Tag: Trust

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.

Learning to Live Courageously

Life takes courage. It takes courage to talk with that person you have a crush on and takes even more courage to stick with it when things get tough. Raising children and suddenly being responsible for another life takes courage. It takes courage to go after the job or promotion that you want. It takes courage to stand up to a bully, whether at school or at work.

Students in our classes learn to develop their courage. It takes tremendous courage to face your worst fears on the mat. Whether you’re most afraid of rape or murder, setting a limit with a friend or a family member and then being rejected, or afraid of hurting another person emotionally or physically, we address it in our classes.
Yes, it’s scary. But the good news-?

Everything after that gets easier. The practice pays off. You learn how to steady your voice when you’re afraid, and you learn to hold your ground through your fear and anxiety.

The next time that surge of adrenaline and fear hits, it’s not so surprising. In fact, you start to expect it.  You know what it is and how to get through it instead of being overwhelmed and feeling controlled by it.  Maybe you even welcome it when it comes.

Practicing in a supportive environment can change that feeling of terror in the face of a challenge to noticing that that rush means you’re doing something worthwhile. That surge no longer paralyzes but actually provides you with the energy to do what’s necessary and take action.

Living fully requires action and living with conviction. Courage can be learned and practiced.

Getting My Body Back

I was not very athletic or coordinated when I was younger. I absorbed what many of my peers learned: girls’ bodies are there to look at. I was more aware of my body as something in the mirror than I was of it being something for my own use and enjoyment. Then, after experiencing trauma, I didn’t feel safe in my body.  This made being truly present a challenge – no wonder coordination was difficult for me. I also was vulnerable, like many girls and boys, to feel that if I couldn’t win in competitive environments, it would just be better to not try at all.
When I took my first Women’s Basics class, I was still weighed down by these feelings. And yet, I succeeded in learning to defend myself. There was no competition between students, and all women were supported in learning the physical skills, regardless of size, shape or physical ability. I learned the skills, and more importantly—I learned that I could count on my body. I discovered its power and its capacity to learn through challenges.

This trust that I built with my body went far. Within a year of taking the class, I traveled abroad and became enamored with salsa dancing, easily losing uncomfortable weight that I had carried since an abusive relationship years before. Hiking mountains and doing sports weren’t things I used to imagine myself doing—but now they bring me incredible satisfaction and joy.

By getting reconnected to my body through IMPACT, I discovered more of myself. Re-establishing this mind-body connection empowered me to joyfully inhabit my body once again. Certainly we can all make vows to change habits in the New Year, but oftentimes there are underlying issues we need to address in order to help us truly succeed.

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?

♦◊♦

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.

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.

More than a Few Good Men

Most men are good men. And the good men I know will tell you how sexual violence has affected their lives. Yes, some of them are survivors themselves. Yet, even the majority who are not survivors say that it affects them. They have friends who have confided their suffering at the hands of those who said they loved them. They become lovers of others who have experienced sexual assault and often bear witness to and help their partners work to put aside old scars. They have children to care for and worry about protecting from sexual violence.

Perhaps most notably, many men tell me about crossing the street to avoid scaring a woman who is walking alone. Others tell me about acting carefully when working late hours with a woman so as to not say anything that might intimidate her. Some men go out of their way to seem friendly and engaging to women while other men choose to almost ignore them. They use whatever strategy they think will minimize the threat she may feel: the threat that simply being a man carries in our society.

Women can tell you a list a mile long about what they do to prevent being a victim of sexual assault. It can range from carrying mace to how they dress to where they go at what hour and with whom. Yet as a woman, I don’t have to worry about scaring another human being the way men do.

I used to concentrate so much on men as potential perpetrators that I really didn’t acknowledge what many of them did to make me feel safe. Now that I carry that sense of safety inside me, I am able to truly appreciate how caring and connected the vast majority of men are.

© 2024 Resolve · PO Box 8350 · Santa Fe NM 87504