Author: marie

Without the Myth of Random Violence

Violence is seldom random.  Like all behaviors, violent behavior follows patterns that can be observed.  Once understood, these patterns can be prepared for.  I highly recommend the book, The Gift of Fear, in which the author Gavin de Becker breaks down the behaviors that manipulative or dangerous people use.  He goes into depth about how intuition functions to keep us safe.  At IMPACT, we teach an Intuition Development class on this topic.

If everyone understood that violence follows a pattern, it would have a profound impact on communities:

1.     Individuals would only be appropriately alarmed when a set of behaviors happen, and would feel at peace when they don’t.

2.     People could grow closer, not feeling suspicious of one another because of stereotypes or profiling or past experiences.

3.     It would make a lot more sense to learn a systematic approach to preventing, defending against, and mitigating the impact of violence.

4.     Victims/survivors and others affected by the threat of violence in our society could learn practical skills to avoid, prevent, and diminish violence in their lives and feel safer.  By gaining knowledge and skills, survivors can change the idea that it was something intrinsic in them, or that they are victims.

5.    Good people regularly profiled as potentially dangerous (men, people of color, those wearing baggy pants or piercings, etc.) could walk down the street and get into elevators without having to worry and put effort into not scaring others.

6.     Perpetrators of violence would be seen as using a set of behaviors to hurt and scare (have power over) others, and the behaviors would be addressed more, rather than demonizing the person.

7.     We could address the roots of violence and prevent it on that level, instead of continually having to provide victim services and lock up perpetrators.

Violence will always be shocking and upsetting.  By focusing on patterns, we discover the tools necessary to change how violence affects our communities.

Cultivating the “How Dare You?”

After my IMPACT class, I went from being complacent about my boundaries being crossed to a feeling of “How dare you?!”  I felt incredulous that anyone would take from me something that is mine by right.  Whether it was my right to speak up and say what I wanted, my right to dictate who touched me and when or how, or my right to feel safe in my own body – I felt the imposition of that person’s (or society’s/media’s) will over my own as truly outrageous.

It was – and is – that sense of indignation or outrage that helps us change things.  Without that sense, we don’t know how much something needs to change and how ready we are to change it.

I certainly don’t want to live with outrage as a constant sensation or feeling, but that spark is so useful for making the changes, saying what I need, or removing myself from a situation.  It is what precipitates everything that makes it better and gives us a sense of peace again.

It’s rare that I feel it so strongly anymore myself, because I have adjusted the major areas in my life so that I am more comfortable and am treated the way I need to be most of the time.

So, it’s educational and refreshing when I’m coaching students in class and I feel the “How Dare You” on their behalf.  It reminds me that this is the place where change starts.  This is where we begin to get what we need.  Whether it is an outside force or our “inner assailant” crossing our boundaries, the only appropriate and natural response is to say, “How dare you?”  When we are able to hear that voice, change is possible.

What It Takes To Stop An Assault (and how the media misrepresents that)

It takes less than you might imagine to stop an assault.  Stopping an assault is not about “winning” or being stronger than the assailant. Research shows that the majority of assailants are looking for someone who won’t stand up for themselves or someone easily provoked*.  Assailants are looking for someone who is easy to dominate and manipulate.  It takes very little to demonstrate that I will stand up for myself and that I won’t buy into his manipulations.

This is why simple defense techniques work.  By setting a boundary verbally or yelling, most assailants go away.  98% of our graduates report they have used their awareness and/or verbal skills to keep themselves safe.  2% report using a physical skill to stop an assault – and it was usually one or two strikes.  Defending ourselves and staying safe has nothing to do with physical size, strength, or fitness.  Effective defense requires that we believe we have a right to protect ourselves, the adrenaline management to act in the face of fear, and some knowledge of effective verbal and physical techniques.

National statistics reflect this trend.  A study on effective resistance shows that 3 out of 4 attempted rapes are prevented (“Real Knockouts: The Physical Feminism of Women’s Self-Defense”, Martha McCaughey.)  Who knew?!  What a great statistic!  Most rapes are prevented!  But in that same study, they found that 13 completed rapes are reported for every 1 prevented rape by news media.   And then, when prevented rapes were reported, the headline generally still read “rape”, not “prevented rape.”  That gives us the impression that rapes – and assaults in general – can’t be prevented when that is not true at all!

We need to believe it is possible to stop an assault in order to defend ourselves effectively.  It doesn’t require great skill or strength if it comes to physical defense, but it does require this belief.  We must also have the knowledge that we can keep ourselves safe in order to walk truly confidently down the street – coincidentally, producing the effective body language that deters assailants.

*It bears reminding that the majority of assaults happen by someone that you know rather than a stranger, but I think it is important to address the physical aspect of this concern – we address verbal strategies with people that you know in other articles. 

The Laws of Nature

There are certain laws of the natural world.

• What goes up, must come down.
• If you touch something hot, you will pull your hand away.
• If someone tries to harm me or someone I love, _________.

It’s only natural.

Protecting each other and ourselves is natural.  Unnecessary aggression and revenge are not what I am talking about.  However, knowing that we can, deserve to, and will defend ourselves if someone tries to hurt us is acting in accordance with nature.

Unfortunately, the laws that our society operates upon do not always mesh well with the laws of nature.  At the beginning of our classes, we sometimes hear, “I know I should defend myself but I’m not sure I can or I would.”

There is no reason to criticize ourselves for learning from the system in which we were raised.  But it is a broken system in which people learn to freeze, to consider whether it fits their self-image to hurt another person (or their image of a good woman, etc.), to consider the person’s feelings…  It’s not your fault the system’s a little screwy.  And you do not have to continue to live within that framework.

The student who once wondered, “Can/should/would I defend myself?” can learn deeply, “I can defend myself.  I will defend myself.”

Owning our inherent rights to protection allows us to live with confidence and peace.  This is what it means to be aligned with our natural selves.

Revealing Vulnerabilities

“It was so great to have men in this class – here I am, a 68-year-old woman, thinking I’m the one who’s got stuff to be worried about, but they are struggling with this stuff too.”

– 4-Hour Workshop Participant

Just as the student above describes, I love teaching mixed-gender and mixed-age classes because through seeing the different situations role-played in class, students learn just that:  we all have our challenges.

 

From a young age, many girls are still taught that they are more fragile or less able to do things than their male counterparts.  They eventually learn that they must watch their drinks, cannot go on walks alone, or that the road trip that their brother goes on is forbidden for them when they reach the same age.

 

For women growing up in this context, discovering that men are not impervious to threat and not invulnerable can be a revelation.  This discovery can have profound implications for our beliefs about our own vulnerability and ability to defend ourselves.

 

It’s the reason I believe our mixed gender classes are becoming more popular for men and for women.  Women, while learning to protect themselves, learn about the situations that men face.  Men, while learning to protect themselves, learn more about the depth to which violence affects most women’s lives.

 

If you’re a woman, consider taking a moment to talk with your friends, father/brothers, or boyfriend/husband.  Ask them if anyone has become fearful of them or aggressive with them – without any intentional provocation on their part – simply because they were men and viewed as potentially violent.  See if you can get them to honestly tell you about situations they’ve faced and the fear they felt.

 

If you’re a man, consider sharing these little-revealed vulnerabilities for the benefit of the women in your life.  Also, consider sharing with other men and younger generations that though you may deal with a situation quite capably that you still do feel fear and adrenaline, that you still experience that vulnerability.  Lifting the veil and acknowledging this helps everyone by normalizing the experience and letting others know that though it never goes away, there are ways to prepare.

Self-Sufficiency

The advice I got growing up about safety was to stay in groups and if anything happens, go to the nearest store for help.

This spring has brought out the hiker in me – and that hiker is at odds with the advice I received growing up.  I love to hike alone, and there clearly are no convenience stores nearby.  Since numerous students in our classes ask to prepare for the “hiking alone” scenario, it seems that many feel that hiking is taking a great risk.

But as I pass pleasant, quiet men and women walking alone with their happy-go-lucky dogs, I’ve been wondering why we were told to take precautions instead of go enjoy our alone time.

Somehow, we have been taught that the unknown attendant in the gas station is better prepared to deal with the situation we’re facing than we ourselves are.  In truth, he probably has nothing more going for him than having access to a phone to call the police.

Who -really- is better able to defend me, than me? After all, others may not have any skills we do not have or cannot get.  Certainly, receiving help is wonderful and speaks well of the community around us – but there is no good reason to not become experts about our own safety.  There is no reason to not feel self-sufficient.

Experts are available for two important reasons: things we cannot handle on our own, or to teach us how to handle things better for ourselves.  The more we use experts to teach us to be self-reliant, the fewer situations we will experience where we need an expert’s help for things we cannot handle.  Good safety experts don’t tell you what precautions to take; they empower you to be in charge of your own safety.

Letting Go of Anger

Just as we don’t want to live in fear, looking over our shoulder constantly, most of us don’t want to live a life of anger.
For years, I hung onto my anger as if it could protect me. I felt angry at people who might hurt me or others.  It seemed natural that I could let that anger fuel the strikes I learned at IMPACT.  It seemed effective – and it was, for a while.
I recently realized that I don’t really feel angry anymore.  I continue to feel every right to defend myself.  I see that being angry at would-be-assailants was a good vehicle for learning to care about and value myself again.  But I realized that defending myself with my words or physical strikes can happen still without carrying around anger.
Whether fear or anger, emotions often happen reflexively as an attempt at self-protection.  People often believe that by reading about the rape in the news, or telling a friend about the horrible story they heard, that they can prevent violence in their own lives.  This may be true.
People also believe that by being outraged at events on the evening news or by that “rude, inconsiderate” person, that they can keep violence at bay.  This strategy may also work.  Yet while strategies like these may help us avoid bad situations or “bad people,” they may also keep us from good experiences.
When we keep fear with us, we often do not notice – and keep ourselves from the opportunities to notice – that we are powerful.  We may not realize or discover that we are capable of effectively handling difficult situations.  And when we keep anger with us, we too often miss out on the joy that can come from people getting close.  We miss out on the opportunity to notice the real healing we’ve done and the innate tenderness and compassion we have for other human beings or someone special.
We sometimes need to let go of these emotions in order to live the lives we were born to live – and deserve to live.  Fear and anger will, ultimately, only hold us back.

Sharing Our Stories

Storytelling is an important part of how we all learn.  So, we would do well to think about what the moral of the story is before we tell it.  When it comes to personal safety, the moral is all too frequently:

a) be scared!
b) don’t do that!
c) it could happen to you
d) there’s no way of foreseeing it/preventing it
e) you have to watch out for those people (promoting prejudice)
or f) all of the above.

One of our instructors had a couple free minutes with a class of 6th graders where the students wanted to tell stories about frightening situations they had experienced.  Since we know kids easily latch onto sensationalized tales of danger and we prefer our kids classes to be non-scary, she coached them: “And what did you do?  Did that keep you safe?  Sounds like a scary situation that you handled really well – and you stayed safe.  Good for you!”

She told the students that when they tell each other stories, they must include the parts where they were successful.  They must include what someone did to get out of the situation, how they acted to keep it from getting worse, and where they turned to for help.  People listen to your stories, she explained, and you can be their teacher instead of just scaring them.

We as adults would be smart to follow the same advice our instructor gave those students.

When I think of an interesting story I saw on the news or something someone told me, and I want to tell someone else about it, I consider,

a) does it avoid the scare-tactic points above?
b) is it actually for this person’s benefit, and if so – what’s the lesson?
c) does it provide useful information that someone can use practically?

By following these guidelines, we can be sure that when we share safety information with others – children and adults – we are helping to prepare them, not scare them.

“Forward These Safety Tips!”

“Forward this email to every woman you know!…”

As a woman and as someone who teaches violence prevention and self-defense, I get a lot of emails about staying safe.  The sentiment of wanting to keep people you love safe is a great one.  However, too often these emails spread disinformation and fear, rather than anything that would realistically help keep someone safe.  So here is a little guide to help people evaluate the emails before they take them to heart and send them on.

• Have you checked Snopes.com? If you are not familiar with it, Snopes is a great website that researches stories that circulate and dispels them if they find them to be urban legends.  Almost all of the emails I’ve gotten (assailants now using older women as lures outside of WalMart, gangs choose their next victims by the good Samaritans that flash their lights at them, etc.) are proven on Snopes to be untruths being spread rampantly on the internet.

• How likely is this to be common? Consider any statistics that you know ab out violence or go read some, and then consider, for instance: if statistically, most women are assaulted by someone that they know, how likely is it that there is someone hiding, plotting to get in my car unbeknownst to me while I fill up my tank at the gas station?

• What, exactly, is it telling you to prepare for? Does it conflate assault with robbery? A robber is someone who wants things, while an assailant is someone who wants to hurt someone else.  Remember that a suggestion like not carrying a purse, not keeping your wallet in your back pocket, never wearing noticeable jewelry, etc. is about robbery, not assault.  Being specific about what you are preparing for can make you feel less scared and more prepared.

• Does it tell you to “never” do something? I’ve read emails that tell women (typically) to never wear overalls or have long hair or to balance their checkbooks in their cars.  They promise dire consequences to those who ignore these warnings, because *that* is what assailants look for.  Well, no.  Assailants, statistically, look for people who are unaware, people they consider easy to overpower and dominate, or easy to provoke.  Hairstyle has nothing to do with it.  Of course lists are tempting, but lists can encourage you to concentrate on things that may obscure the truer power of what your intuition and own understanding would otherwise guide you to do.  Real life doesn’t happen in absolutes.

• Does it ask you to limit your behavior in a way that seems difficult or unrealistic? Many of these emails and, unfortunately, many safety programs promote changing one’s habits in a way that limits living life.  Certainly I’m not going to walk down a dark alley for the heck of it, but a certain degree of risk (balancing your checkbook for a moment in your car after shopping, going out after 7pm, or hiking alone) is not foolish, foolhardy, or irresponsible – it is, in fact, healthy.

• How does it make you feel? This, perhaps, is the most important point to me.  Does it actually share things that make you feel safe, feel more powerful in your own skin, feel more able to deal with situations that come up in life?  Or does it tell you that there is danger lurking around every corner in your everyday life that you must try to avoid?  Good safety information should make you feel safer, not more afraid.

Powerful Words: Verbal Strategies for Prevention

I recently gained perspective on the importance of verbal skills while traveling internationally in areas where I did not speak the language.

I am used to answering my own, infrequent “what would I do if…?” questions.  My response is typically a variation of “Well, I’d talk with him, set a boundary, and it would be clear that I’m not an easy victim…  Or I’d go get help…”  Only after exhausting all of these options would I consider physical skills.

During the time I spent alone on my trip, however, I realized that I really wasn’t able to have that conversation to prove that I wasn’t the target assailants look for.  I realized, “Well, I could say “no” and yell a bunch, but I really wouldn’t be able to say much.”  If it kept escalating, I’d have to turn to physical skills.  Not having the necessary language skills, I’d have no other recourse but to use a strike.  Mind you, nothing untoward happened to me nor did I anticipate anything like that, but I returned home with a new awareness of what happens when a person lacks options.

It was amazing for me to see this, because we work regularly now with young people in the schools – many of whom actually do feel confident with  (and have used) physical skills.  But they have no verbal skills to speak of.  It is not unlike the absence of language entirely to not have the vocabulary to get out of a threatening situation.  And I felt for these young people who get in trouble for using physical violence when words would have been sufficient.  They just don’t have the words.

Teaching verbal strategies and a vocabulary of avoidance and de-escalation is much easier than learning a foreign language, let me tell you!  And we must provide it to them.  Because if we don’t, they will act like a cornered animal who either submits to violence or lashes out him/herself.  IMPACT helps people stand up for themselves.  Teaching students ways to do that before it gets physical may be the most important thing we do.

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