After a visit with my therapist yesterday and her negating my fear of being a sociopath she said to me, "No, I don't think you're a sociopath. You get depressed. You have anxiety. Your friends have the most weight in your life. However, you do have a survival-based personality. You can cut ties without a moments notice. You can make hard decisions and thrive under pressure and take a battering because you had to learn to survive at all costs."
I've thought of myself like that but hearing it come from a professional just seems to give it another meaning. I am a survivor. I have the ability to make friends, cut ties, have no remorse, put myself first, fight or flee with the snap of my fingers, do whatever it takes and yet I still choose my seven friends over me, even if one is currently ignoring my existence I would be there in a heartbeat.
ADAPTABILITY
To be adaptable is to survive. If one is not adaptable in a constantly changing world then one is basically signing their death note. I am a very malleable and adaptable being. I have a core personality and a core belief system but because I've had to move from place to place and step on eggshells a lot of my life I have developed the ability to adapt both mentally and physically to a plethora of situations because I've had to. It amazes me how fast I can recognize an environment and then shift to best suit it. It's a skill so that I remain safe and I do it subcounsciously 24/7
CURIOSITY
Curiosity may have killed the cat but that's not gonna stop me from going to see what the cat was looking at. I am one of the most curious, eaves dropping, over the shoulder looking people I know. I love to listen. I love to be informed. I love to hear the gossip, drama, the good, bad and especially the ugly. I love it because I'm curious and I just want to know. Will I do anything with this information? No. But it sure is a hell of a lot of fun to know who's dabbling in the sheets with who.
NOT AN OPTIMIST OR A PESSIMIST
My friends would probably say I'm a pessimist but in reality I simply tell it how it is. I will give you the most rational and logical outlook of a situation from a bird's eye view and even if you are my best friend I will be brutally honest with you. I believe that by taking it from a perspective outside of the situation and pointing out negative and positive attributes it brings a sense of balance the person's perspective. However, emotions are very murky and cause one's perspective to be very skewed. Realism is Rational.
ABILITY TO STAY CALM
As stated above, staying calm or regaining composure is the foremost important part of high critical-thinking where as high emotions cause disruption and irrationality in thought patterns. I have been in plenty of scenarios where I am the only calm person. I do not have panic attacks or freak out and do things out of impulse, I simply observe and let my mind move at a quick but rational speed to solve the problem at hand. I believe that there is no need to act out of pure impulse in a plethora of situations. Impulse is best utilized when one's thought process is just as fast as one's instinct.
LOOKING BEYOND MISTAKES
I screw up. I do, I will be the first to admit that I have made a lot of mistakes, but I move on. I might dwell on it for a tad bit but then I'm fine. It takes the brain three days to adapt and sometimes even less for me. I understand that mistakes are a part of life and there is no need for me to sit there and wallow in self pity when I'm a bomb guy who's more than just a grade, a slip or a hospital stay.
INTUITION
Being an intuitive thinker is amazing in everyday life and awful in the class room.
Math Teacher: "How did you solve it?"
Me: "I looked at it...I just know..."
Teacher: "It's not right unless you show the work."
Was my most hated line teachers gave to me. The problem is that if I get the right answer, it's multiple choice or otherwise, I should get the credit. I'm not some math whizz but I sure as hell know when I simply know it's not hard. It's a simple intuitive quirk that I have. I just know things. I can look at something and just know how it works. I just know where to go because I have it somehow wired in me. I know. I always know.
BREAKING THE RULES
If I didn't comment on breaking the rules and rebelling against society I wouldn't be doing my job of inspiring the masses right. Those with survival personalities don't find rules to be barriers, we simply go around, above, or through them. This is not because we are disobedient but it simply means that we become smarter than the cages that confine us and think outside of the box all the time.
Apathy
The ability to cut ties with people is one of the most prized skills of a survivor personality. We are able to simply remove people from our personal world of existence. It's not ruthless...well it is, but it goes back to the concept of putting ourselves first...gotta survive even if it means tripping that one kid during a zombie apocalypse.
You have to want to survive, even a little bit will keep you breathing, I promise.
