Knife Defense Session 11: Fear Management

We have talked about this, disproportionate fear response that we have, that most people have towards the knife. Now, that's very easy to go. Normally fear is actually a positive for our survival. Fear is our alarm bell. Is what informs us that we need to do something in order to preserve our lives or the lives of our loved ones.

So, we need to be careful because if we let that fear develop unchecked, it's gonna turn into panic. And you know, panic is not a good state of mind. Panic, you know, it's an emotional state that at least it wild irrational behavior, wild irrational action. So we don't wanna get there. Let's see how we can manage that fear.

First step, is understanding its value, right? Like we said, it's our alarm bell, is what actually initiate our defensive responses. The second positive value of fear is the fact that among those body natural reaction, we have a cocktail of chemicals get poured into our bloodstream. And those chemicals, adrenaline, cortisol, all these other different things are there to help us become more dangerous to the bad guy. Better able to either run away fly or fight back.

So, we need to embrace that. A very important details. When we recognize a threat, and the body's natural reaction start, apart from the external physical one internally, we focus on that threat. There is a change in blood flow, blood gets, you know, shunted from the extremities, and on top of it those chemicals get dropped into the blood stream. So, imagine if you will the effect that it has.

For the first fraction of a second, we're gonna have blood coming away from our extremities and a lot of chemicals coming through. So our knees may feel a little weak and our stomach may feel like we have butterfly. If we don't know that that's normal because the very next split second, those chemicals they equally gonna work the way they're supposed to. So we're gonna be faster, stronger and more impervious to paint than ever before. But at the very first moment, we may misinterpret that and feel like, Oh my God, I'm weak at the knees, my stomach is churning a little bit.

I might be a coward, I might be, you know, a victim. And so we kind of get wrapped into that instead of understanding that the very next second, those sensation are gonna change. There's gonna be indignation coming through and it's gonna be this adrenaline response that is gonna carry us through the fight. Remember that that's true for most people. The only people that don't feel, are either sociopath or psychopath or just playing liars.

Understand that fear is your ally and use it to your advantage. Use it as a stimulus to action. Don't let it take over you. There are a few things that we can do in order to better prepare for that. First and foremost, we need to understand that sometime violence is the only viable answer for the situation that we are in.

I understand that it's not an easy talk. But if you're watching this course, you know that there is a possibility of something bad happening and you wanna be prepared. So own that. Now that you realize that that's a possibility, you need to give yourself permission to hurt another human being. That's not easy.

If you're honest with yourself, you know that we have a natural reticence that we're hurting other human beings. So we need to find a way to get over there. One of the most important things that you can do for that, is write down a kind of a personal directive that explains what you be willing and able to do in case you need to defend yourself with a loved one. You need to write it down, don't expect, don't try to figure that out in the time of need. That's gonna slow down your response.

You need to sit down and write it down on a piece of paper. Just to give you an example, my personal directive goes like this. In order to protect my loved ones and myself, I'm willing and able to use all the skills at my disposal to stop the threat with the least amount of violence necessary. Now, that directive follows my moral ethical beliefs, is congruent with the laws of self-defense. I'm saying that in order to defend my loved one and myself, I put my loved one first.

And radiant we need to use all the skills at my disposal, which means avoidance, which means deescalation, verbal deescalation, it means empty hand. It means knife, firearm, stick, whatever. Is the bad guy that's gonna choose, to which level of violence he wants to bring me. I'm trying to use the least amount of bad unnecessary to stop that threat. So make sure that whatever the person directly that you write for yourself is a resonate with you.

With your moral beliefs, with your ethics, with your religion and with the law, regardless of defense. Another one of the control techniques that we're gonna talk about today, is a positive emotional triggers. What I mean by that is that we need to find something in your life that will elicit a very strong emotional response. What I mean by that is that, you know, you need to do some homework and think about them, write down two or three of the things or the people that you care the most about. The things of people that you will love the most losing.

Once you have the list, how we can use that, is simply visualizing in the time of need this person or these people, and see how that changes your approach, your emotional approach to that situation. Lemme get back a little bit and explain a principle that is ingrained in our psyche, in our survival instinct, if you will. And it is a behavioral trait that has been passed on at the genetic level through our evolution. As human beings, we are social animal. So we're actually pretty supposed to intervene to help somebody that we love or somebody that is part of our group, kind of almost automatically.

I'm gonna give you an example. If you are, you know, finishing work late, you know, you need to go and do some shopping for the week. So you go to the supermarket, now you're back to your car and loading your groceries in the back of your trunk. You're by yourself, a white van pulls up, doors open, somebody grabs you. Just think about.

What is your first emotional reaction to that? What are you thinking about now? Now, let's talk about the same exact scenario but with a little different. Now as you're doing that, your daughter, your wife your favorite niece, your best friend is with you. We are both loaded in the grocery, in the back of the trunk the same way van comes, the same door open, the guy grabs your friend, your niece your loved one.

What is your emotional response right there? If you think about your daughter being grabbed, if you think about somebody that you love. I bet that those two emotional responses are pretty different. And the first instance we are obviously naturally gonna be a little bit jolted, scared and our main focus is gonna be, can I fight this guy off? Is he bigger than me, stronger than me?

A whole lot of things coming into play in the situation because the threat is directed towards us. That is a very natural response that is ingrained at the genetic level. If I help you today, if I help somebody who's a member of my tribe, my family today, there are chances they gonna help me out tomorrow. So, that is what happens at the, you know, at the behavioral, you know, evolutionary level, but the real advantage of this positive emotional trigger for self-defense is more psychological than anything else. When we talk about fear, we talk about physiological fear.

So the natural response to a dangerous stimulus. And that's where we get started, when you know we initiate the adrenaline response, we look at our center of gravity, all those things that we have seen before. Now there is also psychological fear. Psychological fear is not in response to actual, real danger but it's in response of a perceived danger. So what happens with psychological fear is that, it doesn't initiate a physiological response.

So it doesn't prepare to better fight. It doesn't prepare us to fight better. We don't get the adrenal response, we're not lowering our center of gravity. That psychological fear kind of has a chance to turn into panic rather quickly. One of the way that we can move away from that, is by focusing on this positive emotional trigger, there's loved one.

My positive emotional trigger is my wife. So let's imagine, you know, I get sucker punched and I'm on the ground, somebody is kicking me. What I'm thinking, I'm visualizing my wife yelling, Alex Sandra, stand up, get back, I want you back home, fight back. Now even if I'm just talking to you about it, my internal emotion are starting to send me up for action. My tone of voice is changing a little bit.

Because I did the homework, I chose my emotional trigger and I do my visualization work. Another instance is, when I'm actually confronted by somebody that is threatening. Now I'll give you another example. You know, if I'm confronted by a biker. I turn the corner, I'm outside the bar, you know, and there's this biker that is coming at me like, "Hey, you, blah, blah, blah." The natural reaction there is I going, oh crap.

You know, this can be dangerous. So I'm gonna be a little bit distracted by, you know the appearance of this person and how mean they look, how aggressive they look. But, if when that happens, I started to visualize that my wife is with me and is behind me. The only thing between the bad guy, between the aggressor and her, it's me. Now, right now, I don't care about any of the consequences to myself.

I don't care what may happen to me. What I want to do is stopping this threat by any means necessary and my emotional charge is way different. When I'm starting to visualize somebody trying to hurt my wife, rage comes up. Rage is a very powerful emotion and it may elicit a fighting mindset. It may elicit a stronger response.

So I'm gonna get to the level of rage that I need to get faster, and on top of it I'm not gonna really care about what may happen to me. What I want to do is stop that threat. And I'm not just saying this to be cool or make a statement about myself. You have to do the work, you have to do the homework, you have to write down, you have to choose your positive emotional triggers and you need to visualize few different situation. And I can guarantee that once you visualize somebody is threatening your family, internally you're gonna feel a difference.

Your emotions are gonna start to churn. And that is what's gonna help us to confront an aggressor and not waste time thinking about what the aggressor may do to us, but focusing on what we need to do to the aggressive to stop them. We are not gonna let the person intimidate us. To intimidate is to control through fear or violence. And predators are really good at that.

Projecting aggression, you know looking mean, looking tough. So we need to have all the tools at our disposal to stay within the parameters of that biological fear, that's gonna help us. Cause it's gonna be that jolt and then adrenaline starts to coarse through our body. So we're gonna be better prepared to fight. We're not gonna feel pain as much and having a positive emotional trigger ready for you to call upon is gonna really be a tremendous help in that.

So do your homework, do your visualization exercises and let us know what you think about that. Let us know how that changes, and if you see an advantage in that.