He Was Tortured for Seven Years. In a Crisis, His Lessons Will Keep You Alive.

The ejection broke his back and dislocated his shoulders.

And that was just the beginning…

Watching his bomber spiral toward the ground, Stockdale clung to his parachute while drifting toward a crowd of angry villagers. He could see them gathering below, waiting for him. Most pilots would’ve probably said a quick prayer. Instead, he told himself: “I am entering the world of Epictetus,” the stoic philosopher who spent 30 years under torture. He was right.

The NLF (Viet Cong) hadn’t even shown up yet. The villagers surrounded Stockdale and started beating him. By the time any troops arrived, he was already suffering multiple injuries, including a broken leg.

Stockdale spent seven years in the “Hanoi Hilton,” enduring years of solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, and starvation diets designed to leave prisoners in a state of permanent malnutrition.

He was tortured 15 different times.

They wanted to break him.

Instead, he broke them.

The wrong optimism gets you killed

Stockdale and the other prisoners gave up hope. Instead, they organized resistance movements and escape plans. Forbidden from speaking, they learned to communicate with a special tap code their captors couldn’t understand.

But, wait. They gave up hope? That doesn’t make sense. That contradicts everything we’ve ever learned about resilience and grit.

You’ll understand everything in a minute.

But we have to tell the story:

Multiple times, Stockdale even beat and cut himself to undermine his captors’ efforts at using him for propaganda. Because he was so resilient, they stopped torturing other prisoners in the camp. They realized: It wasn’t going to work. It was going to backfire. It wouldn’t yield them any classified information. It wouldn’t break anyone’s spirits. It would (and did) simply trigger international outrage.

In 1972, Stockdale finally made it home.

Twenty years later, the pilot who survived seven years in brutal captivity did a series of interviews and published a book about his experiences. By then, he wasn’t just a pilot. He was an admiral. Time and again, journalists asked him how he managed to survive and stay sane. They wanted to know:

Who were the ones who didn’t make it out?

He gave them all a clear answer:

“The optimists.”

The salvation of BACK US

It’s quite a thing to say that optimism gets you killed.

What did he mean by that?

I think there was a lot of damage done by optimists; other writers from other wars share that opinion. The problem is, some people believe what professional optimists are passing out and come unglued when their predictions don't work out.

In his book, and his interviews, Stockdale describes the optimists. They were the ones always predicting when they would get out. Easter. Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Year’s Day. They made these predictions over and over. The optimistic predictions gave everyone a dopamine spike.

But then Easter arrived. Thanksgiving. Christmas….

One holiday after another, year after year, the predictions never came true. Each time a new season approached, their anxiety spiked. It drove them nuts. Then it passed. They didn’t get out.

They crashed.

This endless cycle of dopamine crashes caused one prisoner after another to crack. Over the years, it fried their nervous systems.

They ran out of hope.

During captivity, Stockdale rose to the rank of captain and became a senior officer in the prison. He actively discouraged this kind of optimism. It was the wrong kind. He told everyone they would get out, but he had no idea when. It would take a long time, years and years. Some of them might die in captivity. None of them would come back the same as they went in. This was going to change them forever. Instead, he worked with other officers to develop BACK US:

B - Do not bow in public or on camera.

A - Stay off the air. Never let the captors film you.

C - Never admit to a war crime.

K - Kiss goodbye any hope of early release.

US - Never put yourself over the group.

That “K” part really sticks. As Stockdale learned, you stay sane by avoiding the dopamine cycle of constant false hope.

It worked.

There’s one thing that’s essential to survival

Now imagine yourself in that kind of hell. Maybe you’ve even been there. When it comes to long-term survival, two things matter:

Getting things done.
Staying sane.

But that’s hard.

When you wake up, you don’t want to do things. That’s not burnout. That’s not even sleep deprivation. It’s called an adenosine dip. Your brain’s receptors are still clinging to a compound whose whole job is telling you to sleep.

There’s another chemical in your brain called nociceptin. It builds up as you get tired and the obstacles mount. It tells you to give up.

There’s only one way to solve this problem.

You have to get moving.

And keep going.

Why “just do it” works

Unfortunately, sports companies and life coaches have latched onto something true in human psychology and turned it into a weapon.

And yet, it’s still true.

There’s a paradox in the human brain. We think motivation precedes action. You have to feel like doing something before you do it. That’s wrong. It’s the opposite. Action often precedes motivation. You have to overcome the inertia your brain and body feel. Animals rely on instinct. But you have a bigger and more complex prefrontal cortex. It allows you to override the way you feel.

Some would call that discipline.

Everything we understand about discipline lives in our big, complicated prefrontal cortex. This is where you separate emotions from logic. It’s where you interpret your raw feelings and develop plans for them.

The same thing works for hope, because that’s a dopamine trigger. Hope can never precede action. The action has to come first.

Hope doesn’t make action.

Action makes hope.

You can change

You’re not stuck the way you are.

You’re not doomed to be like the gullible optimists at the Hanoi Hilton, sitting around predicting salvation by seasons and holidays.

You don’t have to wait for elections to save you.

You can rewire yourself.

Every time you push yourself to “just do it,” you change your brain. You develop lived experiences and memories that show you what’s possible. You learn how to get up and tackle life despite the state of the world.

Or how you feel.

Another thing we miss

There’s another thing we have backwards, and it’s the same problem. Many of us assume our brains produce dopamine in response to a reward. That’s wrong. Our brains produce dopamine in response to anticipation.

That’s a big difference.

This explains why wanting something, daydreaming about it, fantasizing about it, often feels better than actually having it.

Now you know.

Fear and anger feel good

Our brains also produce dopamine in response to fear. And anger. And indignation. So, yes, fear and anger actually feel good.

Isn’t that nuts?

Peace and calm don’t feel as good

When you actually make progress on your goals, when you achieve them, when you come up with a real plan to manage your fears…

That produces serotonin and oxytocin.

It doesn’t feel as good.

It feels better to get angry and quit

So, it feels better to sit around and fantasize about a future you want. It also feels better to live in fear, to get angry, to give up, than it does to actually make progress toward your goals and achieve them.

Well, this explains a lot.

Doesn’t it?

What you have to do

When you understand all of this, then it becomes pretty simple what you have to do in order to make it through the next few years.

You have to give up without giving up.

You have to be like Stockdale.

You have to let go of the dopamine. You have to do the things that don’t feel quite as good. You have to use your prefrontal cortex. That’s how you’re going to navigate the crazy times we’re going through.

When does this fail?

This won’t work for everyone. It’s not a cure for clinical depression or disability. That’s where I depart from the gurus.

But…

For many of us, this will help. Even more importantly, it will help us help someone else. It will help us take care of people who need more than a pep talk and a reorientation to how our brains work.

I find that valuable.

Why would you listen to me?

You might ask yourself what business I have talking about the survival tactics and mental health strategies of a prisoner. Well, let’s just say that I spent ten years in my own prison, living under a different kind of abuse and trauma. It happened to Stockdale as an adult, halfway around the world.

It happened to me, as a kid, in my own home.

I had to learn the same lessons as Stockdale.

Those lessons worked for both of us.

So there you have it

If you’ve been wondering how you’re going to develop the resilience to stay calm and face moments of chaos and crisis, that’s how. You have to uncouple yourself from the cycles of dopamine. You have to realize that while it might feel better to freak out, to give up, to get angry and yell, that won’t save anyone.

You have to stop daydreaming about survival.

You have to do it.

If you’re interested:

I’ve started working on the second edition of my guide. I’m adding sections on mental health to help us survive in times of crisis.

We’ll need it.