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Controlling the Fear Response in Self Defense Situations
Fear control is perhaps the most underappreciated ability one can have in a self defense situation. The symptoms of fear can vastly exceed one's ability to handle them. Training to control this natural fear response, and even better, to work with it, is the key to successful self defense.
In situations of extreme stress our body has a natural self defense mechanism called the fight or flight response. Just as the name implies, this response empowers us to fight or flee from a dangerous situation. It does so by releasing adrenaline into our bloodstream, which quickens our heart rate, decreases organ function, narrows one's vision, slows time, and makes you stronger, faster, and less susceptible to pain.
But this response has a few negative consequences too. The biggest downside to this reactionary state is the inability to perform fine and complex motor skills. These are any skills which require timing, coordination, or sequential movements. A great many martial arts techniques are complex movements, and therefore a great many martial arts techniques become ineffective in times of extreme stress, like a life or death assault.
What does improve however is gross motor movement, movements which rely on compound body movements like pushing, pulling, lifting, and squatting. So in training for self defense situations, the smartest thing one can do is to fully acknowledge the state you'll most likely be in, and to select tools that will become more effective and stronger at that time, while reducing the number of fine and complex motor skills you train.
That is the key to working with this fear response. For those who want to make self defense more of a long term study, controlling this fear response is going to reap more rewards. There are three ways in which traditional martial artists condition the mind and body to cope with dangerous situations; these are full contact training and fighting, hand and body conditioning, and meditation.
Full contact training is often stressful in itself. It replicates conditions under which the normal individual would experience fear, and it allows the trainee to accept that stress and deal with it. The more experience one has, the more capable they are of functioning in this reactionary state. It also desensitizes the mind and body to hard impact, and allows you to continue on without entering a state of shock.
Hand and body conditioning in martial arts is not just for brick breaking. It is the traditional way of building a body capable of delivering and receiving great force without sustaining injury. The harder your body becomes, the more power is required in an adversary to inflict injury. This reduces your natural fear response simply because there is less to be afraid of. And with very well conditioned hands, the kind capable of breaking bricks, you might as well be walking around with a baseball bat. Most people aren't too afraid when they're holding a baseball bat.
And finally, meditation deals with this fear response from the inside out. Mindfulness meditation effectively allows one to transcend egotistical and selfish thought in exchange for the fullness of immediate experience. If the ego is marginalized, then fear of personal harm is not a real consideration. Focusing on the task at hand and the immediacy of the situation is where the mind is focused. Without a self to be concerned with, fear becomes a moot point. These three methods have long been the martial artists' secret tools for transcending the fear response in self defense situations, and they work as well today as ever.
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