Listen: The Power In Fear, Part 2

"When you say to somebody, 'don't be afraid,' that's like telling somebody 'don't breathe,'" says Bob Martin (right), Vice-President of the Gavin de Becker security consulting firm in California.

Martin explains worry is something in your imagination; fear is, say, when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up—a built-in early-warning system, if we don't ignore it.

"That feeling is always acting in your best interest," says Martin.

Yet, ignore it, we do.

In Gavin de Becker's The Gift Of Fear, Kelly's heavy bag of groceries tears on her building's stairwell. Though she tells the good-looking stranger she can handle it, he talks her into letting him "help" her.

He wouldn't take no for an answer, using a friendly, chatty manner to engage her in a continuing conversation and cajole her into allowing him to carry the groceries up to her floor. And what a coincidence--he was going to the fourth floor, too. Martin explains that when someone refuses to hear your "no," they are trying to manipulate you.

"He got up to her door and she said, 'Thank you very much, I'll take it from here,' and he said, 'No, no, no. I'll help you. I'll just drop this stuff on your counter and I'll go, I promise.'

"Well, he didn't keep his promise, and attacked her, assaulted her, and raped her over a period of hours," says Martin.

Her gun-toting attacker says he's going to get a drink of water; Kelly lies when she agrees to sit where she is.

"When he got up to leave, she put the sheet around her and followed him down the hallway. In her words, she felt like she was a passenger on her own legs, but followed him down, he never turned around and she kept going and out the front door to a neighbor's house," Martin says.

That act of finally trusting her intuition--her fear--saved her life; later, she found out that man had fatally stabbed a previous victim.

"In retrospect, she made that decision because one of the things that tipped her was the fact that he closed the bedroom window," says Martin. "She didn't realize the significance of it at the moment, but it dawned on her that he was closing it because he didn't want people to hear what was coming next."

Martin says too often, for whatever reason, we shrug off the fear that tells us something is amiss.

"Human beings are the only creatures on earth that will override their intuition," Martin says. "No other creature in the face of danger will shrug its shoulders and say, 'Huh! It's probably nothing.' But not us, boy. We'll march into the gates of Hell on a dare."

Kelly's rapist was a predator who had learned to manipulate his intended victim. Here, Martin describes the criminal's use of a common technique called "typecasting." Often, women are afraid to hurt someone's feelings and are compelled to always be thought of as "nice." Predators know that, and if allowed, will use it to their advantage.

When someone violates your personal space, what do you do next? A local security consultant and self-defense instructor says an alert woman can stop the threat within seconds. Details, Wednesday.

Tuesday, 26 February 2008

Monday's story: Fear Vs. Worry