Transforming Fear Into Strength
Transforming fear into strength is an important skill to develop, when dealing with a self defence scenario. When we are exposed in potentially dangerous situations, our fear response symptoms kick in. Adrenaline floods out systems and can improves out abilities and functions. This includes becoming tolerant to pain. But this can very thing can also hinder others such as we can lose out peripheral vision or in other words get tunnel vision. So, unless we look at ways in order to control body’s natural fear response to improve our survival chances. In order for us not to freeze or panic in this very scenario.
FEAR RESPONSE
Let’s say you have been walking home late at night. You start to get a uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach that someone is walking behind you. This is because your fear response has subconsciously alerted you to the presence of a potential threat to your safety. As the feeling of adrenaline enters your body, you will notice things like the hair on the back of your neck standing on end or you start to feel anxious.
You interpret this information, and it then changes your emotional state into becoming afraid. It could be possible that someone is walking purposefully behind you and is looking to assault you. Or they are just simply in a hurry because they are running late. All your fear systems pick up in the sound of the footsteps, closing the distance on you. But not the intent behind it. Once your fear response has alerted you of a potential threat, your body will be hit with an adrenaline rush. In order for you to either fight or running away to safety. This is transforming fear into strength
THINGS TO REMEMBER
Unfortunately, one of the things the human mind does when it first senses a potential threat is it goes into denial. Have you ever been walking along the street and sensed someone maybe following you. Thinking to yourself that you have imagined it or you are reading too much into the situation and therefore you should not be feeling afraid. This is denial. By making a risk assessment, you are acknowledging that you maybe in danger. Which gives you are better chance of survival then if you simply ignored your intuition. If your fear response has ever been activated never ever ignore your instinct as it wlil save your life. A great tip if you ever feel like you are starting to panic in a dangerous situation (only if you have enough space and time) is to do some tatical breathing.
TATICAL BREATHING EXERCISES
- Breathe in for a count of 2.
- Hold the breathe for a count of 2.
- Breathe out for a count of 2.
You can change the count to 4,6,8 or any other number. By Regulating your breathing in this way, it will help you clear yourself mentally. But also, physically in a controlled way. Therefore, transforming fear into strength
SURVIVAL MINDSET
One thing everybody needs to remember is that everybody is worth something, and that within itself is worth fighting for. Nobody has the right to verbally or physically challenge that. Please refer to my survival mindset post which dives more into this. The Foundation Of A Survival Mindset
ACCEPTING YOUR SITUATION (Transforming fear into strength )
It is so easy that if you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to deal with a aggressive person or potential attacker. You need to look at the options you could either say “why me” or you can accept that no is immune from getting attacked whether it is now or sometime in the future. Even a trained martial artist has to be aware that this can happen to them as well and they are not invincible. You see you don’t have to do anything wrong to be attacked but you may not notice the pre attack signals. For more details of this signals refer to the following post. Understanding a predator’s mindset
But when you find yourself having to deal with anyone who wishes to cause you harm. You need to stop living in denial and accept what is happening to you and focus on how you are going to survive. Every attacker will deny you to have any time or distance to either escape or counterattack. So, it would be pointless on wasting your time questioning why it is happening to you and quicker to just accept it and do everything you can to protect yourself as fast as you can.
BE YOUR OWN HERO
Don’t waste time looking around or expect someone is going to come and rescue you. Your entire focus should be trained on your attacker who is trying to cause you injury. Unfortunately, in today’s society is extremely unlikely that someone is going to risk their own safety, even if you were yelling or shouting at someone.
In this scenario if a stranger walking by can explain the away the situation to themselves internally, such as a just couple having a disagreement. But even if they did end up helping from a distance by calling the police. In order from the police to arrive it is still going to take time for help to arrive to come to your aide.
Sexual assault or even a physical fight can occur withing minutes. I know it will be hard, but this is where we need to become your own hero. In order to this you need to accept in this situation you are the only person here you can count on and you need to solve this problem for you to survive. I want to encourage as many women as possible around the world to start a martial art or self defence program because it will help you gain the upper hand in this very situation. Transforming fear into strength.
ONE STEP AT A TIME
When we face danger, we want to remove ourselves from these situations as fast as humanly possible. Often our fear becomes so great that we simply want to act, but we are now sure how or know exactly what to do. This is where fear sets in.
Dealing with a verbally aggressive person who wishes to cause us harm, there becomes an overwhelming desire to escape. But in such instances, you may forget we could use de-escalation techniques in order to defuse the situation. But because you have started to panic you will not be thinking clearly. You could say something like “I don’t have time to deal with this” or “I need to leave” This could come across as aggressive. We need to remember our behavior and actions could end up escalating the situation the very thing we are trying to escape.
Look at it this way, if you have been pinned to the ground in either a attempted sexual assault or a physical fight. Struggling without a purpose will leave you feeling exhausted. Panicking causes your body to use up all of its energy, making it harder for you to escape. Accepting the situation, you are found yourself in and what is at stake. Taking not of the adrenaline passing through your body and doing tactical breathing is much more efficient is calming you down before you execute your planned counterattack.
SMALL VICTORIES
The aim of any self defence system is not to turn you into a fighting machine that could take on the world. Its objective is more realistic; to enable you to stop a would-be attacker from doing what they want to do to you. For example, if you’re a woman having to fend off a huge aggressive male, who is trying to rape you. You should not be asking yourself how you can beat him black and blue. But rather you should be looking at what you can do to prevent them from sexually assaulting you. e.g. can you put a car or any other obstacle between you and the attacker. So, they are unable to reach you. It does not matter if they keep trying to get you and fail each time. Each failure on their end is your win.
The longer you can run down the clock and prevent them from attacking you, the better. You are not delaying the inevitable you are putting them under pressure. Every time you stop them from doing one of the tasks that is necessary for them to control you. Take pride and confidence in that. Most predators rely on the threat of violence and fear to accomplish their attack.
These attackers want compliance, not a victim who is going to struggle and fight back. They know the longer it takes for them to achieve their goals, there is greater risk of getting caught. So every second you gain for yourself, puts them under pressure. If you have made yourself a difficult target from the very beginning and continue to remain difficult. They are more likely to give up and try to find someone else.
PREPARE, PLAN & RESPONSIBILITY
As much as we want to be in control of everything happening in our lives. We have to accept that is not always possible. No person is ever to blame for being assaulted, however there are things we can do to prevent ourselves from becoming victims. If we take these steps, then we should be responsible for that.
Everybody has the right to walk around late at night, leave your car or house unlocked. But it is not responsible to do so. Attackers will create an environment that will benefit them and not you. I found that it helps to think like an attacker. Say for instance you are going to the train station and you walk through those tunnels to enter or exit the platforms. I immediately think this would be a dangerous area to be in at night. Because they could ambush you, not much room to move if you need to escape or what if there’re more than one person.
By thinking in this way, you start to train yourself to become more aware of your surroundings. And be able to plan ahead of how you would act or respond if you end up in this situation. You can even take it further by visualising what you might say or do. The key to survival is by making sure you have done everything you can to prepare yourself. For dealing with any given situation you may encounter, however unlikely it may seem.