How far can Mental preparation go?

A P.O.W. held one word an done bit of sanity during their interments. In fact long after he forgot his name, and no longer thought in English there was one word that was primal to them. And anchor to things "right". Do you have an idea what that word was?

  HOME. 

The word can be different for different people. Home doesn't always bring back good memories, ya know? Point is we all have a word that symbolises all that is right and good for us. For some the word is youth, or Normal. "Normal" is real, and the ideal we've known or glimpsed of something that operated differently than it does now. Confused?  

Suppose we are in a fema camp, we have been tormented, starved,and heavily indoctrinated. "Normal" would be free thought, provision and work, and freedom of movement. Normal or home was the reminder that their current reality was false. I believe that faith held them together. Not dogma but hoping and knowing that this was not the way "things" and people really are or should be.That it wasn't always like this, this is not "normal". 

i wonder, if by keeping home in realisation one could distance themselves from the present torments and observe them. Make humor to oneself about how comical their captors and oppressors are. 

How futile even for themselves the ideology for which they beat and sear your brain. I wonder if, perhaps one could keep sanity by finding a private humor in the conditioned behavior of her cellmates.

 While remembering normal, how predictable are the systematic camp methods to mind control through rewards, harassment, isolation and manufactured paranoia? 

Besides would isolation really be such a terrible thing? Most every experience they put you through is designed to induce fear, anxiety, coercion... what if you distanced yourself in your own way before they make you into a shell their way? 

They want yo humiliate you before others and cause them to socially punish you, but what if you are already liberated form the need for social approval, and in realising normal, you can understand that even this prison societies opinions aren't even their own. 

  Could one maintain sanity by making "unmeaningful" the events in a place that is not normal? 

There are , i guess, 6 ways out of the situation. Conform their way via your fear , pain, and mind loss, Conform your way thru mindful self preservation, merely survive, revolt, be liberated from the outside, and Die. 

  In the event of facing death, if you can, try to make the very most out of life to be sure you have lived free even if only your mind is under your command.

  Anyway, once "normal" returns, supposing a liberation from the fema camp.

 A person who survived in such a way might be stuck in that place. By then his idea of home or normal is itself unreal, as he had to elaborate dramatically in order to hold onto it. He is also liable to resent dramatically anything he feels to be manipulative of his freedom, space, and thought movement, as "normal" is freedom. Opposite of oppression. 

 He feels entitled to normal.  

Well, i have been pondering thoughts of the like above. How someone could keep sanity thru chaos. Military people sometimes train for P.O.W. life, they learn all about the philosophy of brainwashing, how to survive with nothing, (101 uses for fingernails) and the physical training to withstand against torture. But civilians can only prepare so much. 

  I can study. i can prepare in mind to an extent. Here's a think.... 

  When i was mentally preparing for army basic training i watched the first half of "Full Metal Jacket" over and again. i set myself up that BT would be that tough. Could i make it? Would i be Pyle?" Well luckily for me BT was like summer camp, a really long ROTC class. It was nothing like i expected.

  Perhaps, one could maintain sanity in a fema camp by mental preparation for the worse and easy conscious adjustment should it turn out not as bad.

  Cheers to optimism 

 Jessy