I will start with a simple quote;
"Wounds heal, but scars remain - Pain is temporary, but memories are permanent."
I don't know who said it, but this simple quote says more than many books written on this subject might.
In a violent confrontation, the fear you feel, the intimidation, the hopelessness, it's not because of the physical trauma you suffer, it's because of the psychological trauma.
Even if there is no physical attack, the behavior of the individual who is aggressive enough will cause your mind to be affected in a certain way, your emotions will flood in all at once, hormones are released that cloud your clear thinking, which in turn could lead you to freeze, or do something that might make things worse.
You see, we are conditioned by the society today to be pacifists. We are raised to suppress our emotions, especially our anger. Since we are little kids, we are taught to be polite to others, taught to never insult them, respect authority, respect our elders, etc.
Due to that conditioning, we will always behave in a docile manner, and until we are pushed beyond our limits, we will never go "savage". Of course, this too has quite a few exceptions. There are individuals who aren't like that, they don't think like the rest, they don't act like the rest. They don't mind breaking the norms of the society and crossing the limits that create victims from innocent bystanders.
When the rule followers meet rule breakers, chaos ensues and the rule followers end up the victim. Now, I'm not implying that being a rule follower is a bad thing, all i'm saying is that majority of the rule followers won't know what to do, when they get into it, everything will feel surreal to them, they will be confused and won't know the appropriate response to such a threat.
See my point is, when you are faced with an asocial criminal, both your mindsets will exactly be the polar opposite of each other. You will be the one who would want to reason, but the other one will be aggressive and will only want to hurt you to get what that individual wants from you, that's all there is on their minds, you are not a human to them, you are just a target, a dehumanized target.
Now to get what they want, those criminals will always use intimidation of some kind, whether it's a weapon, or extremely aggressive "in your face" type approach with a really angry and loud voice and curse words, etc. or physical assault and life threats.
Most muggers don't actually physically hurt their targets, it's too risky for them to do so, all they want are your valuables, and so, the sudden ambush attack and the aggressive behavior, and just their overall method to scare the living daylights out of their target is enough for majority of people to lose their minds and just comply with them.
During and surely after those situations, even though the victim isn't physically damaged, the psychological after-effects will leave them in a stressful state of mind a.k.a. Post-traumatic stress.
When that happens, the victim's behavior in their everyday life will change dramatically. If they were outgoing, they will prefer to stay indoors after a certain time of day, they could also develop trust issues and might not be able to make friends as easily as they used to. Behavioral changes like that can affect an individual's day-to-day life on a very high level. Certain psychological damage can last longer than almost any physiological damage.
Now unless you are prepared to face something like that, your chances of coming out of something like that without psychological scarring, are basically none. Even with training, you will be shaken up for sure, maybe not as badly, but still.
Now without any training, it will be a nightmare you live out everyday for a very long time, and you might have go see a psychologist or a therapist to deal with and get over those issues and it's not an easy task, far from it actually.
Look, I'm not writing these things here to scare you, these are just the cold hard facts, people have gone through these things, they still do, and the sooner you face these facts, the sooner you can take steps to make sure that you won't go through something like that yourself.
That's the main reason why i focus about 60% of my self-protection training on psychological conditioning, 30% on the technical and physical part and the rest 10% on the unpredictable external factors that contribute to the outcome of a violent altercation.
Training for these situations by making your mind used to these things is the only way to prepare yourself for them. There are no short-cuts to these things.
Alright. That's it. Thanks for reading and please think about what you read here.
