I've experienced what is described in terms of Andy's reactions, in the quote below.  When after several months of torture, I finally 'clicked' that what was happening in the workplace had been deliberate and intentional abuse, something switched in my head.

My focus became much sharper, my intentions ruthless

And suddenly I became calm.

The Psychopath Makeover - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

[In the lab, our pulse rates are significantly higher than our normal resting levels, in anticipation of what's to come.
But with the change of scene, an override switch flips somewhere in Andy's brain. And the ice-cold Special Forces soldier suddenly swings into action. As vivid, florid images of dismemberment, mutilation, torture, and execution flash up on the screen in front of us (so vivid, in fact, that Andy later confesses to actually being able to "smell" the blood: a "kind of sickly-sweet smell that you never, ever forget"), accompanied not by the ambient spa music of before but by blaring sirens and hissing white noise, his physiological readings start slipping into reverse. His pulse rate begins to slow. His GSR begins to drop, his EEG to quickly and dramatically attenuate. In fact, by the time the show is over, all three of Andy's physiological output measures are pooling below his baseline.
Nick has seen nothing like it. "It's almost as if he was gearing himself up for the challenge," he says. "And then, when the challenge eventually presented itself, his brain suddenly responded by injecting liquid nitrogen into his veins. Suddenly implemented a blanket neural cull of all surplus feral emotion. Suddenly locked down into a hypnotically deep code red of extreme and ruthless focus."

Despite the title of the article, there is no sense in which I am psychopathic, which is why, when I originally had my strange change of mental gears, I thought this ability to throw care to the winds and focus on extricating oneself effectively from a very bad situation must have been part of everybody's brains.

The writer's discussion implies that this isn't so, however it is likely that one would have to be put through a very prolonged, grueling experience, first, in order for the brain to ultimately resort to this extreme mode of adaptation.  Sitting in a lab doesn't cut it.

I do empathize with people deeply, under normal circumstances.  However, having been to this extreme point and back, I know that should somebody physically attack me, I would not require the build-up of months of provocation, in order for to move into the zone where I could adequately defend myself.

I'm capable of entering the eye of the storm because I've been there before. I also know that my mind calms down and that I am supremely confident in doing what has to be done to prioritize my own survival.

I recommend Marechera's MINDBLAST.  It starts with a youth being indoctinated by a giant cat.  The cat wants him to say 2 plus 2 equals 4, but the youth insists it equals 5. The cat  become more and more condemnatory:  "I will reeducate you!"  whilst the youth insists that reality can mean whatever he wants it to mean.

This is paradoxical criticism of the stifling of creativity, especially that of writers, under Robert Mugabe's Marxist regime.

There were only a few hundred copies made of this excellent collection of sketches, poetry and some unfinished works.  The order that it wasn't allowed to be published in Zimbabwe was temporarily reversed  -- (or perhaps permanently so, but still there are no books available for purchase, and sellers request over 100 pounds for old copies).  My university library copy, hurriedly printed by College Press, was yellowing, with many of the pages inserted in the wrong order (duplications, along with some pages missing).

Other sections of the book are veiled criticisms of the regime, which tried to co-opt ambitious writers by offering them unproductive jobs in 'The Ministry of Education'.

Here's another criticism of censorship from one of the long poems:

Minds of every hue intermingle with matter
Only of concern to the Censor;  Athena
And Malcolm X are the hosts, dealing
Out dagga [marijuana] and kachasu (a lethal homebrew spirit) to freedom's veterans.
Black sky, dark stingray --- O To drown in deep waters!
This dried-up Lake Kariba
Of censorship peering over
Homer's shoulder;
That tumultuously waterless
Victoria Falls
Of writer after writer
Hurled to the seething hell below.
I gave her the pure bloom of jacaranda
The fiery ecstasy of flamelilies
The continuous gnawing delight
That now is nothing but painful memory;
And few the luminous seasons in her eyes
Which to sheer adoration toss grudgingly
Bits of psychological speculation,
Bits of political condemnation.

Were Hell other people
And not myself I could willlingly
Diagnose the scratchings at the other side
Of the door.
The telephone rings;  from the other end of the line
My name an voice introduce themselves:  Poet.

What Offends You, the War on Women or That It’s Being Discussed? | Clarissa's Blog


If I am a woman speaking about women’s issues, a man may stand up and say, “Let’s try to be rational about all this.”

On the surface that statement would be impossible to disagree with. It’s good to be rational. Everyone should be rational. Let’s progress rationally.

However, beneath the surface, it has the opposite meaning. The way most people will hear it, because our ears are attuned to patriarchal symbolism, and because the issues being discussed concern gender, will be: “She’s going on and on, in an emotional and irrelevant way, and it’s time someone put a stop to this, so we can focus on what’s important.”

That’s what makes for the confusing aspect of the situation. The words have the opposite meanings to what they seem to have. Yes, in that sense it’s about like Orwellian language, because patriarchal metaphysics is like The Ministry of Peace. And, unless you have been exposed to its reverse logic, you won’t quite believe it. You will think that patriarchy is all about promoting rationality and aiding progress. I notice, though, that many women in the Labor party, Nicola Roxon. Penny Wong and Julia Gillard, all have a very shrewd understanding of how this game is played, which is why they have managed to reach high positions without being knocked down. Most women don't fully understand this. I was a late learner.

The booby trap in the patriarchal construct is that always, if try to oppose it’s method of silencing, you end up looking like you’re opposed to rationality — like you desire chaos to reign.

Gillard and others have done a remarkable job in side-stepping many of the patriarchal booby traps.

 | Clarissa's Blog


People have tried to change me ever since the end of the Second Chimurenga, in 1980.  Both political leftists and political rightists have tried it for reasons best known to them.

This eventually caused me layer upon layer of traumatisation.

Once you get pulled into the power of evil people, the effect of their force field is hard to resist.  Other people won't let you get away. I’ve even had people imply that the fact because I was in such a hard place that I tried to accommodate all the demands for change, this meant I had an unstable sense of self.  If you try to give people what they're forcing you to give, it means you had something wrong with you from the start.  The ideology of dominance and submission typically reverses cause and effect.   "If you comply with me, I will prove you are evil!" is the ideology of evil and self-hating people.

The good news is, I’ve finally found a way through — by giving up.

You know, if an assailant has you in a bear hug, you can find that difficult to resist, but if he grabs you when you have a lot of air in your chest, you can suddenly let all the air out and make your body go limp. You can then drop to the ground and escape.

This is what I’ve finally managed to do on a psychological level, because I had learned over the years that the more I resisted, the worse it would become for me.

“If the Soviet Union was so bad, then why didn’t people flee?” | Clarissa's Blog


 One of the worst situations I faced was working at a Labor union, where they tried to change my character structure. There was a profound degree of cynicism in this place about human nature. You couldn’t do anything pleasurable, because it was a sign you were giving in to your humanity. I think the core of this ideology was driven by the Catholics in the organisation. The right faction of the left-wing Labor party in Australia has a lot of union support and I was working at a relatively conservative union.

Human dignity was degraded because the goal was to “shape” people, and to make them earn their respect. Any amount of protest against this was considered to be a sign of attempted political or emotional manipulation.

Trying to put up with this ended up breaking down my digestive system, which hasn’t fully recovered to this day. I wish people would learn we can’t shape adults, who have already developed a shape of their own. Trying to shape children isn’t all that better, but adults already have a character structure and working to break that down is abusive.

Shamanism's quest is ontological, to do with the nature of being, rather than epistemological, to do with developing a theory of knowledge.  It hardly denies the importance of knowledge.  Rather, it pursues knowledge in order to enhance the quality of existence.  Knowledge, here, is a form of mystical self-revelation.

My existence, of course, like any other, moves from the unknown to the known (relates the unknown to the known).  No difficulty; I believe I am able, as much as anyone I know, to surrender to operations of knowledge.  This is, for me, necessary -- as much as for others.  My existence is composed of steps forward, of movements which it directs to point which are suitable.  Knowledge is in me--I mean this for every affirmation of this book [INNER EXPERIENCE]; it is linked to these steps forward, to these movements (the latter are themselves linked to my fears, to my desires, to my joys).  Knowledge is in no way distinct from me; I am it, it is the existence which I am.  But this existence is not reducible to it; this reduction would require that the known be the aim of existence and not existence the aim of the known.  ( p110)