Category: Female Smarts

The Self Defense Continuum, Part II – Teja Van Wicklen

Last installment we covered the first part of The Self Defense Continuum and what it means to Deter a criminal’s Intent to harm us. But what is a criminal Interview and what does it look like?

An Interview is the way a criminal, who thinks you have what he wants, makes sure he won’t be injured or captured in the process of attacking you. This, by the way, is your last chance to read him, figure out his game and take off. Once he pegs you as a good bet, you will be peeling him off you instead of walking away.

Five Types Of Interview

According to Marc MacYoung, there are five basic types of criminal interview. Get the full scoop directly from Marc at www.nononsenseselfdefense.com (or NNSD.com). No need for memorization it’s the concepts that count. Even if these aren’t familiar they will make perfect sense. This is the highly abridged version.

The Regular Interview A criminal will approach you expressing a need–the time, a cigarette, whatever. He’s distracting you. While he’s talking, or you are, he’s checking your awareness and also your commitment to defending yourself.

The Hot Interview is a sudden, usually loud, mind-jarring emotional bombardment.  Marc says, “The success of this strategy relies on you not being accustomed to dealing with extreme emotional violence and reacting in a stunned and confused manner.” A stunned victim is an easy victim.

In an Escalating Interview, the criminal tests your boundaries with behavior that quickly goes from normal to nuts and will increase until it becomes physical if he gets away with his strategy. This is basically a Regular Interview that quickly ramps up to Hot.

The Silent Interview is where a criminal watches you. You may never have a face-to-face encounter until he attacks. This is the one that scares people most since they feel they have the least control here. The criminal goes through the Intent and Interview stages as he follows you through the grocery store and into the parking lot, hopefully (for him) without you noticing.

The Prolonged Interview can take weeks or more. Think stalking.

Just knowing there is a bomb is pretty important information. Action beats reaction. Once you see the bomb or hear it ticking, you can begin to disarm it or get away. If you don’t know what a bomb even looks like, you are fodder. The five types of interview give shape to your instinctive feelings about a situation.

Gavin DeBecker’s work is another very important part of honing the ability to read a predatory interview. If you haven’t already, grab a copy of The Gift of Fear. DeBecker writes about the kind of stuff you would usually see in Regular Interviews.

Regular Interviews can be perpetrated by well-dressed people with nice manners. The Persuasion Predator’s motto is, you get more bees with honey. This is true in general, but the Persuasion Predator raises it to an art form. This guy’s primary goal is gain your trust and keep you off guard so he can Position himself to get what he wants. This is where being able to think like a criminal can help you out, but you don’t have to go quite that far in order to tap into your persuasive side. Have you ever made promises you didn’t intend to keep in order to get something you wanted? Or told a lie in order to persuade the officer to let you keep your driver’s license?

There are ways to persuade without dishonesty as well. Persuasion Predators use those too. Whatever gets the job done.  Of course, not everyone using these methods is a criminal. The key is to use what you’re learning to spot groups of signals together. If you spot more than one ploy there may be something more going on.

DeBecker describes Forced Teaming as a stranger implying a connection between the two of you in order to get under your radar, as in “we are in this together”. There’s a certain natural distance with strangers that only time and trust will change. The idea here is that anyone trying to rush the natural progress of trust should be watched.

Another Ploy DeBecker discusses is Charm, which he explains is a verb not a adjective. People use charm to get what they want. Sometimes all they want is conversation, but sometime they want more.

DeBecker goes on to describe Too Much Information, Unsolicited Promises and others. Go get the goods, it’s on Amazon along with everything else.

If there were a 6th “D” it would be Deescalate. Deescalation plays an important part in deterring some forms of social crime. Deescalation is about slowing or stopping the flow of energy in an exchange that is gathering heated momentum-starving the fire of oxygen. Staying calm while someone berates you is easy and natural for some and near impossible for others. We can all probably think of lots of times things didn’t need to go wrong, but someone lost his cool and the interaction went to hell in half a second. This is a social skill so practice on your kids, on your loud obnoxious neighbor-every day and as much as possible.

Deescalation is a tool you can use to change or redirect an interaction with someone you’re starting to recognize as unstable or aggressive.

Peyton Quinn came up with a few things not to do in response to someone’s excessive anger. These may seem obvious, but common sense is less than common.

Don’t insult him. Insulting is escalation not de-escalation. Usually we only insult people we aren’t afraid of, but we all do dumb things in the throws of anger and other high emotions. Marc MacYoung says, “four letter words have no place in Deescalation.” Don’t tell him to calm down or relax. We all know this never goes well and yet we all say it in that same sarcastic tone every time. Telling someone to calm down is an insult. You are in essence telling him he is nervous and out-of-control.

Don’t challenge him. When you challenge someone with an unstable ego you are forcing his hand. “What are you going to do about it!” can only be construed as an escalation.

Provide him with an honorable exit. Make it easy for him to disengage without feeling like a coward or a looser. This often means you back down first. You have to be willing to stop making your point in the middle, or to apologize even if you’re right. Easier said than done, especially when emotions are high. Try phrases like, “I see your point”, or “I was out of line.” Give him the benefit of the doubt. Get more on Peyton at www.rmcat.com.

Deescalation is about remaining calm in the presence of someone who wants you in an emotional state that makes you less rational and less likely to see the truck coming. Here comes the caveat. Rory Miller says de-escalation techniques don’t work with asocial predators. They don’t see you as a person anyway, so your apology means nothing. This means you may not know what’s going on until you try deescalating the situation, but you will understand what it means when it doesn’t work.

Erik Kondo came up with a wonderful concept called the Goldilocks Principle, which says any response that is out of proportion to the situation upsets the balance. If you under react you may be seen as weak. Apprehension can look like fear, which can have a galvanizing effect on a predator. On the other hand, if you are aggressive in return you have nitro and glycerin. The Goldilocks Principle is Erik Kondo’s way of describing the Just Right Reaction that says, I’m not looking to make a big deal, but I’m not cannon fodder either.  You can find more on Erik’s work at Not-Me.org or ConflictResearchGroupIntl.com.

To all this I would add, watch out for the power of wanting. When we want things it makes us vulnerable. Any decent predator can use what we want against us, whether it’s a good deal on a car, a pair of shoes, or the opportunity to audition for a television commercial. Wanting is the bait on the end of the hook. Always check yourself when you are in the throws of want.

The criminal Interview is one interview you really want to fail. Whether it’s up close and personal or from a distance, what you know, how you walk, your general demeanor and awareness and the power of preparedness are your weapons.

There is no award or parade for de-escalation and avoidance or for failing a criminal interview. There is no sign that says, “phew! You just escaped dismemberment by a serial killer.” But you do win another day to eat spaghetti in front of the television or toss a frisbee with your kids. And that counts for quite a bit.

 

The Warrior Legend – Kathy Jackson

We tell our children myths and fables. These are very powerful stories that carry the messages and core values of our culture. That’s how cultural knowledge passes from one generation to another. Humans are motivated by stories. Those stories, those fables, those myths, those legends – they all hit something at a very visceral level. They hit your gut.

Within the firearms and self-defense training community, we have often benefited from the Warrior Legend. This cultural myth hits something deep within the heart of every good man. It is the story of the strong head of household who defends his family. It is the story of the warrior who protects his people. It is the story of the knight who rescues the princess. The Warrior Legend hits a very powerful node in the best and the strongest among our men. And that’s good!

We have often used that goodness to our advantage within the self-defense training community. When we use the word “tactical,” that’s one of the words that strikes this same chord. We have lots of words and phrases that activate the same feeling: Sheepdog. Fighter. Warrior. Soldier. Protector. The man who runs to the sound of the guns. Or puts his own body between his beloved home and the war’s desolation. The strong man loves his woman and he faces danger for her sake. That’s the story we tell, in short form, when we use those words.

Within the training world, we’ve gotten very good at hitting that button, hitting it from a lot of different angles, over and over. And it’s been very effective in motivating male students to buy classes, to pay attention in class, to practice what they learn, to drive forward and learn more. It’s a very powerful message that draws many students into our schools and motivates them to continue their efforts to learn.

The problem is, this message – as powerful as it is – is not one that resonates with the average woman in western culture. Little girls don’t grow up being told that someday, they can ride up to the castle and rescue the enchanted prince. They aren’t encouraged to dream about slaying dragons. Nobody tells their baby girl, “A real woman stands between her husband and any danger that would threaten him.” That’s just not a message we give our daughters.

So this powerful legend that drives men into classes won’t necessarily hit potential female students in the gut. Nor will it encourage them to take their training as the serious business that it really is, or drive them forward to learn more. Culturally, women just don’t hear that message in the same way that men hear it. We’re more likely to react to it as a legend (a fantasy, a myth, a fairytale, an un-reality) than we are to be motivated by the emotion it’s intended to provoke.

Boring

Here’s the awful truth: effective self-defense training is … boring. For those who want to use firearms for self-defense, we spend a lot of time drilling the basics. That’s sights, trigger, follow through. We spend time working on a consistent grip, on a safe and smooth drawstroke, on being able to access the gun from a variety of positions, on good gunhandling and efficient reloads. Students should learn these fundamentals to the point of automaticity. Simply being able to handle the tool without thinking about the tool itself goes a long way toward establishing good preparedness for everything else that follows.

When talking about the humdrum, practical matters that make up the bulk of reasonable self-defense instruction, firearms trainer John Farnam wryly observes, “Everyone wants to know when they get to jump out of the flaming helicopters.” So, thinking about the Warrior Legend that motivates good men, we write class descriptions in terms that would attract the people who want to jump out of those flaming helicopters. We do this because it works very well to attract adrenalin junkies and strong-hearted men, who make up the bulk of the self-defense community. We appeal to the Warrior Legend.

But then we’re surprised and a bit sad that more women won’t come to our classes or learn the skills that would help them learn to protect themselves. Don’t women care about staying safe? Don’t women want to have fun learning cool new skills?

We don’t write our class descriptions thinking about boring, mundane things like, “This will help you stay safe and keep your family safe.” That might be true, but it isn’t sexy. It doesn’t give the reader an adrenalin jolt and it doesn’t promise that they can be the hero of their own legend. It’s the steak without the sizzle.

Who needs this?

The problem is, strong men and adrenalin junkies don’t derive nearly as much benefit from defensive training as the people who aren’t motivated by the Warrior Legend.

The message that women want to hear and need to hear is that serious self-defense training is practical. This training will help you do the things you want to do, in the ordinary happy life you live right now. These skills and this mindset will fit into your everyday life. We don’t train, and we aren’t inviting you to train with us, just because we want to fulfill some virile fantasy, but because we’re concerned about simple reality. This is where the rubber meets the road. This will make your actual day to day life better. That’s the message that women need to hear, and in some ways, it’s almost the opposite of how self-defense training has traditionally been marketed.  

So we need to find more ways and better ways to get this message out to good women as well as to good men: Training is not a fantasy or a game. It provides you with important knowledge and experience on a very practical level that can help you take better care of the people you love. The hard work of learning how to defend yourself will help you enjoy the life you want to live. Learning how to protect yourself will help you stay safe and keep your family safe.

When we get that message to our potential students, they come to class. Better than that, they learn how to protect themselves and the people they love.

The Self-Defense Continuum, Part I – Teja Van Wicklen

This Self Defense Continuum is about perspective and context. It is a tool to help you break something big down into bit-sized pieces so it can be examined and followed and understood. The Self-defense Continuum is a combination of the ideas of two self defense analysts who were, at the time, working separately.

Erik Kondo came up with The Five Ds of Self Defense. These are five options you have for avoiding, disrupting or escaping crime in one piece. They are Decide, Deter, Disrupt, Disengage, Debrief. (You can find out more about Erik Kondo at ConflictResearchGroupIntl.com or Not-Me.org)

Marc MacYoung came up with The Five Stages of Violent Crime, which represent the stages a criminal goes through in order to commit a crime. They are Intent, Interview, Positioning, Attack, Reaction. (You can find out more about Marc MacYoung at ConflictResearchGroupIntl.com or NoNonsenseSelfDefense.com)

The fact that both men came up with five things that completed one another and formed a natural connection, was opportune and curious. When I looked closer I found they had come up separately and miraculously each with half of a whole.

Together these concepts form The Self Defense Continuum – the time line along which a crime occurs. Thinking of crime as something with a Before, During and After helps us view crime as a process and not just a sudden occurrence we have no control over. It helps us see how moments come together to form events. It helps us see where we fit in and possibly how and where we can affect the outcome. To be able to see a particular crime as a kind of story, can give us more power to affect how we play into it – in naming and understanding the individual moments of a crime, and seeing how one moment follows the next, we gain a bit more insight and potential control over circumstances.

Unfamiliar stories or processes seem to occur out of the blue or too quickly for our reaction time. When we are blind to a process we are unable to comprehend it, let alone, change it. How much time or notice there is before and even during an event has an enormous amount to do with what we perceive to be important information. We only hear or take in that which makes sense to us, and that expands or contracts the feeling of time. The process of crime or event prediction is very much about seeing more than we thought was there.

Let’s use baseball as an analogy. Imagine, you’re at the batting cage for the first time. That ball is coming at you at 65 or so miles per hour and if you’ve never been in a batting cage before, that can be reasonably hard core. How are you supposed to put a bat on a tiny thing headed directly at your head like that?

So you start with a formula. Where is the ball coming from? And where is it aiming at? Once you begin to understand the trajectory, you start hitting the ball. This is an intuitive process for some, and a calculation for others. Either way, you have to get it embedded into your reflexes somehow because you won’t have time to consciously tell your arms to tense up and swing. It has to just happen.

After you’ve had a bit of practice, you start to get the hang of it and you find you have time to dig in and get comfortable. Now that you know how it works, there seems to magically be plenty of time to process things and you start hitting a lot more balls than you miss. Hitting them well is another phase of learning, but hitting them at least means they’re not hitting you.

The first phase of The Self Defense Continuum is:

DECIDE To Spot Criminal INTENT
This is the Before Stage. Decide is the longest, most important and least explored area of self defense. It is where we live, it is where we work, it is where we have time to fortify our homes, our lives, our families, ourselves.

Once something goes wrong you are in the During phase where you have to act quickly. You no longer have time to prepare, make leisurely decisions or comb your hair. Before a robbery you can choose which locks to buy. You can compare prices. During, you can only make a phone call, fight him off, run, or put out the flames.

Before is where most of the work gets done. Until something goes wrong it is always Before. It is Before, right now. Right now, you are Deciding to read this article.

Decide then, is about Preparation. And preparation is the single most important step you can take before a journey. When you hike up a mountain, what you know and what you take with you are pretty important. When you study for the test, you ace the test. When you don’t, you scramble, second guess and reap the rewards of a job poorly done. But never get cocky, that’s how we become lazy. Hubris is often why seasoned swimmers drown and professional climbers fall.

Specifically, this part of the Continuum is about a Deciding to learn how to read or intuit the Intent of another to harm you.

The concept of Criminal Intent refers to a person’s readiness to commit a crime – a readiness that manifests itself physically in some way, because very few people are able to hide everything they’re feeling when something serious is on the line.

Intent is more than a motive. A motive is a reason to do something. We all have good reasons to do lot’s of things that we don’t do. You could have a good motive to quit your job, but you may not. Intent is imminent. He has moved from motive to plan. The barriers are down.

Why he’s chosen you may or may not be important, you may or may not ever find out. If you get away quickly and he escapes, you may have to live without ever knowing. The longer you engage with a criminal, the more you find out about what he’s planning. Is he tying to take you somewhere? Has he asked for something? Or does he want to hurt someone? Do you really want to know?

How do you thwart criminal Intent? Well, first you have to learn to SEE it. And the earlier you see it the better for obvious reasons. If your training and your senses are working for you, you may not even know if the situation was really going to be dangerous. He’ll be gone and moving on to someone else instead of you. There’s always the chance he was just a lonely guy looking for conversation and that he really is a friend of a friend of yours. But there are cues and clues to what people want and how invested they are in getting it. Everyone has a tell, and unlike the movies most tells are similar.

I won’t go into specific behaviors here, Gavin De Becker already wrote the book ‘The Gift of Fear’. And Desmond Morris wrote a number of books on human behaviour if you want to go deeper, just look him up. Then there is What Everybody is Saying and Lie Spotting. There is a ton of information on this stuff at your fingertips. Go forth and practice people reading. Do not, however, jump on your beginner abilities and start judging people. Just watch and over time see if you’re right about your preliminary thoughts. When it comes to danger it’s simple. If something tickles your spider sense, just opt out.

A guy once walked straight towards my car window. He walked in too direct a line and smiled the whole time. The smile looked too practiced and he came a little too quickly. My son was in the car. It was getting dark. He held his hand out like he had a question but I didn’t see any real question in his eyes. He looked too comfortable standing in the middle of a parking lot. Not like a person with a problem. None of this was thought out, things just seemed off and I responded to the discomfort I felt and the child in the back seat I was responsible for.

I rolled up my window before he got to my car, that’s all the time I had. My keys were in my hand but I couldn’t get them into the ignition before he was at my window. He said something like, “can I talk to you.” I smiled and pretended not to understand. I put the key in the ignition while he motioned for me to roll down the window. I smiled, nodded, and I pulled out.

He didn’t need me to roll my window down to talk to me. He also didn’t need to get so close to my car. If he had a question he could have gestured, pointed, stated his need clearly from a few feet away. Good men who live in this world know that you don’t get that close to a woman, especially one with a young child, especially in dim light or darkness.

I love to help people. If you really need something and I can help, I’m your girl. But those were not the words or the body language of someone in a desperate situation. They were the words and actions of someone with an agenda.

It’s arguable, of course. But my son was in the car and that’s what my instincts told me. I’ll never know, and that’s okay with me.

To Be Continued.

Next: DETER At The INTERVIEW Stage

 

Teaching Self-Esteem Through Self-Defense – Bikrant Bikram Chand

Overview of Violence against Women in nepal

Like in many other developing countries, in Nepal violence against women is one of the key factors responsible for the poor health of women,  livelihood insecurity, and inadequate social mobilization. The extent of gender-based violence in Nepal is extremely high.

Women and girls in Nepal are exposed to a many of forms of violence. Experimental studies in Nepal have documented the prevalence of sexual violence suffered by 12% to 50% of women (Deuba et al 2005, Puri et al, 2012). Violence against girls and adolescents is quite predominant in Nepal. A recent study, Sexual Violence Assessment in Seven Districts of Nepal, found almost one in ten girls (9.8%) reported experiencing sexual violence. Thus, gender-based violence is a serious issue that requires serious attention and a comprehensive solution.

PHYSICAL VIOLENCE

Physical violence is also predominant. About 22%, one in a five women ages between 15-49 years are found experiencing physical assault in Nepal (source: Nepal Demographic and Health Survey, 2011).

One of the study revealed that almost half of women (48%) had experienced violence at some time in their lives, and 28% had experienced violence in the past 12 months; where emotional violence (40.4%) was most commonly reported type of violence followed by physical violence (26.8%), sexual violence (15.3%) and economic abuse/violence (8%) (OPMCM, 2012).

IS THE PHYSICAL VIOLENCE PREVENTABLE?

The answer is Yes. It can be, if the potential threat is identifiable.  If one is trained to identify potential threat or to recognize the threat, it’s possible to prevent from being attacked. But if one is equipped with certain techniques of self defense than chances are extremely favorable that one can defend attack and easily escape with no harm or damage been made.

In any country, the self-defense is permitted by law. Self-defense is defined as the right to prevent suffering force or violence through the use of a sufficient level of counteracting force or violence. 

real self defense “academia of fight management”

Real Self Defense (RSD) Nepal is an organization dedicated to promote the art of self defense system with its motto of “Teaching Self Esteem Through Self Defense”. The Syllabus of Real Self Defense constitutes of techniques from wide range of modern combat arts. The threat management and fight management are embedded in the self defense & personal protection training organized at Real Self Defense training centers.

Apart from training to civilians, elite groups, professional securities and martial art students, training to Female groups on personal protection and self defense at RSD is highly regarded.

At RSD we design the trainings which constitutes simple, doable, effective techniques which are practiced in an environment which imitates the real scenarios of physical assaults and domestic violence.

personal protection and self defense training To Female  ?

When you look like a victim, you tend to become one! In contrary when you walk with confidence and show no fear in your face, the assailant tends to think many folds before he/she attempts for ill intention.

It has become inevitable in today’s world to learn the art of self defense – both the threat and fight management skills. The cruel reality that someone with no known reason attacks, assaults, stabs, attempts to murder has no defined norms, guidelines, standards or laws that allows us to prepare for those circumstances. There remains no other way to protect oneself, protect one’s family, property and friends, than getting prepared to fight back with the given situation, which is unforeseen.

On the occasion of World Women Day, March 8, 2015, RSD Nepal organized a self defense training for 120 females. Training was participated by school & college girls, working women and housewives. The training was organized with the aim to disseminate knowledge on both the threat management and fight management. The real scenarios were discussed, visualized and rehearsed during the training.  

 The only way out to manage with the unpredicted situation in the street, homes, public places, dark areas, might be is to get through the training  course on Personal Protection and Self Defense. And there is no other substitute for it, only Training might help prevent damage, and might even save the only life we have!

About the Author: Bikrant Bikram Chand, Founder and Chief Instructor of Real Self Defense.

Email: bikrant.chand@gmail.com Mobile: 00 977 9802027555