Self-Defense - The Role of Your Emotions in Effectively Surviving a Brutal Self-Defense Attack

Most self-defense and martial arts classes avoid the emotions altogether. Others limit their focus on a gross over-simplification of emotional states during a self-defense situation. But, aside from being frightened or angry, what role do your emotions play in dealing with a potentially deadly situation?

Did you ever consider that?

Aside from being responses to the moment-to-moment occurrences as we move through our days, what role do your emotions play. For most people, it's kind of like your blood type. Apart from knowing what it is so we don't end up with the wrong one if we need it, it and the emotions are just things that we "have" and have no control over.

In reality, the emotions are actually tied to our body's own natural, human, defense system. It's true. Your body is already hard-wired for self-defense by design.

The thing is that, our sophisticated brains, socialization, and cultural, academic, and familial education has virtually made us completely unaware that we have these abilities and functions.

So, what's the function of your emotions, and how can they be used for self-defense? Excellent question.

It's not the focus of this article to explain all of the inner workings of your human brain. Let's just start with some very simple responses to stimuli from the world around us.

You see, everything that we're exposed to, invokes a feeling, or response at a base, primitive level. This happens without us being conscious of it, and also happens below the level of what we normally call our emotions.

These base "feelings" or responses can be generally classified as feelings of:

Attraction - we like it


Aversion - we don't like it, or...


Apathy - it doesn't cause us to move either way

Don't confuse these simple feelings with higher, more complex emotional moods like:

Love
Hate, and...

Ignorance

The ones I'm talking about are much simpler and tied not to the higher brain functions, but actually come out of our lower "reptilian" brain - also known as the R-complex - the section of your brain that is primarily concerned with self-preservation activities like eating, procreating, and not-dying.

"Why," you may ask, "do I want to know all this scientific mumbo-jumbo? All I want to do is pick up some moves to protect myself?"

And I would answer, "you don't have to learn anything."

Not if you just want to learn your "moves" and then hope that you'll be able to use them in a real street self-defense situation.

Remember. When you're training in a martial arts or self-defense class, you're probably pumped up, happy, having a good time. Am I right?

Looking at the base feelings I described before, that would put you in "attraction" mode, where you like what you're doing and want more of it. The activity - the training - it feels good and, while perhaps difficult at times, probably not very threatening or dangerous at all.

Now, whether or not you've ever been in a real fight, or ever been attacked by an enraged individual out for blood, I'm sure you can imagine what that must be like. You can almost see his eyes and the intense look on his face. Add to that, the intensity and intention he's projecting and the smell of him - we can't forget that smell and feel of him as he invades your personal space.

Are you still in "attraction" mode? I bet not. And you're not even in the real situation. I'm just describing it and you're having an "aversion" response.

How do you think you're going to feel actually being in the heat of the moment?

You got it. Very different than in class or your own personal training sessions where there is no real danger.

If you understand the role and immense value that your emotions play in keeping you safe. And, if you learn about what role they play in spearheading your body's natural defense mechanisms, then you can also train to tap into their power and use them as tools for your own defense.

Having this knowledge will help you to tailor and adjust your actual training methods to accommodate, acknowledge, and utilize your emotions as the valuable aids they are.

Remember, any monkey can learn the moves, but a real expert - a true master - uses things that most individuals don't even know about, or don't know exist. So, do you have to study and use your emotions in your self-defense training? No.

But then, you don't "have" to breath either. But I'd highly recommend it!

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Jeffrey Miller is an internationally recognized self-defense expert. He is the creator of the unique EDR: Non-Martial Arts Defensive Training System and teaches individuals, security professionals, companies, and organizations how to be more safe in Today's often unsafe world. Visit his web site at => http://www.warrior-concepts-online.com