - the nature and speed of his actions, the degree of aggressiveness, the ability to conduct a dialogue with him and avoid consequences that are harmful to you depend on this.

Let us describe some emotional states and show how, by external signs, it is possible to determine which (or which) emotion experiencing threatening.

Fear- sometimes you can face a situation where the threat or attacker is afraid himself. With fear, as a rule, there is a sharp contraction of the muscles, due to which the person experiencing fear has stiffness in movements. They are somewhat uncoordinated, you can quite clearly fix the trembling of the hands, especially the tips of the fingers, legs, etc. The eyebrows are almost straight, slightly raised, their inner corners are shifted towards each other, the forehead is covered with horizontal wrinkles. Eyes disclosed enough pupils are wide, often dilated, the lower eyelid is tense, and the upper one is slightly raised. The mouth is open, the lips are tense and slightly stretched. The look is perceived as running.

There is more active sweating, although the temperature is comfortable indoors or outdoors. Sweat can be observed in the following areas: forehead, above the upper and under the lower lip, on the neck, armpits, palms, back. The person is actively wiping sweat, his face turns pale.

Anger often observed in aggressive behavior. It is this emotion that is an indicator of the degree of aggressiveness of the partner. His posture takes on a harvesting character, the person looks as if he is preparing to throw. The muscles are tense, but there is no tremor characteristic of fear. The face is frowning, the gaze can be fixed on the source of anger and express a threat. The nostrils dilate, the wings of the nostrils tremble, the lips are pulled back, sometimes so much that they reveal clenched teeth. The face turns pale, but more often reddens. Sometimes you can see how convulsions run across the face of a person experiencing anger.

Speech with notes of threat through teeth. Very rude words, turns and foul language can take place. It is characteristic that even people of non-Russian nationality often use Russian obscene language in strong anger.

It should be especially noted that when angry, a person feels a surge of strength, becomes much more energetic and impulsive. In this state, he feels the need for physical action, and the stronger the anger, the greater this need. Self-control is reduced.

Contempt- unlike anger, this emotion rarely causes impulsive behavior, but it is possible that this is why a person who demonstrates contempt is in some way more dangerous than an angry one.

Outwardly, it looks something like this: the head is raised up, and even if the person demonstrating contempt is shorter than you, it seems that he is looking from above. You can observe the posture of detachment and self-satisfied facial expression.

Disgust - negative emotion that can stimulate aggression. A disgusted person looks like he has something disgusting in his mouth or smells extremely bad. The nose wrinkles, the upper lip is pulled up, sometimes it seems that such a person has squinted eyes. As with contempt, a posture of detachment, but without pronounced superiority.

Disgust combined with anger can cause very aggressive behavior, since anger motivates the attack, and disgust - the need to get rid of the unpleasant.

We will not dwell on the description of such emotions as joy, surprise, grief, shame, since they are not so characteristic of situations of aggression and attack. But if the person who hurts shows external signs of joy, then this is at least a sign of sadism.

Man "out of his mind"

Often the threat of attack, the attack itself or blackmail is carried out by a person who is in a state of alcoholic or drug intoxication. Alcohol and drugs bring the psyche of the attacker or threatening to a state of increased excitability, sharply reduce the level of self-control. That is why it is sometimes important to determine what “doping” and how much the opponent has taken and what can be expected from him.

The signs of alcohol intoxication are so well known that there is no need to describe them in detail. But it is important to know: the most dangerous are the light and medium stages of intoxication, which often cause an increase in aggressiveness. Some take alcohol for "courage", thereby overcoming the feeling of fear, the signs of which can nevertheless be recorded.

With alcohol intoxication, the criticality of the perception of what is happening decreases, such a person hardly perceives or does not perceive any argument at all. Movements are activated and can quickly turn into aggressive ones. As a rule, a physical attack in such situations is preceded by swearing, abuse, threats.

A person who is in a state of drug intoxication looks like almost any normal person, and someone who has never seen people in such a state may not notice this.

Drug intoxication is characterized, as a rule, by increased activity in movements: fast, excessively lively speech, not quite adequate response to questions, a kind of "shine" in the eyes, sometimes causeless laughter, in general, a state of euphoria. In some people in this state, sensitivity to pain decreases, responsibility for their actions may practically not be realized, there is no feeling of empathy for others. All this is typical for mild drug intoxication, which acts excitingly.

In a chronic drug addict, you can fix injection marks, bags under the eyes. It should be borne in mind that the reaction to the drug can be quite short-term, and the end of its action in an extreme situation for the addict can cause him to withdraw, which will result in a sharp deterioration in his condition, he can become depressed, angry, even more excited and aggressive.

He may have an overwhelming desire to remove the obstacle to the next dose of the drug as soon as possible. For some drug addicts, this period of activation lasts a short time, after which a period of sharp depression may set in, up to epileptic seizures, when the person becomes practically helpless.

Aggression can come from a person suffering from a mental disorder. Very conditionally, such people are divided into four groups: patients suffering from paranoid schizophrenia; patients suffering from manic-depressive psychosis; patients with antisocial behavior; persons with inadequate response.

If the person threatening to attack belongs to the first group, then it should be taken into account that such people have practically lost all connection with reality, they often have auditory and visual hallucinations, as well as a manic syndrome, manifested in delusions of grandeur or persecution. With delusions of grandeur, a person considers himself endowed with special qualities, as a result of which he is much “higher” than others. With persecution mania, a person is sure that he is being persecuted for his "special mission", "special gift", etc.

A manic person may consider you a "great sinner" from whom he must rid the world. These are people with a sufficiently developed intellect, it is difficult to deceive them, mislead them. In certain situations, they can be quite aggressive.

Persons belonging to the second group are usually in a state of such deep depression that they lose all connection with the real world. They often consider themselves unworthy of life, but they are ready to take others with them to another world, since they sincerely believe that they will render a service by delivering them from the horrors of earthly existence.

The patient's speech is extremely slow, it takes him from 15 to 30, and sometimes more seconds, to answer the simplest questions. The movements may be like showing a movie in slow motion. He may have spontaneous "improvements" of the state, when he suddenly says quite calmly: "Well, now I know what to do." Do not rejoice ahead of time, it is better when the improvement of his condition occurs gradually.

The next two groups do not belong to the mentally ill, as they do not lose touch with reality, but they can also be classified as persons with mental disorders.

The classic manipulator or swindler is characterized by a complete absence of guilt, remorse. He is alien to morality and ethics in the general human sense, which makes it unlikely that he will be able to treat those whom he threatens or who he physically influences as people. Often, he strives for physical pleasures, likes to manipulate other people, knows how to “submit” himself, and at first he can form an opinion about himself as a pleasant person. Increased impulsiveness, can achieve immediate satisfaction of their requirements.

And, finally, there are people who, without losing touch with reality, think immaturely, although they can be aware of the consequences of their actions and actions. Shows an inadequate reaction to stress, feels like a loser in life, a person who is always unlucky. An incident with you is an opportunity to prove something important to someone, and a physical collision can be considered by him as one of the thrills. He often makes statements like, “I'll prove it to them. what I'm capable of."

Survival in extreme situations requires a person's endurance and unshakable faith that there are no hopeless situations. We have collected 5 stories whose heroes managed to survive in the most difficult conditions.

Long flight and 4 days of struggle

The record height, after falling from which a person managed to survive, is 10,160 meters. This record is listed in the Guinness Book and belongs to Vesna Vulovich, the only survivor of the plane crash on January 26, 1972. She not only recovered, but also wanted to return to work again - she did not have a fear of flying, because she did not remember the very moment of the disaster.

On August 24, 1981, 20-year-old Larisa Savitskaya and her husband flew from their honeymoon on an An-24 plane from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. In the sky at an altitude of 5220 meters, the plane in which the newlyweds were flying collided with a Tu-16.

Larisa Savitskaya was the only one of 38 people who managed to survive. On the wreckage of an aircraft measuring three by four meters, she fell in free fall for 8 minutes. She managed to get to the chair and squeeze into it.

Later, the woman claimed that at that moment she remembered an episode from the Italian film "Miracles Still Happen" where the heroine survives in similar conditions.

Rescue work was not very active. Graves have even been dug for all the victims of the plane crash. Larisa Savitskaya, in the end, was found last. She lived for three days among the wreckage of the aircraft and the bodies of dead passengers. Despite numerous injuries - from a concussion to spinal injuries, with broken ribs and a broken arm - Larisa Savitskaya not only survived, but was able to build herself something like a hut from the fuselage fragments.
When the search plane flew over the crash site, Larisa even waved to the rescuers, but they mistook her for a geologist from an expedition stationed nearby.

Larisa Savitskaya was twice included in the Guinness Book of Records: as a person who survived a fall from a great height, the second time - as a person who received the minimum amount of compensation for physical damage in a plane crash - 75 rubles (in 1981 money).

On a small raft

On November 23, 1942, a German submarine torpedoed the English ship Belomond. All members of his crew were killed. Almost all. Sailor Lin Peng managed to survive. He was lucky - during the search on the surface of the water, he found a life raft, which had a supply of food.

Lin Peng, of course, understood that food and water would run out sooner or later, so from the first day of his "Robinsonade" he began to prepare equipment for collecting rainwater and catching fish. He stretched an awning over the raft, made a fishing line from the threads of the rope found on the raft; from a nail and wires from a flashlight - hooks; from metal from a tin can - a knife with which he butchered the caught fish. Interesting fact: Lin Peng could not swim, so he was tied to a raft all the time.

Lin Peng caught very little fish, but he took care of its safety - he dried it on ropes stretched over the deck of his "ship". For a hundred days, his diet was one fish and water. Sometimes algae came overboard, the consumption of which prevented Lin Peng from getting scurvy.

The bitter irony of Lin Peng's record-breaking voyage is that he could have been saved multiple times. Once he was not taken on board a cargo ship just because he was Chinese. Then the US Navy noticed him and even threw him a rescue buoy, but the storm that broke out prevented the Americans from completing the rescue mission. In addition, Lin Peng saw several German submarines, but for obvious reasons did not turn to them for help.

Only in April 1943, Lin Peng noticed that the color of the water had changed, and birds began to appear in the sky every now and then. He realized that he was in the coastal zone, which means that his chances of success increased many times over. On April 5, he was found by Brazilian fishermen, who immediately took him to the hospital. Surprisingly, Lin Peng was able to walk on his own after his journey. He lost only 9 kilograms during the forced “Robinsonade”.

Well-read cabin boy

"Robinsonade" is the survival of a person alone for a long time in the natural environment. The record holder in this "discipline" was Jeremy Beebs, who lived on the island for 74 years.

In 1911, during a hurricane in the South Pacific Ocean, the English schooner Beautiful Bliss sank. Only 14-year-old cabin boy Jeremy Beebs managed to get to the shore and escape on a desert island. The boy was helped by his erudition and love of reading - he knew by heart the novel by Daniel Defoe.

Following the example of the hero of his favorite book, Beebs began to keep a wooden calendar, built a hut, learned to hunt, ate fruit and drank coconut milk. While Biebs lived on the island, two world wars took place in the world, atomic bomb And Personal Computer. He didn't know anything about it. We found Biebs by accident. In 1985, the crew of a German ship unexpectedly discovered a record holder among Robinsons, who had already reached the age of 88, and delivered him to his homeland.

Father's daughter

In the story about Larisa Savitskaya, we recalled the film "Miracles still happen." It is based on real events. On December 24, 1971, a Lockheed L-188 Electra aircraft of the Peruvian airline LANSA fell into a vast thunderstorm area, was struck by lightning, entered the turbulence zone and began to collapse in the air at an altitude of 3.2 kilometers. He fell into the jungle, 500 kilometers from Lima.

The only survivor was 17-year-old schoolgirl Juliana Margaret Koepke. At the time of the fall, the girl was fastened to a chair. Her collarbone was broken, her right hand was injured, she was blind in one eye. Juliana's survival was helped by the fact that her father was a famous zoologist, who from childhood instilled in his daughter the skills to survive in extreme conditions. Immediately after the crash, putting aside attempts to find her mother among the bodies of the dead, the girl examined the luggage for food, but found only a few sweets - also the result.

Then Juliana found a stream near the place of the fall and went down its stream. Only nine days later she was lucky enough to go to the boat on the river bank. With gasoline from a canister, the girl treated the wound on her right shoulder, in which at least 40 larvae had already bred.

The owners of the boat, who turned out to be local lumberjacks, did not appear until the next day. Juliana was fed, treated for wounds and taken to the hospital of the nearest village.

Alone with the snow

On October 13, 1972, a plane carrying the players of the Uruguayan rugby team Old Christians from Montevideo, as well as their relatives and sponsors, crashed in the Andes highlands. 27 people survived after the fall. Later, due to the avalanche, another 8 people died, three more died from their wounds.

The fact that there was nowhere to wait for help, the Uruguayans realized 11 days after the accident, when they said on the radio that their search had been stopped and they were declared dead. The dire situation in which the passengers found themselves was aggravated by the fact that supplies were leaving very quickly. Miraculously surviving after the crash, they made a difficult decision - to eat the meat of the dead.

The victims were rescued only 72 days after the disaster. Only due to the fact that the group sent three people on the road, who needed to cross the Andes and report what had happened. The most difficult transition was overcome by two. W

and 11 days, without equipment and warm clothes, they walked 55 kilometers through the snowy Andes and went to a mountain stream, where they met a Chilean shepherd, who informed the authorities about the surviving passengers.

Imagine a group of athletes preparing for a major running competition. In training, they show approximately the same results, their functional capabilities are equal - one wonders why some are, as it were, doomed to win, while others always lose, even

having higher results shown on the control estimates?
When all the runners line up at the preliminary start line, it is clear that almost everyone is worried and nervous. But at the same time, some blush, while others turn pale. We know from history that when Julius Caesar selected soldiers from recruits for his invincible legions, he tried at first to confuse the person properly. Fear manifests itself in different people but in different ways - in some, the skin of the face turns pale, while in others, on the contrary, due to a rush of blood to the skin, it turns red. Think and tell me - did Caesar try to get those who were turning pale or blushing into his army?
This means that there is a huge, fundamental difference between activity under normal conditions (say, at a training session, at a regular lesson) and the same activity, but at major competitions or at an entrance exam, on the results of which, perhaps, all life depends.
such signs as “complex”, “difficult”, “special”, “critical”, “emergency”, “emergency”, “extreme”, “supereketremal”, “hyperstress”, etc. are called. It turns out that in one case, the emphasis is on the characteristics of the objective conditions of activity (difficult" conditions), in the other, on the person's attitude to the situation that has arisen ("difficult" conditions), in the third, the emphasis is on the state that has arisen in a person ("hyperstress" conditions).
The very concept of extreme conditions is defined by some experts as "unfavorable for life", others as "conditions that require the mobilization of the body's emergency capabilities." It is known that everyone can run fast if a growling shepherd dog rushes behind. Recall the story that happened in KiiTae on the eve of the Tokyo Olympics. The police pursued one robber and drove him into a dead end from which there was no way out. Tall fences lined the street on three sides.
The police triumphed - the fate of the thief was a foregone conclusion. Ho the thief continued to rush forward, increasing his speed
height; they turned on the siren and the searchlight - this finally frightened the unfortunate. Having uttered a heartbreaking cry, he took off from a straight run, with a push of his right foot, over a fence 2 m 51 cm high and disappeared. China then needed at least one gold medal at the Olympic Games. It was announced in the newspapers that if this criminal voluntarily appears at the stadium in the high jump sector, then everything will be forgiven him, and besides, he will be included in the Olympic team and paid a solid monetary reward. Seven people showed up at the stadium. The best one jumped 2 m 03 cm. This was below the Olympic standard^ and, just in case, the winner of these "criminal police" competitions was sent to prison.
Or another example closer to us. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, at the age of 52, was vacationing in Switzerland. He lay on the green grass, on the bank of the stream with his feet to the water and admired the clouds floating across the sky. And suddenly a snake's head swayed before his eyes. And Bunin was terrified of snakes from childhood. Terrified, he jumped up and jumped over the stream. And the width of the stream was 2 m 94 cm. It is known that Bunin was intelligent person, of short stature, who had never played sports in his life. I am sure that among the readers of this book there are a lot of “cool” guys lm 90 cm. Let them try to jump at least 2 m 50 cm from a place. This means that people under normal conditions use only a small fraction of their potential. Extreme conditions are needed so that a person can show his true capabilities. But it turns out that not all people are able to improve their results in a critical situation for their lives. Some, on the contrary, are lost in a difficult situation and are not able to show even their usual result.
Psychologists know that under the influence of various psychological conditions activity, there is a weakening of the impact of some and an increase in other properties of temperament. So, performance indicators in training sessions do not show practically any connections with any property of temperament. In familiar conditions and a calm environment, each person can show everything that he is capable of. But the effectiveness of performances at competitions is negatively affected by such personality traits as anxiety and emotional excitability. These properties of temperament in competitions, differently than in training, affect other aspects of activity: the duration of concentration of attention before performing exercises, the level of claims, etc. change. In particular, under conditions of cipecca, the motives of the same activity cause an unequal degree of neuropsychic stress in athletes with strong and weak nervous system. In people with a strong nervous system, great activity motive, as a rule, the level of psychological stress is optimal, and this contributes to the improvement of their activities. A classic example of American sprinter and long jumper Jesse Owens at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Having received a gold medal in the long jump, he began to prepare for the final race of 200 meters. The interval between these views is 30 minutes. All athletes are in monstrous nervous tension. And Owens calmly wraps himself in a blanket and calmly goes to sleep on the green grass of the stadium. Exactly 20 minutes later, he wakes up and begins to warm up confidently. The sight of Owens sleeping on the eve of the most important start of his life had a devastating effect on his main competitors. For Ifflx it was a demonstration of absolute confidence in their victory.
As for athletes with a weak or unstable nervous system, with active motivation, they usually experience excessive mental stress, leading to a deterioration in performance. I remember how, on the eve of the national athletics championship, I, a young 20 km walker, had an ideological and educational conversation with me: “Tomorrow morning you have a final. The fate of the entire team struggle depends on your successful performance. You have to go all out and show your best." As a responsible person, I took this instruction very seriously. So start at 8 am. You need to get up at 5 o'clock and eat properly. So, you need to go to bed early to get a good night's sleep. And so I went to bed at 21.00 and until 5 o'clock in the morning I could not close my eyes. No matter how much I inspired myself that I needed to sleep, it was all useless. The big responsibility literally crushed me. During the night, at least 20 times, I started and fought with imaginary opponents to the end. In the morning, completely exhausted, I was able to crawl out of bed with great difficulty. It is known that under the influence of stressful pages, the call zzzzzz==rzzz
factors, excitation is stimulated and a dominant is formed with varying degrees of mobility of nervous processes. In a person with a strong nervous system, the dominant is stable and stable, while in athletes with a weak nervous system, it is unstable and easily turns into inhibition, accompanied by a deterioration in motor capabilities. A very important role in human behavior in an extreme situation is played by such qualities as temperament, sensitivity (emotional sensitivity and excitability), anxiety and activity in overcoming obstacles. Sensitivity in the broad sense of the word is an indicator of effectiveness, adaptation of a person to stressful or extreme conditions. High sensitivity is a quality opposite to the stability and stability of the mental state. Practice shows that with an increase in networking, the effectiveness of human activity worsens, especially in a critical situation (say, responsible competitions, exams, an unexpected attack by hooligans on the street).
It is known that almost all Olympic champions have reduced sensitivity. Why is that? Imagine that a log 30-50 cm thick lies on the ground. Will you worry, worry, worry, doubt your abilities, turn pale with fear if you are asked to walk on this log? Well, of course not. After all, the log is very wide and this walk does not pose any danger to you. And if the same log is thrown across a deep gorge, along the bottom of which a river roars in a fierce battle with huge boulders? And you will no longer be asked, but forced to cross the gorge along this log. Some people can die of fear at the mere thought of it. Before such an ordeal, a person turns pale, sweats, his arms and legs tremble. And all why? He doesn't just want to cross this log. And he really wants to! And the more he inspires himself that “it is necessary”, “you need to force yourself”, “by all means”, “I must”, “otherwise shame or death on sharp stones”, the less chances he has for successful completing this task. But one has only to convince oneself that there is no danger, that I ran over this log hundreds of times, that because it was raised to a great height, it did not become thinner, - you will easily complete the task. The main thing is not to look down at the boiling water and sharp rocks at the bottom

gorges. So, in order not to be afraid, you need to really look at things, soberly assess the situation (this is not the last exam in life, it won’t work out - I’ll come again, I won’t win in these competitions - I’ll win in others, in the end both the assessment and the sports result - it's not the most important thing in life. Sometimes it’s even useful to downplay the degree of possible danger (well, what’s wrong with throwing a familiar log across an abyss from childhood, because I ran along it a hundred times while it was lying on the ground). He is by chance the greatest speaker ancient rome Cicero uttered a paradoxical thought: good speech can only be said in front of a herd of sheep.” Therefore, anyone preparing for public speaking, must treat his audience without excessive Tpeneia and excessive respect, otherwise he will only be able to tremble with fear and babble nonsense. You have to look at the audience from top to bottom. Veda you prepared, you all know what to be afraid of. It's time to enlighten these "rams" as well. The same applies to people with speech impediments. The more a person thinks about his stuttering, the more he tries to get rid of it, the worse his speech will be. First you need to be able to relax and convince yourself that my speech defects have no meaning for life. After all, a smart person is not visible to the eyes. If I could then, many years ago, be able to relax on the night before the start, I would have shown a good result.
According to psychological research, persons who, due to a violation of the regulatory functions of the personality, are not able to cope with a difficult situation, show a tendency to avoid it. In particular, it was found that among people with high self-esteem there are more unstable to stress than among people with adequate self-esteem. An athlete is always afraid of getting physically injured. What a shame to stretch the tendon on the eve of the competition! But it is equally important to learn how to avoid mental trauma. Indeed, in difficult conditions, not individual organs or systems of the body, but the whole organism as a whole, participate in the implementation of activities, although any of the systems may be subjected to a predominant load. At the same time, it must be taken into account that the biological structures of the individual, as the personality develops, are increasingly transformed and, at the level of a developed personality, become subject to it. In a mature and developed personality, the biological functions of the body largely depend on psychological determinants. Psychologists emphasize “fine adaptability of the body to various emotional situations; Thus, vegetative, somatic and behavioral reactions in fear are completely different depending on whether the possibility of avoiding danger is real or not. In sports psychology, there are data according to which “biological functions during competitions proceed under the strong influence of mental factors.” But mental factors act, firstly, individually, and secondly, selectively. The autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for the internal functions of the body, is practically uncontrolled by consciousness. Therefore, people with a strong balanced and mobile - sanguine temperament, in an extreme situation, there is a "lion stress". It turns out that the more difficult the situation, the more optimally, rationally and reliably such an individual acts. Here he is at the start, reddened, with eyes shining with excitement. A large amount of adrenaline, a hormone that stimulates motor activity, enters his blood at this time. the hormone will help him to give all his best and show a higher result than in quiet training work, without a large number of spectators and strict judges. And the louder the roar of the stands, the more confident such an athlete feels. Danger, as it were, spurs such a person, makes him act boldly, confidently, decisively. Napoleon wrote of one of his marshals: “Ney had mental insights only among the nuclei, in the thunder of battle; there his eye, his composure and energy were incomparable, but he did not know how to prepare his operations as well in silence of the study, studying the map. But next to our hero is his friend, who in training surprised everyone with his high results. Ho is very pale, agitated and shudders at the shouts from the stands. He also wants to be the first and set a record, but he has a weak nervous system and acetylcholine is released in his blood - a hormone with an action opposite to that of adrenaline. Therefore, in the conditions of the same extreme situation, a person with a weak nervous system has a completely opposite reaction - “rabbit stress” - disorganization of activity, a sharp drop in its efficiency, passivity and general inhibition. Moreover, for a particular athlete, the “stress rabbit” can every time

manifest differently. For two false starts, he can simply be removed from the competition, he stumbles and falls, poorly tied spiked shoes fly off him, etc. After an unsuccessful finish, such an unlucky athlete, explaining his defeat, will each time find different reasons: sudden indigestion (called “bear disease” - a direct consequence of stress), an old injury suddenly ached, he started the distance too quickly and there was no strength left to finish, etc. .d. Other losers in such cases always blame the rivals - they are the ones who are overwritten at the start, beaten with an elbow in the liver, pushed over the edge, etc. It is interesting that if such incidents happen to a person who is confident in his abilities, then, say, a blow to the liver can only anger him and become a new incentive for a brilliant victory. Therefore, the same property of temperament - for example, anxiety (which is understood as a person's tendency to exaggerate the physical or social danger of a situation and experience negative emotional states - fear, anxiety, anxiety, etc.) does not manifest itself in different people in the same way. This personality trait largely determines the intensity of the anxiety reaction among athletes on the eve of important competitions. But the whole point is that without this very anxiety there is no way to show a better result in competitions than in training. The anxiety reaction should therefore be regarded as a natural process of adaptation of the organism to a tense situation. To a certain extent, the intensity of this reaction is positive, and only excessive anxiety is undesirable and leads to a deterioration in performance. Anxiety serves as a trigger for the manifestation of activity in overcoming external and internal obstacles on the way to achieving the goal. Anxiety and excitability in various limits contribute to the emergence of a state of mobilization, mental readiness for activity in stressful conditions, and improvement of its effectiveness.
What is important for us is not that people with a strong nervous system (and this is an innate property given to a person by God) are capable of high results. These people by nature are intended to be winners. It is much more interesting that among athletes of a very high class there are people with weakness, imbalance, inert
Tew nervous processes, overly excitable and mentally unstable. But even such properties of the nervous system and temperament do not prevent them from achieving outstanding success in sports. This is largely facilitated by the formation of an individual style of activity, which is understood as a set of techniques and methods of activity and forms of response determined by the typological properties of the nervous system, which make it possible to achieve success in its implementation. An individual style of activity is one of the significant aspects of self-actualization, something that every person should strive for. The formation of an individual style of activity mainly occurs not by overcoming or correcting the negative aspects of temperament and properties of the nervous system, but by effectively using their positive aspects for this activity. So, the reliability of an athlete in extreme conditions of major competitions depends not only on whether he has a strong or weak type of nervous activity, but also on how much he dominates his psyche. After all, almost any person, with proper preparation and training, has the ability to self-regulate at an involuntary and arbitrary level immediately before a performance. Involuntary regulation of the prelaunch state is carried out by implementing certain programs automated during the preparation process.
Conscious regulation of the pre-launch state is based on the developed ability of an athlete to control its manifestations and causes, purposefully create images-representations, concentrate and switch attention to any objects, distract from the impact of negative psychogenic factors and stimuli, use verbal formulations and special techniques for. effects on the state of muscles, autonomic functions and emotional arousal. Conscious regulation of the mental state can contribute to an increase in the reliability of an athlete only with the daily use of a system of psycho-regulatory influences (autogenic, psycho-regulatory training).
So, practice shows that in the same conditions, different individuals react differently, and these differences relate both to the degree of exposure to influences and the type of observed effects. So, some have you

high resistance to stress, to activities in extreme conditions, while others are low. At the same time, in some, under extreme conditions, activity improves (sometimes quite significantly, while in others it worsens up to a breakdown).
So, we can talk about two types of states associated with activity in an extreme situation: tension, which has a positive mobilizing effect on activity, and tension, which is characterized by a decrease in the stability of mental and motor functions up to the disintegration of activity.
On what does the occurrence of this or that state depend? In many ways, from a subjective assessment of the degree of importance, significance of this or that event for a certain individual. This can be called a potential threat assessment. According to the data obtained by psychologists, a threat is a person's anticipation of the possible consequences of a situation affecting him. This assumption was tested in experiments in which subjects were shown the same movie showing accidents at a sawmill. In the first version of the experiments, the subjects were simply told that the film would show accidents at the sawmill; in the second, that the events are not real, but only imitated by the actors; Finally, in the third case, the experimenters tried to divert the attention of the subjects from the difficult episodes in the film: the audience was asked to observe impartially, for example, how clearly and convincingly the master sets out the safety rules for the workers. Based on the data obtained, it was concluded that in the first case, the majority of viewers had clearly expressed stress reactions, in the second case, stress did not arise, since the events in the film were considered not dangerous. As for the third version of the film, if the subjects interpreted these events as dangerous and thus did not occupy an impartial position of the observer, then stressful condition arose.
The psychological specificity of states of tension, therefore, does not depend on external influences, although they should be strong enough for a person, but also on personal meaning goals of the activity, assessment of the situation in which he is, etc. In order to solve the problems that arise here, the developed psy

chologists questions about the strength of motives, about their hierarchy, types of such hierarchies, the effectiveness of potential and actual motives, their awareness and unconsciousness, the dependence of the realization of motives on time, on distance to the goal, on the intensity of needs, on the adequacy of ways to achieve the goal, age characteristics, etc. .
However, it remains unclear to what extent the regularities established for ordinary conditions are preserved in difficult situations. Indeed, in situations that create a threat, all motivational processes come into play and the implementation of one of them will depend not only on its strength, place in the hierarchy, etc., but also on various situational factors, the degree of danger, etc. Thus, a person who knows that running away in conditions of physical danger is unworthy of a “real man” may, after being attacked by hooligans, flee, because at this moment maintaining health is more important than maintaining a good opinion of oneself.
Everyone knows that in difficult conditions in a critical situation, the dynamic side (tempo, energy, intensity) of activity and behavior becomes extremely important, since it directly determines the effectiveness and reliability of a person. This means that the innate dynamic characteristics of the course of mental reactions in extreme conditions have a decisive impact on the final effectiveness of human actions. Undoubtedly, the strength of the nervous system plays an important role in the dynamics of mental states. The strength of the nervous system is a physiological prerequisite for the reliability of a person. This factor has always been taken into account in professional selection and career guidance. Therefore, to work as an air traffic controller, a pilot (and other professions that require instant making the right decision in an extreme situation), people with a strong, balanced and mobile nervous system have always been selected. This means that the natural features of a person limit the possibilities of a person. It is in a critical situation that their functioning can become decisive and affect the process of activity as a whole. The fact is that there are general and individual limits of permissible intensities of biological processes, within which various kinds of biological rearrangements occur, accompanied by the mobilization of the body's reserves, its adaptation to influencing stimuli. At-
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approaching these limits or exceeding them leads to various pathological changes, which are sometimes even irreversible.
The question is, can a person go beyond the limits of his biological capabilities not in extreme, but in the most ordinary conditions? Many amazing facts that science is not yet able to explain prove that the possibilities of man are truly unlimited. This can be understood only through the unity and interconnection of the natural properties of a person with his properties as a person. And a person, as already mentioned, can be described not only as a biological individual, but also as an unlimited field of consciousness, which has unlimited experiential access to various aspects of reality without the mediation of the senses. Thus, the newspaper "Komsomolskaya Pravda" (1996, No. 44) wrote about a 56-year-old strong man from the city of Serpukhov - Anatoly Ivanovich Amodumov. Anatoly Ivanovich is short, strong, but not Stallone. If you meet me on the street, you won't turn back. It lifts 6.5 tons off the ground. In principle, it is impossible to explain how he does this, based on the data of physiology, anatomy, physics, chemistry and other sciences. The limit of human biological capabilities (meaning a super strongman weighing 150 kg) cannot exceed 1.5 tons.
Once Samodumov fell into the hands of Vladimir Shaposhnikov's book "Iron Samson" - about Russian strongmen. After reading it, he was surprised that all the "heroes" in their achievements stopped at 60 pounds (about one thousand three hundred kilograms). "Why not more?" - Anatoly thought and began to solve the riddle, based on his own experience. And also stalled at this mark. When I lifted a ton of three hundred, it seemed that I could add a couple of hundred more kilograms. Ho added fifty, and the bar seemed to grow into the ground. However, training continued, and in the end the bar gave way. After that, Samodumov spent a month and a half in euphoria. “It was an idiotic state,” he recalls. - I was absolutely happy, satisfied with everything, although I understood that from the outside I look crazy. When this state passed, I began to realize that in this way you can achieve a lot and get into an area hitherto unknown.
How does Samodumov himself explain his phenomenal

results? According to him, it’s not about pumped up muscles and monstrous physical strength.
“In addition to gravity, there are a lot of other phenomena in the world that we didn’t know anything about before and are just beginning to comprehend,” he says. - For example, there is an internal energy state of every living being or object. It is important to learn how to manage this state of vie. Doctors have established that if a person is engaged in lifting weights, this has a beneficial effect on him: the body recovers very quickly. When we lift the barbell, all our capabilities are included in the work. The energy capacity of each cell is rebuilt. Our classes are the same natural need as eating, drinking and sleeping.
The trouble with yogis, all martial arts is that he is. develop some centers in a person, but suppress others. Development is one-sided. We achieve harmony - in this;, the uniqueness of the methodology. And all our records are just an effey from self-improvement classes.
Anatoly Ivanovich does not declare his method as a panacea for all diseases. He only cites the facts - a fifty-four-year-old patient had a purely female pathology. Doctors forbade her to carry more than five kilograms, otherwise; - intensive care unit. threatened the most complicated operation. After six months of classes in the section, this woman lifted eight centners, the need for surgery disappeared. Almost all the diseases that I tried to treat using my technique have disappeared, says Samodumov. - "Side effect" - weight loss, rejuvenation, overall strengthening of the body. People who work with me stop getting sick. Even a cold, from which it is very difficult to protect themselves, they pass very easily and quickly ... But do not immediately try to grab heavy weights to get rid of sores. Nothing will work. It might get worse. Here, as in studies, training is based on the principle of "teacher-student". This is very important, because, according to the shackles of Anatoly Ivanovich, for the first time it is he who "charges a person with energy drawn from the Cosmos." Without her, all classes are in vain. ”
It is curious that Anatoly Ivanovich deals only with girls. He believes that girls are more open, more trusting, more disciplined. Men question everything, they need to analyze everything and sort it out, and there can be no talk of trust. In addition, the stronger sex very easily squanders the potential accumulated with difficulty.
This means that a person, not only in extreme conditions, but in ordinary ones, when it is necessary to do something beyond the limits of human capabilities, can draw additional energy from an unknown source. Not only this, but also many other unusual results can be explained by obtaining additional energy. How, for example, can a karateka break 10 concrete blocks laid one on top of the other with his bare hand? Even if we assume that his bones and muscles are stronger than steel, it is still impossible in principle, since the power of a heavy artillery shell is needed to perform such work. Or how a karateka extinguishes a candle behind a thick glass with a wave of his hand? Moreover, sometimes such phenomenal opportunities appear in the most ordinary people who find themselves in a critical situation. After all, facts are very stubborn things.
One day, in front of a woman, a wall collapsed on her 15-year-old son. The guy was crushed by a very heavy plate. There was no need to wait for salvation, there was no one in the room, and he was doomed. But the fragile woman did not think that only a crane could lift a slab weighing about three tons. She thought only about saving her only son and knew that no one else would do it except her. Therefore, she was able to jerk this slab up and pull her son out. More well-known examples can be cited. So, the famous yogi Shri Chen Moy lifted a load of 2 tons in weight from mief and above his head in front of numerous spectators. From history, one can recall how 14-year-old American Lulu Hurst in 1885, standing on the scales in the circus arena, lifted a chair over her head with a man weighing 80 kg sitting on it. The most surprising thing is that the scales at the same time showed only her weight. The weight lifted by an unknown force has decreased to 0. Obviously, only in some exceptional conditions a person acquires such incredible strength and gains new unprecedented opportunities. Conventionally, psychologists call these phenomena special states of the psyche. These special states arise, as a rule, in extreme or, more precisely, borderline situations. These are situations of individual existence in which the self-consciousness of the individual becomes aggravated and the person involuntarily cognizes himself. More precisely, he learns something new about his essential powers and capabilities.

According to K. Jaspers, borderline situations arise only in the face of death, unrequited love or trials with an unpredictable outcome. Borderline situations encourage a person to rely on their essential forces and serve as an important source of self-development of the individual. Borderline states do not have a continuous existence, they seem to be interspersed in our everyday experience. Being in this state, a person acts contrary to everything, despite common sense and in spite of everything. Many real facts prove the legitimacy of this purely philosophical abstraction: for example, a person rushes to help another, not only risking his life, but often not realizing whether it is possible to save him at all. A man defends his dignity and man's honor, knowing that no one will ever know about it.
Imagine that you are walking along the Voroshilovsky Bridge and in front of your eyes a five-year-old child is hanging over the railing and rapidly falling down. How to act in such a situation? All men are divided into two categories: some, without thinking about anything, jump from the bridge into the water, while others, convulsively clinging to the railing, think hard about something. But there is something to think about. Does it even make sense to take risks and jump down if the child has already crashed into the water and drowned? What if iron piles or concrete blocks stick out of the water in this place? What if a barge is already coming in from the other side, and I will jump right onto the iron deck? Finally, it would not hurt to take off an expensive leather jacket, etc. etc. It is clear that after such a comprehensive analysis of the current situation, there will be no one to save. But on the other hand, how can a reasonable person commit reckless acts?
Some guy can boast a lot about his "coolness" and courage, but he will never go unarmed against a crowd of twenty people. After all, this is recklessness - the forces are too unequal. But why does another (who falls into the category of "real man") these reasonable arguments never come to mind, and he crashes into a crowd of twenty people with burning eyes? Paradoxically, such recklessness often leads to a convincing victory. There is something in the madness of the brave that puts to flight a stronger and more numerous opponent.
Masculinity is always irrational and paradoxical. Sometimes a person realizes that the act he is doing

not only a steelyard, but also meaningless, but to do otherwise, to restrain himself, he, in principle, cannot. Sometimes the concept of "masculinity" is incorrectly replaced by the concepts of "ideological conviction", "moral maturity", "moral choice in an extreme situation", etc. But this is not entirely true, since the moral choice is still under the control of consciousness, as well as devotion to any ideas or ideals. And masculinity is not controlled by consciousness, logic and common sense.
In an old film about the joint military operations of Soviet and French pilots Normandy-Niemen, one real episode is shown. One French pilot had to take the plane to another airfield. He put a Russian mechanic without a parachute in the bomb bay. But having risen into the air, the pilot lost control as a result of some kind of accident. A critical situation has arisen when he cannot land the plane, help the mechanic too. He reports this to the ground, and he is ordered to eject. But to do so means to violate the code of a real man (“die yourself, but rescue a comrade"). But in this situation he is not only a man with thoughts and feelings, but also a combat unit that needs to be preserved in order to be used for its intended purpose in the next battle. He is strictly ordered to eject, but he cannot do anything with himself The internal code of male honor is above orders and even the desire to live Finally, the mechanic on the internal intercom implores him jump, but it explodes along with the plane.
What is the reason for such actions, if we discard all considerations of prudence and common sense? But they are not unreasonable (moreover, a person in such situations assures that he could not do otherwise). To say that the cause of these actions is irrational and existential is to raise the question of the nature of these causes. Therefore, for psychologists, borderline states are a kind of “windows” into a special dimension of human life - into that “existential space”, the laws of which act on a person as inexorably (it is impossible to do otherwise), like physical laws. The external reasons for the reckless behavior of a person in a borderline state can be very different - religious fanaticism, political beliefs, patriotism,

just generally recognized "coolness", but inside the same reason operates - masculinity. It is the formed masculinity, like a tightly compressed spring (like a constantly cocked trigger), in a critical situation, instantly straightens, pushing (or rather shooting) a person, throwing him into battle against the whole world. The moment of the "shot" in principle cannot be realized and critically comprehended. A person will be burned at the stake, and he, not feeling pain, will enthusiastically shout: “Glorified is the Lord!”. Such masculinity has always been "like a bone in the throat" of the mighty of the world this, accustomed to doing business with obedient loyal subjects. For centuries, many have tried to break the courageous man, to force him to change his former position. Ho, even if a mountain runs into a real knight, then he, putting his spear forward, will continue to shout loudly that there is no lady more beautiful and worthy than his beloved.
For 300 years the Holy Inquisition operated in Europe. What has the inquisitive thought of “creatively minded” inquisitors been wrestling with for centuries? How to come up with such torment, torture, such a sophisticated method of execution for a person in order to force him to abandon his former (heretical) views, change his beliefs and principles. Find a way to confuse a man in such a way as to break his masculinity. Not just to make it very painful, but to split the consciousness of a person, like a “rotten nut”. But it turned out that there is no such MjrKH, such torture that a courageous person who is convinced of his rightness could not endure. We respect Archpriest Avvakum not for his views (looks can be both stupid and insane; just as the Dulcinea of the ideal knight Don Quixote can turn out to be a fat, pockmarked and stupid girl in a pose), but for his courage in defending his position.
At the end of the 20th century, it would seem that they found a way to break any person, no matter how courageous he may be. It's about about a psychotropic weapon, with the help of which specially encoded information, freely passing through the filters of consciousness, invades the subconscious and subordinates a person to someone else's will. I do not want to believe it, because the spread of these weapons can kill the main thing in humanity, its masculinity. It seems that this weapon can not subdue, but simply kill a courageous person. Killing is always much easier.
The author believes that true masculinity, as the core of the personality, permeates not only the consciousness, but also the subconscious of a person, determining his behavior in almost any situation. I would like to tell a story that many years ago I heard from my late grandfather. Now it is not possible to verify the authenticity of individual details of this story, but the principle itself is more important. The bottom line is this - in 1942 in Ukraine, the head of one of the district offices of the Gestapo was a psychologist by education. Even before the war, he wrote in his writings about man as "an animal covered with a thin film of civilization." And since a person is essentially an animal, then such phenomena as honor, conscience, nobility, courage are all husks, empty words of morality that very quickly fly off from any person, as soon as he drives a few needles under his nails. The main thing is to be able to drive them deeper. In peacetime, he did not have the opportunity to test his views in practice, but during the war such an opportunity presented itself. For the experiment, only those prisoners were selected who had already established themselves as a "tough nut". As a rule, they turned out to be red commanders, political officers, former athletes and just ordinary communists and patriots. A man was put into a deaf leather bag with a load at his feet and thrown to the bottom of a deep and cold river. The bag was on a long rope, by which it could always be lifted to the surface. And a thin rope was wound around the man’s fist, passing through the neck of the bag to the surface. Imagine yourself sitting in this leather bag for 30 seconds, feel the hopelessness of the situation, feel the cold water pressing on your ears. These seconds pass very quickly, and there is only one crazy hope to breathe one more time, to live a little more. Here a weak person can pull the string. The bell will ring, and the bag will be quickly pulled to the surface. But our "psychologist's" attitude was not designed for this primitive animal fear. He had a thinner one; vile, as it seemed to him, scientifically substantiated and insidious calculation. After all, when the last breath of air is used up, the consciousness turns off. And when consciousness is turned off, then all attitudes developed by consciousness disappear - communist ideas, patriotism, sacred hatred of enemies, religious principles and everything else. And what remains? Only some animal instincts, and among them the most important - self-preservation. The bet was made on this short period of time, when consciousness turned off, and the body itself is still alive and can act. The dying brain sends the last signal, and the hand itself pulls the string against all the previous beliefs of the person. A bag with a person in a semi-conscious state is immediately pulled to the surface.
He immediately receives a glass of schnapps for warmth and courage, he is dressed in a warm police uniform, given a carbine (to begin with without cartridges) in his hands and forced to participate in a mass execution in this uniform in front of everyone. You can also take a picture of him against the backdrop of the gallows with the hanged and give him this photo with a dedicatory inscription from the boss himself as a keepsake. The enlightened Gestapo wanted to put this case on the conveyor - you put a political officer in a bag, and you pull out a policeman. But the experiment failed. Of the hundreds of people executed, only 2 or 3 were weak and pulled the rope. Ho and they, after a while, laid hands on themselves, since they could not walk on their native land in the role of a traitor. In fact, the experiment did not fail, but confirmed once again that genuine masculinity not only permeates the entire conscious structure of the personality, but also captures the area of the subconscious (and maybe the area of the unconscious, where masculinity is fixed at the level of archetypes). Grandfather also said that a report was compiled on the materials of the experiment and sent to headquarters. Based on this report, relevant decisions were taken. In particular, from the end of 1944, communists were no longer tortured, since an appropriate badge was put in the personal files of prisoners, indicating that this person was a convinced communist (in the context of the problem under consideration, this meant a real man) and torture was a waste of time. Therefore, such a person is only subject to immediate destruction.
From everything, one conclusion can be drawn that true masculinity is not subject to all considerations of prudence and common sense. In the situation of “being a man in the face of death”, a person must cast aside all the arguments generated by modern life and act in accordance with some ancient motivational programs. It was these ancient programs that constantly pushed

men (even against their will) at the forefront of the evolutionary process.
Imagine that people who suffocated in a bag somehow survived. How would the experienced existential state affect their personality? Would they come out of the bag the same or would there be some kind of transformation?
Practice shows that the experience of borderline states leads to the "conversion" of the personality. The person himself begins to feel different, changed. Something opens up to him that does not allow him to lead his former way of life, he really already thinks, feels and understands in a different way. The basic reasons for the main actions of a person are the state discovered and experienced by him in existential experience, and not the usual motives determined by the environment. This means that the existential state experienced by a person (the reasons for which are usually hidden from us) itself becomes the cause of subsequent events.
It is important to emphasize that the influence of the social on biological processes in states of tension is carried out primarily through mental, in particular motivational and emotional components of activity, their specific content. Along with the examples just given, this can also be confirmed by works from the field of prevention and overcoming the negative effects of mental tension, which show the possibility of conscious regulation of certain vegetative processes, which leads to an increase in the functionality of the physiological systems of a disabled person, their compensation and, on this basis, an increase in resistance to influencing stimulation. Moreover, it can be said that under certain conditions a person can restrain the manifestations of his bodily being at their greatest tension, as if to suppress them and, to a certain extent, go beyond the limits of biological laws.
This means that the effect of a stressor is not limited to its specific action, but is also due to the psychological characteristics of a person. Thus, immediate danger to life, severe pain, which are recognized as effective stressors, may not be such in connection with the performance of a certain role or, for example, in connection with religious or ideological motives. Psychology of races
11. The school of burning believes a large number of studies indicating that. that the motivational, intellectual and other psychological characteristics of a person, his life experience, the amount of knowledge, etc. significantly correct the influence of the objective properties of the stimulus. For example, in works on the study of the mental states of skydivers, it has been repeatedly shown that the degree of fear before a jump positively correlates with a lack of faith in one's strength and lack of experience, in particular, the ability to fight against the wind during the jump.
Even more striking confirmation are the data obtained by American psychologists. The study was conducted on recruit soldiers. The situations of "crash" and forced landing of the aircraft were simulated. The subjects were in a DS-3 twin-engine military aircraft. Each of the passengers had a headphone connection with the cockpit.
Before boarding, each participant in the experiment was given a brochure with instructions for a 10-minute study - a list of necessary actions in case of a possible disaster. In addition, as required by the charter of the Air Force, each participant in the flight, under the control of the aircraft commander, put on a life belt and a parachute. At about 5,000 feet, the plane began to roll as it climbed. All the subjects saw that one of the propellers stopped rotating, and through the headphones they learned about other problems. Then they were told directly that a critical situation had developed. The subjects, as if by chance, hear through the headphones an alarming conversation between the pilot and the ground observation post, which finally leaves no doubt about the reality of the situation. Since the plane was flying near the airfield, the subjects could see trucks and ambulances arriving on the runway, i.e. that on earth they clearly expect a crash and are preparing to provide assistance. A few minutes later, the order came to prepare for splashdown in the open ocean due to the failure of the landing gear. Some time later, the plane landed safely at the airport. In general, the experimental situation was perceived as real, strong emotional experiences were observed associated with the fear of death or injury (“numb with horror”), etc. However, some of the test subjects did not notice these phenomena: some of them had extensive flying experience and were able to determine the staged nature of the danger, while others were confident in their ability to survive the "impending catastrophe", to overcome it.
This gives reason to believe that the main role in the emergence of a threat, it belongs not so much to objective danger and objective opportunities to counter this danger, but to how a person perceives the situation, evaluates his capabilities, i.e. subjective factor. If a person believes in himself, in his abilities, he can handle the most difficult and extreme situations.

According to the rescue services of different countries, about 80% of people in moments of danger fall into a stupor, 10% begin to panic, and only the remaining 10% quickly pull themselves together and act to escape. See how a clear understanding of the situation and self-control help a person survive in any, even the wildest conditions.

The 17-year-old girl was one of the passengers of the plane that flew over the Peruvian selva in 1971. Lightning hit the plane, and it fell apart right in the air. Only 15 of the 92 passengers managed to survive after the fall, but all but Julian were seriously injured and died before help arrived. Only she was lucky - the crowns of the trees softened the blow, and, despite the fracture of the collarbone and torn ligaments in the knee, the girl, fastened to the seat and falling with him, remained alive. Yuliana wandered through the thickets for 9 days, and she managed to reach the river, along which a group of local hunters swam. They fed her, gave her first aid and took her to the hospital. All the time spent in the selva, the girl was inspired by the example of her father, who was an experienced extreme sportsman and walked the path from Recife (Brazil) to Lima, the capital of Peru.

Spouses from the UK in 1973 spent 117 days in the open ocean. The couple went on a trip on their yacht, and for several months everything was fine, but a whale attacked the ship off the coast of New Zealand. The yacht received a hole and began to sink, but Maurice and Marilyn managed to escape on an inflatable raft, taking documents, canned food, a water container, knives and a few other necessary things that came to hand. The food ended very quickly, and the couple ate plankton and raw fish - they caught it on homemade pin hooks. Almost four months later, they were picked up by North Korean fishermen - by that time both husband and wife were almost completely exhausted, so salvation came at the last minute. On their raft, the Baileys covered more than 2,000 km.

An 11-year-old boy showed an amazing example of endurance and self-control in an extreme situation. The light-engine plane, in which Norman's father and his girlfriend were, the pilot, as well as Norman himself, crashed into a mountain at an altitude of 2.6 km and crashed. The father and the pilot died on the spot, the girl tried to go down the glacier and fell down. Fortunately, Ollestad Sr. was an experienced extreme sportsman and taught his son survival skills. Norman built a kind of skis found in the mountains and safely went down - it took about 9 hours. Growing up and becoming a writer, Norman Ollestad recounted this incident in Mad About the Storm, which became a bestseller.

A traveler from Israel, along with his friend Kevin, was rafting in Bolivia, they were carried to a waterfall. After the fall, both survived, but Kevin almost immediately managed to get ashore, and Yossi was carried away down the river. As a result, the 21-year-old guy found himself alone in a wild forest far from civilization. Once a jaguar attacked him, but with the help of a torch, the young man managed to drive the beast away. Yosi ate berries, bird eggs, snails. At this time, the rescue team that Kevin gathered immediately after the incident was looking for him - after 19 days, the search was crowned with success. One of the plots of the popular Discovery Channel program "I Shouldn't Have Survived" was dedicated to this case.

A police officer from Italy in 1994 decided to take part in the "Marathon de Sables" - a six-day 250-kilometer race in the Sahara desert. Caught in a severe sandstorm, he lost his direction and eventually got lost. 39-year-old Mauro did not lose heart, but continued to move - he drank his own urine, and ate snakes and plants that he managed to find in the bed of a dry river. Once Mauro came across an abandoned Muslim shrine where the bats He began to catch them and drink their blood. After 5 days, it was discovered by a family of nomads. As a result, Mauro Prosperi walked 300 km in 9 days, losing 18 kg during the journey.

The Australian lost almost half his weight during forced wanderings through the deserts of the northern part of the continent. His car broke down and he walked to the nearest settlement, but did not know how far or in what direction it was. He walked day after day, eating grasshoppers, frogs and leeches. Then Ricky built himself a shelter out of branches and waited for help. Luckily for Ricky, it was rainy season so he didn't have much trouble with drinking water. As a result, it was discovered by people from one of the cattle farms located in the area. They described him as a "walking skeleton" - before his adventure, Ricky weighed just over 100 kg, and when he was sent to the hospital, where he spent six days, his body weight was 48 kg.

Two 34-year-old Frenchmen in 2007 survived seven weeks in the wilderness of Guiana, eating frogs, centipedes, turtles and tarantulas. The first three weeks, friends lost in the forest, spent on the spot, building a shelter - they hoped that they would be found, but then they realized that the dense crowns of trees would not allow them to be seen from the air. Then the guys hit the road in search of the nearest housing. At the end of the journey, when, according to their calculations, they had no more than two days to go, Guillem became very ill, and Luke went alone to fetch help as quickly as possible. Indeed, he soon went out to civilization and, together with the rescuers, returned to his partner - for both the adventure ended happily.

A tourist from France survived after falling from a height of about 20 meters, and then spent 11 days in the mountains in northeastern Spain. A 62-year-old woman fell behind the group and got lost. She tried to climb down, but fell into a hollow. She could not get out of there, so she had to spend almost two weeks in the wilderness waiting for help - she ate leaves and drank rainwater. On the 11th day, rescuers spotted Teresa's red T-shirt from a helicopter and rescued her.

A 29-year-old ship's chef from Nigeria spent almost three days under water on a sunken ship. The tug got into a storm 30 kilometers from the coast, was badly damaged and quickly sank - at that time Okene was in the hold. He felt his way around the compartments and found the so-called air bag - a "pocket" that was not filled with water. Harrison was wearing only shorts and was chest-deep in water - he was cold, but he could breathe, and that was the main thing. Harrison Okene prayed every second - the day before, his wife sent him the text of one of the psalms in SMS, which he repeated to himself. There was not much oxygen in the air bag, but it was enough until the rescuers arrived, who could not get to the ship immediately because of the storm. The remaining 11 crew members died - Harrison Okene was the only survivor.

A 72-year-old Arizona woman survived 9 days in the wild. An elderly woman went to visit her grandchildren on March 31, 2016 in a hybrid car, but it ran out of charge when she drove through completely deserted places. Her phone did not catch the network, and she decided to climb higher to call the rescue service, but in the end she got lost. A dog and a cat traveled with Ann - on April 3, the police, who were already searching, found a car and a cat sitting in it. On April 9, a dog was found and the inscription Help (help), lined with stones. Beneath one of them was a note from Ann, dated April 3rd. On the same day, rescuers found first a makeshift shelter, and a little later - Ann herself.

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Life is amazing, and sometimes, unfortunately, unforeseen situations happen. Some things we can change and some things we can't. However, there is always a way out.

We are in website we want to tell amazing stories where a miracle is intertwined with courage, endurance of people and hope.

10-year-old schoolgirl wrestled a crocodile with her bare hands

Unprecedented courage was shown by 10-year-old schoolgirl Juliana Oss (Juliana Oss), fighting off a crocodile during a tour of the reserve in Orlando. Leaving the main path to rinse her feet in the stream, the girl came face to face with the amphibian. The crocodile grabbed the girl's leg with a death grip, but she did not lose her head.
“I started hitting him on the head, but it didn’t help. But then the words of the instructor surfaced in my head, and I pinched the crocodile's nostrils with my fingers, he had to breathe through his mouth. As a result, I was able to free my leg,” says Giuliana.

The girl had to put 14 stitches, but the crocodile did not hurt the vital organs or bones.

Your own surgeon

Amos Wayne Richards (Amos Wayne Richards) while walking fell into one of the canyons of Utah. The fall injured his ankle, but he still managed to get out of the canyon. For several days he crawled through the desert in search of help. Amos says that the story of Aron Ralston, which formed the basis of the film 127 Hours, helped him not to panic.

Noticing a rescue helicopter looking for him for the 4th day, Richards attracted attention with the flash of a camera, which, fortunately, he had with him. The elderly man was rescued and taken to the hospital. The story ended happily.

8 days in the desert without food or water

Italian Mauro Prosperi (Mauro Prosperi), participating in the race across the Sahara, took the lead. Wanting to maintain his position, he made the decision to continue the marathon even as a sandstorm swept through the area. But the runner got lost in the middle of one of the largest and most dangerous deserts in the world.

“I walked through the desert day after day, catching snakes and lizards and eating them raw. I drank the same way. I think there are some instincts that are included in an extreme situation.

Mauro escaped on the 8th day by finding an oasis of nomads. But he still had to fight for his life: the health of the marathon runner was undermined by dehydration and other consequences of a long stay in the desert. However, he recovered and after 4 years finished his marathon.

The Boy Who Didn't Lose Hope

Steven Callahan, a yachtsman and journalist from America, did not even suspect, going out to sea to participate in the race, that he will spend the next 76 days on the water.

He survived a shipwreck and crossed Atlantic Ocean on an inflatable life raft, trying to survive. A shark attacked Stephen, 9 ships sailed past him, simply not noticing his raft, he was poisoned by the paint that got into the watermaker, but still continued to fight. On the 75th day, the man washed up on the island, and the next day his raft was found by fishermen.

After the ordeal, the journalist wrote a memoir that was included in the guide to survival at sea, and for the film Life of Pi, Callahan made the tackle that the main character used with his own hands.

"He did everything flawlessly, says David. - I traveled with him in the mountains for many years, and the guy turned out to be on top. My son and I had a strong friendship before, but now, I don’t even know, it is as strong as granite or concrete, if this is not too weak a comparison.