Embracing the Gift of Fear

Safety, awareness and self defense are very important subjects to me.  You could say I am somewhat obsessed with the examination of conflict, behavioral psychology and violence, which manifests itself in my daily life through my approach to business and personal matters and that sees me training in martial arts between 5-8 classes a week.

I write this post for the same reason that I write most, it was on my mind and then something happened to make it very relevant, last week I was traveling on the subway in New York and was targeted for a mugging, and this week when chatting with someone who recently returned from vacation the detailed a very similar feeling.

Fear is a gift, it is animalistic in nature and actually something that we as society have attempted to stifle through modern conveniences, and as I explore its purpose here in this post I do so with the knowledge that too much fear can be debilitating, as my wife experienced when our Dive Instructor was too focused on the negatives of a dive emergency, the entire experience of diving for her was very jaded for a long time.  As I write this I hope to tread the line between informative and off-putting.

My own targeting surprised the heck out of me.  Just from a physical perspective I am not the sort of guy you would pick out as the victim, but that day I was loaded up with value for an attack:  my head was buried in my Tablet reading a book, my other hand held my iPhone 5 and whilst I was dressing down I was wearing an expensive outfit.  In other words, though I might have not looked too easy to hit, I had enough potential reward on me to make the encounter worth the effort.

A funny thing about being ‘targeted’ is that if you take the necessary action to defuse the situation you never know for sure if it was your paranoia or not at work, and actually, the fear of being wrong in a situation like this, or denial that is happening are what get you in the most trouble.

I’m certainly more alert than most, even with my headphones on, book in hand and sunglasses I noticed the following things that made me concerned:

• Two guys on the platform were together, but when they entered the train the appeared not to be together.  They sat apart but in a manner that allowed them a clear view of me.
• They were big enough to intimidate.  I regularly train in martial arts with guys of 120lbs who can throw down, so I know size isn’t everything, but it counts for a lot.  No different from certain breeds of dog, that might be very nice, but by their physicality the potential for damage is that much higher.
• They were poorly dressed.  As I discussed earlier this week, the less money a person has the more likely they are to operate outside of the law for basic needs, so stealing food or robbing someone physically to maintain basic sustenance are more likely.

I de-escalated the threat by target hardening.  I took off my headphones, put away my book and positioned myself in a way that I could see them, and yet had a defensive line between me through the seating and handholds.  After a stop or two I still felt the tension, so I took off my backpack, stowed my glasses and was ready to go.

Everything had changed about my demeanor, and the threat dissipated.  We all left at the same station, they became a pair again, and I moved through the crowd fast enough to avoid any reconsideration from their part.

Escalation Signs

Sexuality and violence.  It sounds strange as I write this, but I see a corollary between sexuality and dominance when it comes to an escalation sign in violence.  A threat might test to see if you are a hard or soft target for potential robbery or assault by first exuding a sexual or other dominant tendency.  It might come from uncomfortable physical contact and closeness.  This is a barometer for how they think you would react should they escalate.  A prime example of the man on man dominance is when a guy ‘hugs’ another guy by wrapping their arm around their neck, once there they can apply pressure and test reactions.  Don’t ever let a guy do this to you, even in a bar or other public place, it is a dominance test that will later cause issues.  The best solution to this is to return the compliment, so both your heads are wrapped.  Might sound weird, I know, but that is because you have been told that such dominance doesn’t happen and you are in denial.  If you feel uncomfortable, embrace that feeling, and find a way to get to a safer place.

In my subway encounter I removed this potential threat early, it came to me from the gift of fear, the fact that I thought if these two were determined to harm me it would take some effort to deal with created fear.  Fear comes with natural reactions within the body, such as an increased heart rate and dumping of adrenaline the chemical effect of this is literally paralyzing as your body goes from normal, to threat, to fight mode – the threat stage actually slows you down.

This adrenal dump phase makes people insecure, which is one reason why when they are threatened they either try to supplicate or deny the existence of a threat.  Feelings like this would come further down the path in an encounter such as mine, for example should they have ‘got in my face’.  The good news is that it happens for both you and the bad guy.  The bad news is the more you do it the easier it is to manage the feelings that come with conflict so they are likely better at dealing with it than you are.

A way that people move past the adrenal dump is through a something that Rory Miller termed a ‘Monkey Dance’ in his excellent book Meditations on Violence. This is the phase in an encounter where a person is hyping themselves up to fight, what they are doing is trying to push through the adrenal dump to a point where they can ‘go live’ and fight you.  It is the point where you hear an escalation in verbal threats, name calling and chest thumping.  If you encounter a person doing a Monkey Dance, physical violence is likely to ensue.

You have two options to avoid conflict, either a pre-emptive attack or short circuiting the dance by verbal de-escalation.  Trying to rationally dialogue to downgrade the Dance will likely fail, the verbal approach typically works best as a short-circuit, such as finding an unrelated and non threatening comment that will somehow make the aggressor confused by your statement and stop to think about it, when they stop to think the Dance resets and you can avoid the encounter.  I remember stories from my father, who used to manage troubled Nightclubs in the UK that when an aggressive drunk was about to fight him he would call him a ‘Tart’ and laugh, and somehow they would end up best friends – such an outrageous insult kicked the brain into gear again and closed the encounter.

Trust your Fear, embrace it, but do not let it rule you, the Sixth Sense

The feelings I have talked about in this post come from what some might say a sixth sense, it is something that we all have, and I have wondered about for some time.  In fact I have wondered about it specifically for around 5 years since I sat down in a training hall in Japan to be tested for my teachers license in a Japanese Martial Art.  The test was designed to see if you could feel Sakki or Intent.  The format of the test was to kneel down, in what is called Seiza position in front of a guy with a sword (actually it is a Fukuro Shinai, a Kendo sword, made of bamboo with a leather cover, I suspect for insurance purposes in the event of a fail) the test requires you to sit with your eyes closed and not to move until you ‘sense’ the cut coming, at which point you need to take evasive action to avoid being hit.

I spoke with many people about their experiences here, coming in contact with their sixth sense, my own I will share here.  I was incredibly tired, and I did not feel deserving of the teachers license so as I knelt I thought I would let the Master hit me.  A fail by being hit was considered less shamefully than nervously twitching or trying to move in anticipation.  I had decided I did not care, and I would not look stupid.  Minutes passed as I sat there, a train came and left the station that was next to the dojo so loud that all I could hear were the wheels screeching, doors opening and announcements made.  I did not move.

I knew the cut had started as I sat there, and I thought to myself, should I move? I agreed that I had decided not to, but at the same time it seemed a viable option, and so I move out of the way, and avoided the strike, to a friendly applause from the 100 or so students facing me.  I would love to say as my counterparts had that some mystical movement held me and pushed me forward at the right moment. But in truth I think that was tested was a development of my senses.

Although the sword was held above the Masters head I feel there was a slight raising of it, that was perhaps audible, and when it came down there was both a sound and a touch element from the air being pushed forward.  These changes to my dynamic were picked up upon, just as the dynamic in the subway last week. The sixth sense I believe is just a heightened sensitivity to the other senses, along with the threat matrix – in this situation I am kneeling in front of a swordsman, something bad is bound to happen if I do not act, in the subway I was in closed space with two people who had the potential to do harm, something bad could certainly happen here too.

Conclusion

I believe that the sixth sense, and the gift of fear come from a combination of your existing senses, along with situational awareness, and proximity of threats.  The environment matters, as does your appearance as either a soft, or hard target.  For each ‘sense’ that you eliminate from your toolkit your ability to implement the sixth sense diminishes, and in turn that makes you a softer target.

• Don’t have headphones in both ears, that reduces your sound sense.
• Don’t be obsessed with reading a book, that reduces your vision and ability to track threats.
• If you feel the threat escalating and you have no other option, change your target profile by removing sunglasses and backpacks to make you more agile and threatening.

Most importantly – leave your ego behind.  If you are a victim of a theft or mugging and it has engaged (gone beyond dominance displays and Monkey Dances) do not fight back for money, let them take your cash and valuables and keep what is most important, your safety and your health intact.