When discussing the topic of “Self Defense”, there is oftentimes the tendency to only mention the physical elements of defending oneself. You will hear experts and instructors alike discussing martial skill, specific techniques, things like drawstroke from a holster, reload skill, how to escape a choke and why this method is better than that and so on. And, while yes, there certainly is a physical component to successfully defending oneself, and those skills should be crafted and honed, there is an even more important element to Self-Defense; Psychology.
The swift and harsh realities of a targeted violent encounter can be extremely damaging psychologically and affect our ability to defend ourselves. In this blog, I have discussed often the importance of mental rehearsal and being not just physically prepared for violence, but mentally too. There is something about being the victim of a specific targeted attack that can make even the best trained of us have a sudden overwhelming response including a spike of fear, adrenaline, and general “holy shit! Is this really happening to me!?!?”.
In this post, I intend to address some key psychological elements of Self-Defense training and ways we can work on better training our bodies and minds for such instances. Please bear in mind that I am NOT a psychologist!
Train Your Brain!
In order to understand how to work our brain, we must first understand how our brain works! At the expense of delving too deep into psychology and turning this post from a blog into a PhD Thesis, for our purposes, in the context of a defensive encounter, our brains are comprised of 3 main parts:
- The Neocortex which controls rational thought
- The Limbic which controls emotions and feelings
- The Reptilian brain which controls our most basic of instincts (of which included is the Fight/Flight/Freeze response which we should all be familiar with).
Chart depicting main sections of the human brain and the major functions of each. Notice the main functions of the brain stem, this is where the Reptilian brain lies.
The biggest issue found in many martial arts/self defense systems is a failure to account for the psychological responses the brain has when met with a sudden ambush of a violent attack. There is a distinct dissociation between classroom and hands on training.
Classroom learning and even some physical training only trains the rational brain i.e. no stress inoculation. But we know that under stress, logic and rationality go out the window. We lose control of our “executive function”. We lose control of the Neocortex section of our brain and our Reptilian brain takes over relying only on instinct and prior lived experiences to problem solve for an answer.
This method of problem solving is not pretty. It’s quick and cheap. It relies on the least amount of CPU space in our brains. A decision is made and put forth into action. Sometimes it is not always the best decision. Unfortunately, there is no time to form a committee and weigh the pros and cons of different variables. A decision must be made quickly and may not always be the “optimal” solution.
The decision you reach and the action you employ may not be optimal solutions to the problem at hand.
Fear is a natural human trait. It is a survival response generated from within to alert us that something about our immediate predicament is very, very wrong. Everyone will experience fear to some degree in the face of violence, our survival depends on it. There is no such thing as someone with “no fear”, there are only those who can control it well and those who cannot.
The person who survives a defensive encounter is the person who can better control their fear. Fear is a reaction we experience to a sudden stimulus. There are different levels and categories of fear (ranging from sudden and brief to complete panic). By understanding what fear is, and what it does to our bodies, we can learn to utilize it to our advantage and learn how to listen to our bodies so we can break it’s paralyzing effects. We can weaponize our fear and learn to use it offensively.
Fear primes our bodies for action. FIGHT or FLIGHT. It releases a chemical cocktail of adrenaline within us and gets us physically ready for whatever is about to come next. It gives us a chance to survive. Fear is the accelerant that helps move those who are situationally aware from Yellow to Red, and those who are not from White to Black. If we are not aware, and are not experienced in knowing what fear feels like, then it will quickly consume us.
Weaponize Your Fear
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again because it bears repeating. Under extreme stress you will not rise to the occasion, rather you will fall to your lowest level of training. If your training has never incorporated elements to train your psychological and emotional responses to violence then you are only training to fight, you are not training effectively for self-defense in the street. That’s fine for an MMA bout and even the majority of drunken bar brawls. But if you’re looking to learn to protect yourself and your loved ones from violent, apex social predators you need something more.
When you are faced with sudden ambush of an attacker and are thrust into a defensive encounter, your body is only thinking one thing: Survive. You are behind the 8 ball, and in order to survive, you need to weather the storm of the ambush long enough to “come online” to then mount a response. This could be a split second to a few seconds, but could easily feel like eons.
Moving Forward
So, where do we go from here? I have always said how I like to take a more nuanced approach to Self-Defense training. That being said, how do we incorporate psychology training into our defensive training? The best way to achieve this is going to be through realistic, relevant and rigorous Scenario-Based Role Playing.
Stress inoculation is the key to tying in all the elements of physical training and mental conditioning. We can never 100% simulate real fear and real violence because obviously we have to train safely. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t push the limits and replicate it as best as possible. There’s thousands of ways to approach this, have some fun with it. Sim guns, marking knives, HighGear suits. Take your training outside into a parking lot, simulate being in an elevator, subway, waiting at a bus stop, sitting in a restaurant, etc. Yell, curse, scream at each other. Simulate a robbery or a home invasion.
Most importantly is be a realistic role player! Don’t be a martial artist attacking another martial artist like a martial artist would. Be a drunk asshole looking to victimize someone outside a bar at 3am. There are also differences in the way men and women are attacked. Explore those differences.
It’s less about the physical techniques and more about replicating a real scenario. We want our brains and our bodies to have that “been there, done that” feeling in the event we are ever faced with violence. We need to forge those neurological pathways now and become accustomed to finding solutions to these types of problems. We need to push our scenarios to induce a spike of fear, to know what it feels like and looks like to fight through that. As with anything, the more experience we have in this, the better we get at it and the sooner we can learn to harness our bodies’ responses to such.
Conclusion
We covered a lot in this post. We discussed they way our brain functions as it applies to the context of a Self-Defense encounter and how the brain’s default is to utilize the Reptilian brain which activates the F/F/F Response to keep us alive.
We also discussed the importance of fear in that response and how fear helps to prime our bodies to take action, but we have to be able to control our fear in order to stay in control of ourselves during the encounter. I also touched briefly on strategies we can use to weaponize that fear and use it offensively to survive an ambush, but in order to do so we must first get through that ambush.
Lastly, I talked about the incredible significance of incorporating role playing scenarios in our self-defense training and what this should look like. If our scenarios and our role players are designed in such a way that they are realistic, relevant and rigorous, then we substantially increase our odds of survival in the event we are the victims of a targeted, deliberate attack from an asocial predator intent on taking either our body, property or life. Good mental preparation starts now.
BE SAFE. TRAIN SMART. USE YOUR BRAIN!
