The science of survival
(CBS News) Bouncing back from this month's fiscal crisis is a job for the entire nation. Bouncing back from a personal crisis is a job for the individual, an internal process science is learning more about all the time. Our Cover Story is reported by Susan Spencer of "48 Hours":
Micki Glenn is as delighted as anyone to see a perfect rainbow over the water, but unlike most of us, she is just as delighted to see sharks under the waves.
"They're powerful and graceful," said Glenn. "I mean, they're beautiful, beautiful animals"
Which is why Glenn and her husband, both expert divers, went on a Caribbean scuba expedition 11 years ago photographing sharks.
"They would just slowly cruise around. It was almost like watching horses," she said.
And some were almost as big. On day five, this seven foot female got uncomfortably close.
"Her eye was just maybe eight inches from my eye. And she just hung there, vertically in the water."
Then, she struck.
"She had my whole right upper body in her mouth," Glenn recalled. "So when she whipped back and forth, my forehead would slam the water, and then the back of my head would slam the water."
When the shark suddenly let go, she took a chunk of Glenn's arm and shoulder with her.
"I could see blood everywhere," Glenn said.
"It's unbelievable that you survived," said Spencer.
"It is. It really is. I mean, that's a miracle in itself."
Second miracle: Six surgeries, and a few weeks later, she was back at work!
She had no use of her right hand. She was haunted by flashbacks, but determined to resume normal life, on the farm . . . and, yes, even back in the water.
"Do you consider yourself extraordinarily resilient?" asked Spencer.
"I do now," Glenn replied. "I'm proud of the way that I handled things."
Most of us find ourselves nose-to-nose with sharks only in the safety of an aquarium, which is probably a good thing. But bad things happen on dry land as well, and people bounce back from trauma all the time.
Which raises that age-old question: What about me? Faced with a real crisis, how resilient would I be?
Psychiatrist Dennis Charney says people can train themselves to be more resilient.
Twenty years ago, Dr. Charney -- now dean of Mt. Sinai Medical School -- was researching post-traumatic stress among soldiers. He became fascinated with the resilience of those who didn't have it.
"We came up with a series of factors that seemed to be prevalent in all different populations of people and all different kinds of trauma," Dr. Charney said.
He said that in disasters like 9/11 or Hurricane Sandy, people are more likely to weather the storm when they have strong social support, a strong community. And if there isn't one, real survivors more or less make their own.
This was especially true, he found, among former POWs.
"Many of them are in solitary confinement for years, and they weren't allowed to talk," Dr. Charney said. "So they developed a way of communicating through the wall by tapping on the wall. And the analogy is that everybody needs a 'tap code,' a way of developing a support system and communicating with other people that are going to help them get through tough times."
Even in the toughest times, Charney's POWs shared something else: Unshakeable optimism, another key element of resilience.
"One of the POWs told us, 'We knew we were 8,000 miles away. We knew that nobody was going to come and get us. And we were being held by an enemy. But together, we felt we were going to prevail.'"
Micki Glenn can certainly relate to that. When asked what she tells people who ask about her comeback, Glenn said, "I think, first off, I tell them that I was a person who is generally always happy. And second, I just stumbled on positivity and how powerful it is. That's a big part of it."
Like Glenn, Regina Calcaterra beat long odds by staying hopeful; unlike Glenn, her trauma was decades long.
Calcaterra said her mother was mentally ill, and self-medicated with drugs and alcohol. She ended up having five children with five different men, but focused all her rage on her middle child -- something you'd hardly guess from Regina's brave little smile in her childhood photo.
"She would pick up my body and throw it into a wall, throw it into a door," Calcaterra said. "And she would pick it up from the floor and bang it down. She would lift up the back of my hair and then bang my head into the ground. And while I was down, as this child, she would be kicking me in the ribs and kicking me in the back."
School was a safe haven, but as Calcaterra writes in her recent memoir, "Etched in Sand" (Norton), she often was homeless and couldn't go.
How did she survive? How did she feed herself? "We stole food to eat," Calcaterra said. "I was drinking vinegar to survive. . . I figured out that it just suppressed my appetite and I would be less hungry with it."
By eight, she realized her situation was neither her fault nor hopeless. By 14 she had won legal emancipation from her mother.
She went on to college, then law school. Today she is a top aide to the Governor of New York.
Does she consider herself a resilient person? "Yes, absolutely, I do," she replied. "If I'm pinged or knocked down, I get up very quickly and just move forward, and I always have."
"Do you think you're unusual?" Spencer asked.
"Do YOU think I'm unusual?" she laughed.
Psychology professor George Bonanno, of Columbia University's Teacher's College, probably would answer no to that. He says his studies show people are a lot more resilient than they think.
"We just did a study on spinal cord injury, and the resilience was over 50 percent," Bonanno said.
That's right: More than half the people he interviewed in the hospital showed no signs of depression or anxiety. Another study of trauma centers had equally impressive results:
"People were minding their own business, suddenly were injured in a single incident trauma -- you know, bells, and whistles, and ambulances, and required emergency surgery. Very scary stuff," said Bonanno. And more than half of the people in the study -- 60 percent -- showed people who were resilient.
All these years later, Micki Glenn and Regina Calcaterra look back at their experiences almost philosophically.
"Do you get annoyed at people when they get all upset about life's little issues?" asked Spencer.
"Absolutely, I do," laughed Calcaterra. "I actually think that it's good that they get upset about the small things, because then they didn't experience such pain and suffering. So then they've had a good life, if the little things set them off."
Spencer asked Micki Glenn, if she could magically erase the shark experience from her life, would she do it?
Glenn said no. "I learned so much through it. I learned about being positive and how powerful that is. I learned that you are who you are on the inside and it doesn't matter how scarred you are, it doesn't matter what happens to you on the outside. Those are life lessons that most people don't get to learn."
For more info:
- "Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges" by Steven Southwick and Dennis Charney (Cambridge University Press)
- "The Other Side of Sadness: What the New Science of Bereavement Tells Us About Life After Loss" by George A. Bonanno Ph.D. (Basic Books)
- "Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resilience" by Laurence Gonzales (W.W. Norton); Also available in trade paperback
- "Etched in Sand: A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakable Childhood on Long Island" by Regina Calcaterra (HarperCollins); Also available in eBook format
- michelleglennphotography.com
- Dennis S. Charney, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital
- reginacalcaterra.com
- George A. Bonanno, Teachers College, Columbia University
- Adventure Aquarium, Camden, N.J.