If the BAR gets out of hand, or we are not prepared to fight and we perceive no opportunity to flee, then we may freeze. This is definitely not a good option in the face of the tiger. Remember, to survive, fear must be controlled. And, for fear to be controlled, it first must be acknowledged. Recognize that fear is a natural response when facing the tiger, and not a sign of cowardice. Now, once fear is acknowledged, the body alarm reaction must be controlled and harnessed to pump our fighting machine.
When fear gets out of hand and the BAR is in overdrive, psychologically, we feel that we are going to die. As a result, physiologically, not only do our muscles tense up (or sometimes go limp), but we tend to hold our breath, feel a tightness in our chest, breathe shallowly (or heavily) from our upper chest, and/or hyperventilate and become light-headed. Our body temperature drops and our hands and feet turn cold (or perhaps sweaty). Our stomach, bladder and bowels also react. We may feel butterflies or pain in our stomach, and we may lose bladder or bowel control. We may feel as if our body is going to explode or implode, or that we are going to jump out of our skin. All of the above result in our feeling more tense, vulnerable, and out of control. There are three remedies for this.
The first is a physiological step. You must become aware of breath holding, erratic or shallow breathing, or hyperventilation and control it. You can begin to learn breath control by taking three to five slow, deep, and controlled breaths when you are by yourself in a safe environment (in Conditions White or Yellow). I teach my clients to inhale deeply through their nose to a count of five, hold it for a count of three, and then to exhale forcefully through their mouth to a count of eight, blowing stress and tension out into the atmosphere. If this is too difficult at first, you can inhale as deeply as you can, hold, and exhale as forcefully as you can to lower counts, and then work up to greater breath depth and higher numbers as you get better at it. At first, you may feel somewhat light-headed, but with continued practice, the light-headedness will disappear and you will notice that you feel more relaxed, alert, and in control.
Slow, controlled, deep breathing is a switch that turns down the BAR and turns on the relaxation response. It’s a good idea to practice this skill often throughout the day and enjoy how much more in charge you feel. It only takes a minute or so. As you retrain yourself to become more aware of your breathing, first in normal situations and then in normal, everyday stressful situations, you will eventually be able to employ your breathing to your advantage in a crisis such as a fight. Of course, in the middle of a fight, you are not going to have time to focus on your breathing. The point is that, if you’ve practiced, you’ll automatically breathe away your unnecessary stress and tension.
The second remedy to runaway BAR is a psychological step and the second key element discussed above, positive self-talk. If you were faced by three gang-banging punks, but you had Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris on your side, you’d probably feel more confident wouldn’t you? What would you be telling yourself?
The idea is to talk to yourself in such a way that your body gets the message to turn the BAR down to a level that is optimal to the circumstances at hand, just enough activation to be able to use your training to smartly deal with your attackers and prevail. For example, faced with a home invasion in the middle of the night, you want to be telling yourself things like, We’ve planned for this. We are going to follow our plan. Step one is …. Step two is …. We are NOT going to &*%$ing die tonight!
The third step to reducing BAR is mental rehearsal. Like dry-fire practice with an empty firearm, this enables you to practice employing all of the above techniques and your physical and tactical training in your mind enough times so that, if the real deal ever transpires, you are ready. Competitive shooters use visualization techniques like this, as do other successful athletes. The key is to mentally visualize and go through in your mind (mentally rehearse) how you want to handle a challenging situation.
This exercise works best if you first put yourself into a relaxed state using slow, controlled, deep breathing. When you are relaxed, you cannot also be tense, stressed, or scared, because relaxation and these other states are emotional and physical opposites. So, by first getting relaxed, you calm your mind and, thus, can think more clearly and concentrate better. You are more alert and aware and in tune with reality. Your negative self-talk, which is often exaggerated and unrealistic, gets turned down, and your subconscious mind is more receptive to positive impressions
Use mental rehearsal to run movies in your head of you dealing with a challenging situation, doing what you have to do, and winning. You are the producer and the director, so take full editorial privileges. Explore different scenarios, different variables, different tactics, and different outcomes. Run it forward and backward. Cut and splice segments.
You can also employ mental rehearsal as a means of learning techniques from an expert role model. The first step is to closely observe the expert performing the skill. The second step is to imagine what it would feel like to be that expert as he or she performs the skill. If your fear or distraction level goes up, simply interrupt the imagery rehearsal to get more relaxed with your neutral breathing, and then go back to your mental rehearsal.
You can also employ mental rehearsal (which I cover more fully later on) by triggering a mini BAR and then employing breath control and positive self-talk to turn it down. Purposefully seek out and confront uncomfortable or slightly risky situations that get your level of physiological arousal up. Then practice your neutral breathing and positive self-talk to overcome it.
Chapter 4
Your Body’s Natural reactions
If there is any such thing as a certainty in defensive shooting, it’s the natural, instinctive reactions that occur when you’re surprised by a lethal threat.
Instinctive reactions are those things that humans do without prior exposure or training; they are those things that are seemingly hard-wired in our brains from birth12. Reacting to a loud noise, for instance, is a readily observable trait in newborns; babies in the womb, too, are reported to react to a startling sound.
Instinctive reactions to threats have developed over millennia in the human animal; the ability to stay alive among predators, many of them easily able to take down homo sapiens, is why we’re at the top of the food chain today. Without some sort of built-in mechanism to automate our responses we likely would not have made it this far.
It’s important to understand that these natural reactions happen when you’re truly surprised by an attack, and they last for a relatively short amount of time. The half-life of the catecholamine hormones that facilitate your reactions is measured in minutes13, which means that their effect starts deteriorating very rapidly after the onset of the reactions. Your body’s reactions are therefore very short-duration events that, understood and trained for, allow you to gain the upper hand when you’re already behind the curve.
One of the salient points regarding your body’s natural instinctive reactions is that they can’t be trained away. You can learn to suppress their amplitude or to convert them to intuitive responses more efficiently, but they are almost certain to occur. Understanding them is the first step to taking advantage of them.
When faced with a lethal threat your brain directs your body to make some rather amazing transformations 14. There are many different reactions, some large and others almost unnoticeable, that enable you to deal with something that poses a threat to your existence. Detailing all of them would be a book in itself.