sgtmac_46 wrote;
If that works for you and that is what you have been taught I cannot tell you that you are wrong or what you have been taught is unhealthy. For the sake of conversation and admitting that I do not know you and am not talking about you personally I continue this conversation.
For myself what I believe and what I have experienced says otherwise. By only visualizing the positive you already limit yourself to some lessons that can be learned while training, forcing yourself to possibly having to learn them during and after TSHF moments. I can freely admit that I am human. I can freely admit that I have failed in the past and will fail in the future. Admitting this gives me strength and is not a weakness to be feared. Freezing is an action, neither negative nor positive. It depends entirely on the situation. Fear and terror so absolute so overwhelming can freeze a person so that they cannot even take a breath let alone respond to the situation. The fear of injury or of failure can cause freezing and delayed responses. This fear can cause one to over react or to freeze and do nothing, it is a fine line between the two. Learning how to deal with fear can give a person the chance to combat these natural responses. Visualization is one way of learning how to cope with the fear and to keep the fear from making your decisions for you. Learning to recognize that fear building before it gets control is a very good skill to have and one way to get good at that recognition is to practice feeling the fear and then overcoming it thru visualization. Another way is training with honest stress inoculations. I am not saying to dwell on the negative but I am saying to taste them. Feel it happening and then be able to counter them. To deny that the fear is possible denies a chance to learn to overcome it. Being able to visualize negative outcomes helps to reinforce the traits or actions needed for positive outcomes. While visualizing the negative being able to change the action into a positive allows one to do the same in real life. Seeing the boots being put to you, feeling the pain, seeing your family before your eyes then seeing yourself overcoming and surviving can be powerful in my experience. It helps to keep the shock of it happening to you causing a brain loop in the observation orientation actions of the OODA loop. How many witnesses and victims have said “I could not believe it was happening” Get over it, it is happening now deal with it. Prior visualizing helps in my opinion.
Some wear their courage like armor. A shield that has no doubt no cracks no chink no dent no rust. To me this armor is brittle and can be prone to shatter. It is shiny sparkly and new and never tested. This is one reason many may brace their armor and its invincibility with alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, narcotics, false and loud bravado, or other forms of self medication. Fear of letting down their buddies, fear of being found wanting or less in the eyes of their comrades has lead many to glory and the fulfillment of their duty but then lead them to tragedy of self destruction and suicides later as they could not live up to the standard in their own minds. It is better to face danger and fulfill ones duty in spite of the fear rather than because of the fear in my opinion. Learning to recognize it and to overcome it rather than the denying of it or ignoring the possibility of it or rationalizing and making excuses and justifications for it seems healthier long term. Denying, ignoring, rationalization, justifying, making other excuse limits the ability to learn and almost guarantees physically repeating the action at a later time not to mention the countless guilty replays many play over and over in their minds. There is a difference between surviving and thriving.
Regards
Brian King
For the record I believe that in almost all situations action any action usually gets better results than inaction. The action does not have to be large and heroic. It can be as little as sitting in an uncomfortable position so that inertia is more easily overcome when the time to move comes. It can be the active locating of exits, fire alarms, and electrical panels, light switches etc. It can be estimating the number of steps to get to an exit. Actively listening for and gathering useful intelligence for later use. It can be the gathering/making an improvised weapon for use when the fighting time comes. It can be the filling of your hand and others hands with cold steel and gathering allies for the fight.
