STRESS AND SURVIVAL

Sometimes violence erupts when someone feels as though their very survival is threatened. Severe stress can trigger the human responses for basic survival, including violence. Physically and mentally, when threatened, people have an organic default system that is much like our ancestors . Research on the topic of survival mechanisms under circumstances of stress are plentiful from experts in physiology, psychology, sociology and biology. For managers who aren't interested or don't have time to get an advanced degree in the socio-bio- psycho -physiology of the autonomic nervous system (the fight-or-flight response of the mammal homo sapiens ) it is probably sufficient to say that trying to survive threat is natural, and that behaviors associated with the need to survive are rarely cozy and attractive. Most living creatures have a survival instinct that can be triggered by real or perceived threat.

The human survival instinct at work may be suspected with:

• Need to avoid something or someone

• A desire or need to control something or someone

• Looming fear

• Real threat

• Perceived threat

• A desire for retaliation

• A need for attention

• The urgency of ambition

• A sacrificial sense of "doing for the company"

• Working for a required reward

• Having misguided loyalties

• Seeking a path of least resistance

• Conflict avoidance

• Seeking political gain or domination

• Having an out of balance sense of accountability for self or others

• Fatigue

• Illness

• Extreme Uncertainty

• Ignorance

• Poverty

• Lack of education or training