Why Some Cope With Disasters Better Than Others

Sept. 21, 2005 — -- We've seen it over and over the past few weeks. After disaster strikes, some people pick up the pieces and move on with their lives. Others find it far more difficult to continue and seem paralyzed by events beyond their control.

Why is it so much more difficult for some people to deal with disasters than it is for others? How is it that the guy down the road can say "OK, the house and all I had is gone, but I'll rebuild," while a neighbor collapses in agony and indecision?

The reason, according to one body of research, lies in the fundamental way the brain functions, and whether we believe we really are in control of our lives.

Steve Maier of the University of Colorado in Boulder is a psychologist who specializes in neuro-chemistry, or the chemistry that regulates activities in the brain. He has been looking at this issue for some time and believes the answer lies in the level of control exercised by a very primitive part of the brain.

"We're looking to see what happens in the brain when bad things happen," Maier says. So far his research, mostly involving laboratory rats, indicates that when bad things happen, a "very primitive" part of the brain is the first to react.

That part of the brain evolved very early in animals, and for good reasons.

"In primitive species, and in simple organisms, when something bad happens the only way that organism can adapt to that event is by altering its physiological reaction," he says. In other words, fight or flee.

"A primitive organism doesn't really have the behavioral capacity to do much about negative events," he says. So a primitive part of the brain orders the system to produce more energy, for example, and to beef up the repair mechanism in case of injury, and, of course, to hit the road.

"The trouble is in primitive organisms these negative events that happen are usually fairly brief in time," Maier says. "You get attacked by the tiger and you either are going to make it or you aren't."