Tag: community

Why We Set Boundaries

People sometimes tell me that they hate conflict, and so setting boundaries is difficult for them. In reality, learning to set boundaries is perfect for the person who wants to avoid conflict because it prevents conflict from arising or becoming worse.

The true function of boundary-setting is to prevent problems from building up to the point that:

• You eventually explode and jeopardize the relationship;
• You avoid the person and/or have to end the relationship; or,
• It escalates into a more serious issue where physical or sexual assault may occur.

Boundary-setting does not mean asking for everything to go your way. It is not really a “boundary” for me to say, “I feel uncomfortable when you snort when you laugh. I need you to stop.” However, if a behavior is happening that may lead to one of the three points above, it’s my responsibility to bring it up.

Think about how shocking and awful it would feel for you to find out that you’d been doing something for months that significantly bothered someone you care about. Wouldn’t you want a chance to change it before your friend exploded or started avoiding you? Once it gets to that point, changing patterns is far more difficult. There may be serious hurts that have to be navigated and overcome.

Boundary-setting is personal safety.  Setting boundaries can create emotional safety in relationships as well as prevent assault.

It’s incredibly unlikely for the stranger on the street to assault us. Even when a stranger crosses our boundaries verbally, we don’t think nearly as much of it as when a family, friend or co-worker does the same. These are the skills that we need not only to stay safe, but also to create easier, joyful and fulfilling relationships.

Why Do We Watch Real-Life Violence?

Just before the Penn State scandal broke out and garnered so much attention because a popular man did nothing, there was a video of a Texas judge whipping his daughter that was making its way around the television news and the Internet. I was at the gym when I saw it on the news.

I was on my way out, so I googled it later. Unfortunately, I consider it a part of my job to know about the horrible incidences of violence being discussed in pop culture.

According to the article I read on the LA Times website, 695,000 people watched it on YouTube in the week it had been up. That same morning, I got an email from Change.org asking me to sign a petition in response to a video recorded in a classroom of one student beating another student because he was gay. There was a link to watch the video.

We used to ask ourselves why we watched so much violence in the media—in movies, television shows, etc. Now the question I ask is: why are we watching these videos of actual, real violence? Before, unless it was my family or I lived next door perhaps, I wouldn’t see real-life family violence. I wouldn’t see the physical assault of a gay teenager unless I went to that school. These are the sorts of things that turn our stomachs. They should. That feeling in the pit of your stomach is your body’s signal to you that something is wrong. If you witness or experience violence or the signals of impending violence, that signal is there to tell you to get away, defend yourself, or do something to minimize the violence as much as possible.

Why are we watching these videos?

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I think—perhaps generously—many watch them as a way of thinking that they are helping. People think that by watching the video and talking about it that they will change the culture somehow. I don’t want to be crude here, but no—that’s gossip. Just talking about what happened next door or across the country is just another way of doing nothing.

The Change.org email was at least asking readers to sign a petition. You see, the student who physically assaulted the other student was suspended from school for only three days. Can you imagine how terrified the other student must have been to return to school and see his assailant again so soon after the assault? We may have differing ideas about what an effective solution might be (personally I would go for educating the aggressor about issues of violence rather than relying on suspension time alone), but that email at least was attempting to do something.

Watching videos of real-life assaults doesn’t just do nothing, it undoes something. It undoes your natural response to that feeling in your stomach. It normalizes the behavior that you are seeing. If you were appalled by violence in the media before, this is something that should make you scream. Seeing violence should make us act. Simple. It should make us all call the police. It should make us make a scene or defend ourselves or others in some way. It should make us call our local crisis center or mentoring agency and ask how we can get involved. It should make us do something. Talking and “awareness” alone doesn’t cut it.

Feeling Safe & Being Safe

Personal safety and self-defense classes should make a person actually safer, feel safer, and feel less fearful.

Fear can make a person more closed off from the world- loathe to trust others, averse to talking with strangers, and hesitant to try new things, be in new situations, or visit new places.  Living in fear of violence is one of the more oppressive consequences of violence in our society.

I firmly believe that self-defense and personal safety classes should address that fear.  It should alleviate those symptoms.  If a safety program makes a person go out less, be more mistrustful, be less open to new people or new experiences, it has perhaps succeeded in mking him/her safer.  But it has not succeeded in making that person feel less fear.  It has not made his/her life more full or more joyful – and it is not the only means to safety!

To feel and be safer does not require us to feel afraid.  We are often told that to be safe, we must feel afraid.  However, it is possible to feel safe and be safe.

If a violence prevention or personal safety class doesn’t make you feel safer and less ferful, if it tells you to close off your life even more than you already have in order to be safe, take another one.  Closing off is not the only way to get security in this world.  It may seem counterintuitive, but we can actually feel more safe and more secure when we open up, once we have some criteria for judging and some skills for defending.

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.

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.

“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.

Parents Protecting Kids

After the attempted abduction reported in the news last year, our public children’s classes have experienced the highest demand ever.  Several parents confided that though they had delayed sending their children to a class for a variety of reasons, seeing these news stories crystallized the need for them.?

I think that it’s very important for parents to know what we teach in class before registering their child(ren).  So, I talk with families about it being taught in a fun, friendly, and non-scary way; I describe the different aspects: awareness, verbal, and physical skills; strangers, people they know, bullies, a safe person who can help…

I then describe the premise the entire class hinges on.  I tell them that we ask the 6-12 year-olds, “If you are with an adult, whose job it is to keep you safe?”  The children usually answer in chorus, “The adult’s!”  In this way, they can clarify that the skills they are learning are for only when they are alone.

They’re very clear about it, you see.  However, after six hours of training, often a 6 year-old knows more in a factual, experiential, proven way about personal safety than his/her parent.

In order to care for your children, you have to know more than them in key areas.  If I want my child to eat well, I have to know what foods to buy.  Certainly, I hope that she will choose well when alone based on what I’ve taught her and what she’s learned in school, but the overall fitness of her diet depends on me and she knows that.

We must learn to take care of ourselves in order to care for our young people.  Knowing that his/her guardian can protect him/her in case of danger is much of what makes a child feel safe.  It’s even better when you know that it’s true.

It Takes a Village

“It Takes a Village…” – on Bystanders

The African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child,” has become very popular in the United States in recent years.  Similarly, it takes a community to stay safe.  It requires that we look out for one another and one another’s children rather than say, “Oh, that’s the police’s job.” Or, “I’m sure they’re taking care of that at school.”  Or, “I’m sure CYFD’s already been called” or, “It’s none of my business.”

To have a safe community requires that each of us act when we see or suspect an act of violence.  It doesn’t, however, require that we jump into the middle of the fray.  First of all, the risk of getting physically involved may be too great, and we may be unable to stay safe in our efforts to help.  Also, there might be an even better tool to use, like getting a person of authority involved.

In order to be able to care for others, we must first care for ourselves.  Have you ever listened when the flight attendant explains oxygen mask protocol?  First you should secure your own mask before helping a child or another person with his/hers.  The reason is very practical: if you stop breathing, you will not be much help to that other person.  And, of course, after securing our own masks, we would all certainly help that other person.

The same is true for other safety issues.  If we can ensure our own safety, why wouldn’t we help when we saw an act of violence; whether it seemed to be an assailant against a stranger, a husband against his wife, or a parent against a child?

At IMPACT, we teach that personal safety is about assessing the situation as well as the tools that we have to be safe.  The same is useful for community safety.  Maybe my best tool is my cell phone and calling 911 when I hear shouting and glass breaking in the apartment next door.  Maybe my brother’s best tool when seeing a guy trying to take a drunk woman home is to offer her a ride home himself and to tell the guy it’s not going to happen.

As a small woman, am I going to be the best person to break up a fight between two guys in a parking lot?  Probably not.  I teach self-defense; I can keep myself safe.  So, why not?  Just as assailants target their intended victims in different ways based on how they perceive them, if I intervene when I see someone being threatened or assaulted, how I’m perceived is also going to play a role in how effective I am.

We all have to assess our best tools.  Anyone who tells you that there is a set formula for dealing with these difficult issues is not acknowledging their complexity.  There are many ways of helping out and staying safe.  It might look different for different people with different skills.  It’s not to say that one way is right and one is wrong.  It’s about determining what tools we have in different situations.

It takes all of us to keep our communities safe.

The way I as a small woman who teaches violence prevention and self-defense interacts with a situation will be different than a large man with no formal training.

However, just as when keeping ourselves safe, we have to decide:  What is going on?  What tools do I have to best handle the situation?
It is our responsibility to help when another person’s wellbeing is at stake.  However, that doesn’t mean jumping into the middle of the fray.  Believing that we have to tackle someone to keep them safe is the same simple mistake that people make when they assume that “personal safety” and “self-defense” only address physical skills.
It’s true – any decision we make around safety is a calculated risk.  At IMPACT, we talk about assessing the situation as well as the tools that we have.  So, if I witness a scenario where two men are fighting outside of a bar and one draws a knife-  am I going to jump in there?  No!  My best tool for that scenario is my cell phone.  Now, if I see children getting into trouble in my neighborhood, what is my best tool?

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