Articles


TRUST YOUR INTUITION

By: Meredith Gold

One of the core concepts of the self-defense system I teach is to trust your intuition. It’s the little voice that tells you when something is not right and encourages you to take the appropriate action. Sometimes it tells you to stay and defend yourself, while other times the answer is to leave and avoid the problem before it escalates. You just need to tune-in to what you are really feeling because when you don’t, you usually regret it. Assault survivors often recall that they knew there was a problem before the crime occurred; yet they ignored their gut instinct to act.

I happen to be a survivor myself. Ignoring my intuition was a big part of how I became the victim of an attempted abduction many years ago. I knew that I should turn around a face the guy who was following me, but I ignored the impulse to do so, hoping that he would just leave me alone. Of course, he didn’t and proceeded to grab me and drag me towards his waiting car.

The point is that we are all hard wired to know when we are in danger. There is no question that the more we can remain in touch with our built-in “warning system”, the safer our lives will be. So, what happens that allows us to ignore the signals and put ourselves in harm’s way? More often than not the source of the confusion is our socialization.

For women, the socialization begins at an early age. We are raised to be nurturers and this programming often carries the message that it is more important to take care of others than it is to protect ourselves. For many, this unwillingness to act on what we are feeling comes from not wanting to “hurt his feelings”, “look paranoid” or “over-react”, even when we feel that we are in danger.

Martial arts and self defense training are both excellent ways for women to get back in touch with our innate ability to perceive and avoid a potential problem; yet we still need to remain vigilant and trust what we are feeling, rather than allow our denial or uncertainty to get us into perilous situations.

An experience one of my students (who is a martial artist) had illustrates this dilemma perfectly: “The elevator door opened and there was a creepy guy standing in it. I just knew I shouldn’t get in, but I didn’t want to seem paranoid or make him think I was passing judgment on him, so I went ahead and got in. That’s when he grabbed me…”

Luckily for her, she was able to fend him off and escape a few floors up. But, she could have avoided the whole thing in the first place if she had just listened to the voice that was screaming for her to wait for the next elevator car. She found out the hard way that there are far worse things in life than having a perfect stranger think you are scared, paranoid or, god forbid, a bitch.

Men often have the opposite challenge in that they have been socialized to “stand your ground” and, above all, “don’t let anyone tell you what to do”. Depending on the situation, these messages are not necessarily in conflict with one’s own intuition, as sometimes that little voice is telling you that you must fight. However, while commonly accepted, this kind of socialization can also get men into very dangerous situations that could have been easily avoided. For example: As foreign as it might sound, sometimes it is exactly the right choice to clear out when a big, drunk idiot spots you across the bar and decides he doesn’t like the way you are looking at him.

In cases like that, ego management and trusting your gut instinct go hand-in-hand. Even those with a martial arts or fighting background (who theoretically have been trained to only use their skills when there is no other option) sometimes need to remind themselves that it is better to listen to their intuition and leave the environment before the situation gets out of control, even if they have years of training to rely on.

There might be a happy ending for the guy who ignores his intuition and decides to go head-to-head with the drunk, but more often than not, even if he “wins” the fight, he’ll probably sustain some type of injury that will remind him, at least for a while, that he would have been better off just to listen to his instincts, leave the bar and wake up pain-free the next morning!