Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, help is available: contact local emergency services or a domestic violence helpline.
Nobody enjoys a stay in prison. Some prisons are more comfortable than others, but the greatest punishment a person can suffer is the loss of freedom. And yet there is a percentage of long-term prisoners who, despite “knowing” they don’t like prison, find that when the time comes to leave, part of their brain would rather stay inside, because they are afraid of freedom, even though we were all born to be free.
They fear what lies outside those walls: fear of rejoining society, of feeling alone out there, rejected… It’s like someone who builds up a chain of habits so strong that they come to believe they can’t do without them.
Psychology does not recognise this as a syndrome, let alone as “prisoner syndrome” (nor is it a phobia of freedom). But the truth is that this psychological mechanism is similar to the mechanism of fear we have in many areas of our lives, so today we are going to call it “prisoner syndrome”.
We were all born, or should have been born, to be free and happy with our lives. For those of us who don’t believe in resurrection, I think we should remember that we only have this one life. One day it will say “Game Over”, and we won’t get the chance to top up our credit and play better next time.
Like inmates who suffer from prisoner syndrome, some people know they aren’t living the life they want to live (they live in prison), but they are afraid of changing it, afraid of taking the steps that would get them out of where they are and closer to where they would like to be.
And we’re not simply talking about a comfort zone, because in some cases there is no comfort zone, only a hell zone.
Fear of leaving your comfort zone would be someone who is in a job they don’t like and is afraid to leave it: afraid to change companies because of the uncertainty, or to start their own business for fear of failure.
(See: How to change your life radically)
A hell zone, to give one example, is the woman who has put up with insults or physical abuse from her partner for years and stays, not because she is settled in a comfort zone, but because of “prisoner syndrome” and the fear of taking that step despite the uncertainty.
Of course, in this particular case “Stockholm syndrome” could also come into play. That one is recognised as a syndrome in psychology, and it basically means developing an emotional bond with your captor.
This would be the definition in psychology:
“A set of psychological mechanisms that lead to the formation of an emotional bond of dependence between the victims of a kidnapping and their captors and, above all, to the hostages’ adoption of the ideas, beliefs, motives or reasons their kidnappers give for depriving them of their freedom.” – Nils Bejerot (the psychiatrist who coined the term)
In other words, a woman who has been abused for years may go through these stages, or feel them all at once:
- Gratitude towards her abuser when he isn’t abusing her.
- Guilt when she is abused.
- Fear and uncertainty about leaving that “life” and that person.
- Acceptance that this is how the rest of her life will be.
Once she has entered the fourth stage, this woman will probably see her situation as normal until the day she dies.
At what point do people settle into the fourth stage?
Well beyond gender-based violence, we go through these same stages in many areas of our lives, but we enter the fourth stage far too easily.
Many people have already accepted that they will go on living the life they live now, even if they don’t like it, and for some reason they aren’t willing to change because of the same fears suffered by an abused woman or a prisoner who is afraid of freedom.
These people also live with a constant feeling of guilt, because they know they could do more and they know they could change, but they are paralysed by fear.
See also: Discipline for success
(See: 5 things to remember when you feel trapped, stuck and empty)
Doormat syndrome
Ortega y Gasset coined the term “doormat syndrome” to describe people who lay themselves at the feet of others even though those others walk all over them (hence the doormat). In psychology it is perhaps the term most often used to talk about the bond between a victim of gender-based violence and her abuser.
But we mustn’t forget that the psychological mechanism is the same one found in people who have a bad job, or a boss who makes their life impossible at every turn.
Doormat syndrome, Stockholm syndrome and prisoner syndrome, explained in less psychological terms so that everyone can understand, mean that you’ve swallowed so much crap that you reach a point where, even though you know you don’t like crap, if you’re offered the choice between caviar and crap, you’ll turn down the caviar and ask for crap again.
How do you get out?
Fortunately, people with an entrepreneurial mindset who have already come through several failures without turning into alcoholics, drug addicts or extreme pessimists have a lot to say on this.
We are all afraid of change. As we have said many times, brave people are not those who feel no fear, but those who do what they have to do in spite of it. When it comes to starting a business, everything is uncertain, and if we stopped to analyse the business, it would never be the right time to go ahead with it.
The excuses for not leaving our prison, whatever it may be, are usually first of all a lack of means and a blurred view of the way forward. And here the advice is exactly the same as the advice given to someone who wants to develop a business idea:
“Start with the means you have within reach. No more, no less. The brain is powerful in this respect, and once you have made up your mind, it will develop the creativity to find the means you need. As for the blurred path, as someone once said, start walking, and the path will come into view as you keep going.”
It won’t be easy, because no change is easy. Change brings a great deal of uncertainty and probably loneliness, but in the end, if we take action, we’ll find that whatever result we get is better than what we had (which, supposedly, is why we wanted to get out).
What do we do to overcome our fears? The answer is contained in the question itself: overcome them. There is only one way to defeat your fears, and that is by facing them. Remember that fears are great cowards. If you turn your back on them, they become more powerful, bigger and more intimidating, but if you stand up to them, they shrink and run away. And the more fears you destroy, the fewer fears will come.
The only way known so far to be happy or successful in any field involves taking risks. And in many cases taking risks is not an option but the only way to be happy, or at least to try. Despite the fear.
We’ll end, once again, with Bill Gates’s famous line: “If you don’t like your life, change it. You are not a tree.”
See also: Life is a game, and this is how you play it
Featured image: Thomas, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
