It seems to me that Natalie may be on the verge of some kind of breakdown. You might call it a nervous breakdown or maybe a mental or emotional breakdown. But, regardless - she seems like she might be on the verge of losing her mind. Did you see how she behaved after the reward challenge? After talking with Brett about "prayer warriors" during the challenge, she fawned over the winners and over-reacted in the extreme to Russel, Shambo and Jaison. She congratulated them and wished them well to a degree that was far beyond the usual sort of congratulations. At any rate, I just hope the season will end before she has some kind of serious breakdown.
I guess it started when she was talking with Laura about religion and then tonight, she called herself a "prayer warrior" and also identified Brett as a "prayer warrior". I just hope the concept of a "prayer warrior" is something that really exists and not something that she just made up for the purposes of that reward challenge. It was downright scary that she seemed to think God might intervene on her behalf and help her win the reward challenge as a result of her acting as this "prayer warrior". She started talking about religion with Brett and during the reward challenge, it seemed as if she thought that she could actually call upon God to help her win that challenge.
It's such a shame to think that if Natalie could truly prevail upon God to intervene in any human affairs, that she would choose to ask for His help with a TV game show. There are just so many more important matters that could benefit from His attention, it would be a terrible waste for Natalie to ask for His help to win a reward challenge on a TV game show when she could instead ask for His intervention with problems such as continent-wide pandemics or the slaughter of children in the Sudan.
I re-watched a few portions of tonight's epiode and from what I could see, it sure seemed to me that Natalie is approaching some kind of mental or emotional breakdown. All of her talk about religion and about God intervening in her affairs seems like a real bad sign. Same goes for Shambo. Two episodes ago, Shambo seemed to think that some dream she had was some kind of proof that Dave would be going home. But Dave did not go home at the end of that episode and it was John who left instead.
I guess the difference between Natalie and Shambo is that for some reason, Shambo just doesn't seem to take her delusions too seriously. If one or more of her delusions don't work out, Shambo just shakes them off and then looks forward to her next set of delusions. If there was ever a healthy approach to recurring chronic delusions, I guess Shambo has found the answer.
Natalie, on the other hand, seems to take her delusions much more seriously and the danger is that she might actually do some things that could be a real
danger to herself or others. For example, if Natalie got to believing that she could fly, I could see her discussing it with others (whoever is standing
closest to her at the time and maybe even trying to convince them to join her in taking a leap off a highrise building and going for a little flight to visit
with God in heaven. That is a whole level of danger above and beyond Shambo's dangers. I'm sorry to say this because Natalie seems to be such a nice
sweet girl, but I think she could be in some kind of serious trouble whith this "prayer warrior" concept. Like I said above, I just hope this season
of Survivor ends before Natalie might try to do something which could cause some serious harm to herself or others and that one of her friends gets her to talk
to somebody about it.
