Fear of Over-Reacting

When I talk to people who are new to self defense training concepts, one of the things I hear them express quite often is that they have a fear of overreacting. You know, once you start thinking about protecting yourself in a public space or protecting those you care about as you move around your daily life and you start thinking about situational awareness. You start thinking about keeping your head on a swivel. You start thinking about keeping an eye on who's in your space and who's around you. Maybe you're just thinking about pre-contact cues and you're thinking about staging or preparation or ready positions and all of a sudden you start to worry that in an everyday moment at the convenience store, walking down the street, maybe in your workplace you're gonna take up some kind of an aggressive ready position or you're gonna leave a space quickly and hurriedly you're gonna get your kids together and leave the store, leave the mall, leave the restaurant and you're really just gonna be overreacting.

You're afraid of maybe doing something that's going to be embarrassing or doing something that's awkward. Well, what I've found is that if people are really understanding the ideas of pre-contact cues and the ideas of being aware of who's around them and what's going on around them, they'll actually be much more relaxed and much less likely to overreact. Think about that one time when you were maybe coming around the corner, not paying a lot of attention to what you were doing and you almost bumped into someone and you had a startle reaction, maybe you spilled your coffee, maybe you bumped into someone and brought your hands up rapidly and maybe even reached out to push them away and maybe pushed them or struck them as you did so. Well, that's the kind of natural reaction that we would expect would protect us from harm, but if we're not paying attention to the things around us, we're not paying attention to what's going on, then those types of natural overreactions are exactly the things that we get nervous laughter that somebody tells a story about or that do cause awkward or embarrassing situations. To the contrary, if you're paying attention to what's going on around you and you're thinking about whether or not someone could be a threat or whether someone's behavior is odd or if someone just really isn't making you feel comfortable, then you can start to be much more subtle in your responses.

You aren't gonna have that overreaction, but you are gonna have an appropriate response. Those appropriate responses might include taking up a position of advantage, maybe just scratching your head as you walk by someone who's making you a little bit nervous so that if they were to strike or if they were to lash out at you, maybe it's the knockout game. Just a couple kids acting nervous or suspicious or weird as you're walking down the street. Well, scratching your head puts you in a perfect position to protect your temple, to protect your jawline, and to defend yourself if they were to strike. But that's very different from walking by them with your hands up in a ready position or coming up here and covering yourself up like you're getting ready to get hit, right?

Scratching your head, I'm ready to get hit but it's very different from an overreaction that's going to make someone feel awkward because I'm trying to obviously and overtly protect myself. Putting situational awareness into play, putting the knowledge of pre-contact use into play, being aware of who's around you and what's going on around you at all times is much more likely to make your behavior more subtle, harder to be offended by, and you're much less likely to overreact because you are paying attention and you'll be less likely to get caught off guard.