The Gift of Fear/The Curse of Anxiety

by Sandra L. Brown, MA

Is it Fear Or Is it Anxiety?

Women who have been in pathological relationships come away from the relationships with problems associated with fear, worry, and anxiety.This is often related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or what we call ‘High Harm Avoidance’– being on high alert looking for ways she might get harmed now or in the future.

PTSD, by it’s own nature as a disorder, is an anxiety disorder that is preoccupied by both the past (flashbacks and intrusive thoughts of him or events) and by the future (worry about future events, trying to anticipate his behaviors, etc.). With long term exposure to PTSD, this anxiety and worry begins to mask itself, at least in her mind, as ‘fear.’ In fact, most women lump together the sensations of anxiety, worry, and fear into one feeling and don’t differientiate them.

Fear is helpful and safety-oriented whereas worry and anxiety are not helpful and related to phantom ‘possible’ events that often don’t happen. To that degree, worry and anxiety are distracting away from real fear signals that could help her.

In the book which is now a classic on predicting harmful behavior in others, Gavin deBecker in ‘The Gift of Fear’ delineates the difference between what we need fear FOR and what we DONT need anxiety and worry for. In some ways, the ability to use fear correctly while stopping the use of anxiety and worry may do much to curtail PTSD symptoms.

deBecker who is not a therapist but a Danger Anaylst has done what other therapists haven’t even done–nix PTSD symptoms of anxiety and worry by focusing on true fear and it’s necessity versus anxiety and it’s faux meaning to us.

The term fear was used by Freud (in contrast to anxiety), to refer to the reaction to real danger. Freud emphasized the difference between fear and anxiety in terms of their relation to danger:

~ Anxiety is a state characterized by the expectation and preparation for a danger–even if it’s unknown ~

~ While fear implies a specific object to be feared in the here/now. ~

(Anxiety is: ‘He MIGHT harm me’ where fear is: “He IS harming me with his fist, words, actions, etc.”)

If you heard there was a weapon proven to prevent most crimes (including picking a dangerous partner) before it happened, would you run out and buy it? World-renowned security expert Gavin deBecker says this weapon exists,but you already have it. He calls it “the gift of fear.”

The story of a woman named Kelly begins with a simple warning sign. A man offers to help carry her groceries into her apartment—and instantly, Kelly doesn’t like the sound of his voice. Kelly goes against her gut and lets him help her—and in doing so, she lets a rapist into her home.


“We get a signal prior to violence,” Gavin says. “There are preincident indicators. Things that happen before violence occurs.” Gavin says that unlike any other living creature, humans will sense danger, yet still walk right into it.

“You’re in a hallway waiting for an elevator late at night. The elevator door opens, and there’s a guy inside, and he makes you afraid. You don’t know why, you don’t know what it is. And many women will stand there and look at that guy and say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to think like that. I don’t want to be the kind of person who lets the door close in his face. I’ve got to be nice. I don’t want him to think I’m not nice.’

And so human beings will get into a steel soundproof chamber with someone they’re afraid of, and there’s not another animal in nature that would even consider it.”

Gavin says that “eerie feelings” is exactly what he wants women to pay attention to. “We’re trying to analyze the warning signs,” he says. “And what I really want to teach today and forever is the feeling of the warning sign. All the other stuff is our explanation for the feeling. Why it was this, why it was that. The feeling itself IS the warning sign.”

What happens over and over again is that women dismantle their OWN internal safety system by ignoring it. The longer she ignores it, the more ‘over rides’ it receives and retrains the brain to ignore the fear signal. Once rewired women are at tremendous risks of all kinds…risks of picking the wrong men, of squelching fear signals of impending violence, shutting off alarms about potential sexual assaults, shutting down red flags about financial rip offs, squeeking out hints about poor character in other people…and the list goes on. What is left after your whole entire safety system is dismantled? Not much….

Women, subconsciously sensing they need to have ‘something’ to fall back on, swap out true and profoundly accurate fear signals with the miserly counterfeit and highly unproductive feeling of worry/anxiety.

LADIES– WRONG FEELING!

Then they end up in counseling for their 4th dangerous relationship and wonder if they have a target sign on their forehead. No they don’t. They have learned to dismantle, rename, minimize, justify, or deny the fear signals they get or got in the relationship. As if their ability to ‘take it’ or ‘not be afraid’ of very dangerous behavior is some sort of win for them. As if their ability to look danger in the face and STAY means they are as tough or competitive as he is…

No–it means they have a fear signal that no longer saves them. Their barely stuttering signal means it’s been over-ridden by her. She felt it, labeled it, and released it all the while staring eye-to-eye with what she should fear most.

Then later, or another day or week passes and she has mounting anxiety–over what she wonders? She has a chronic low grade worry, whisps of anxiety that waife thru her life. She can’t put 2+2 together to figure out that ignoring true fear will demand to be recognized by her subconscious in some way—an illegitimate way through worry and anxiety that does nothing to save her from real danger. Her real ally (her true fear) has been squelched and banished.

When coming to us for counseling she wants us to help her ‘feel safe’ again when actually, we can’t do any of that. It’s all in her internal system as it’s always been. Her safety is inside her and her future healing is too.

She will sit in the counselor’s office denying true fear and begging for relief from the mounting anxiety she is experiencing. She doesn’t trust herself, her intuition, her judgments–all she can feel is anxiety. And with good reason! True fear is her true intuition…not anxiety. But she’s already canned what can save her and now on some level she must know she has nothing left that can help her feel and react.

Animals instinctively react to the danger signal–the adrenaline, flash of fear, and flood of cortisol. They don’t have internal dialogue with themselves like “What did that mean? Why did he say that? I don’t like that behavior—I wonder if he was abused as a child.”

An animal is trained to have a natural reaction to the fear signal–they run. You don’t see animals ‘stuck’ in abusive mating environments! In nature, as in us, we are wired with the King of Comments which is the danger signal. When we respond to the flash of true fear, we aren’t left having a commentary with ourselves.


“The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.” – John Schaar

Sandra L. Brown, M.A. is the Founder and CEO of The Institute for Relational Harm Reduction and Public Pathology Education.  She is the author of several best selling books, including How to Spot a Dangerous Man and Why Women Love Psychopaths. www.saferelationshipsmagazine.com

Don’t Fake the Funk

By Sandra L. Brown

‘Put a smile on your face no matter what’ ‘turn your frown upside down’ ‘if you keep your face like that it’ll freeze’–who ever came up with these statements was never in a relationship with a dangerous man.

The predominant thing women want to know in their phone counseling sessions is: ‘Is what I lived thru in my dangerous man experience normal?’ ‘The effects I suffer today from that experience–do others have those experiences too?’ ‘Why am I so depressed/anxious/obsessed/paranoid?’ “What is it called that I have and will I always be like this?’

Women greatly under estimate the damage done in dangerous and/or pathological relationships. Why? Often because they have been in so many of them that it’s now normal…being with someone so dangerous is normal AND feeling this bad is normal. It’s been so long since they didn’t have depression, anxiety, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, obsessions or paranoia–they have no idea what it feels like to not have these symptoms.

They also under estimate the damage because some were raised in families where dangerous behavior was also the norm. The chaos, drama, trauma, stress, and instability were the foundations of their home lives. Their childhood simply melded into their adulthood of the same kinds of relationship–except now, by their own choosing.

Women who have gone from pathological families into pathological relationships have been chronically depressed so long that the biochemistry in their brain is currently altered. They have been anxious for so long that that their biochemistry is altered by all the adrenaline they have lived on for so long. Long term exposure to chronic stress, so often seen in dangerous relationships, eventually can create medical disorders. Some of those disorders suspected of being linked to unrelenting traumatic exposure includes: autoimmune disorders like lupus, chronic fatigue and Epstein-Barr. Stress reactions like TMJ from teeth grinding, digestive disorders, migraines, hives and female disorders like endometriosis, phantom pelvic pain and other similar disorders.

Stress has to go somewhere and often it is crammed into the body to wreak its havoc on the body. Even when trauma has been so severe that much of it is not remembered, the body still remembers what the mind has chosen to forget. Your body always tells the truth.

Mood disorders are one of the most common disorders associated with life with disordered relationships. Women are often in denial of the extent of their depression and/or anxiety–either it now feels normal or they don’t want to face ‘what’ the relationship has cost them in medical and emotional disorders. ‘Facing the funk’ is just one way of coming to the truth of how ‘bodily expensive’ that relationship was. You can’t heal what you don’t see. So taking your own inventory about ‘how’ you really are is the first step in recovery. Mood disorders are often manageable thru various means but you won’t be managing anything until you stop faking how effected you are by your own relational history.

Many women emerge from these relationships either diagnosed, or not yet diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) — an anxiety disorder so extreme that the core concept of self is often fragmented. The cracked vessel must try to now function as an undamaged vase–but push on the crack and the vessel will break again.

The Gift of Fear/The Curse of Anxiety

By Sandra L. Brown

Is it Fear Or Is it Anxiety?

Women who have been in pathological relationships come away from the relationships with problems associated with fear, worry, and anxiety. This is often related to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or what we call 'High Harm Avoidance'-- being on high alert looking for ways she might get harmed now or in the future. 

PTSD, by it's own nature as a disorder, is an anxiety disorder that is preoccupied by both the past (flashbacks and intrusive thoughts of him or events) and by the future (worry about future events, trying to anticipate his behaviors, etc.). With long term exposure to PTSD, this anxiety and worry begins to mask itself, at least in her mind, as 'fear.' In fact, most women lump together the sensations of anxiety, worry, and fear into one feeling and don't differentiate them. 

Fear is helpful and safety-oriented whereas worry and anxiety are not helpful and related to phantom 'possible' events that often don't happen. To that degree, worry and anxiety are distracting away from real fear signals that could help her.

In the book which is now a classic on predicting harmful behavior in others, Gavin deBecker in 'The Gift of Fear' delineates the difference between what we need fear FOR and what we DONT need anxiety and worry for. In some ways, the ability to use fear correctly while stopping the use of anxiety and worry may do much to curtail PTSD symptoms. 

deBecker who is not a therapist but a Danger Anaylst has done what other therapists haven't even done--nix PTSD symptoms of anxiety and worry by focusing on true fear and it's necessity versus anxiety and it's faux meaning to us.

The term fear was used by Freud (in contrast to anxiety), to refer to the reaction to  real danger. Freud emphasized the difference between fear and anxiety in terms of their relation to danger: 

~ Anxiety is a state characterized by the expectation and preparation
 for a danger--even if it's unknown ~ 

~ While fear implies a specific object to be feared in the here/now. ~

(Anxiety is: 'He MIGHT harm me' where fear is: "He IS harming me with
 his fist, words, actions, etc.")

If you heard there was a weapon proven to prevent most crimes (including picking a dangerous partner) before it happened, would you run out and buy it? World-renowned security expert Gavin deBecker says this weapon exists, but you already have it. He calls it "the gift of fear." 

The story of a woman named Kelly begins with a simple warning sign. A man offers to help carry her groceries into her apartment—and instantly, Kelly doesn't like the sound of his voice. Kelly goes against her gut and lets him help her—and in doing so, she lets a rapist into her home. 

"We get a signal prior to violence," Gavin says. "There are preincident  indicators. Things that happen before violence occurs." 

Gavin says that unlike any other living creature, humans will sense danger, yet still walk right into it. 

"You're in a hallway waiting for an elevator late at night. The elevator door opens, and there's a guy inside, and he makes you afraid. You don't know why, you don't know what it is. And many women will stand there and look at that guy and say, 'Oh, I don't want to think like that. I don't want to be the kind of person who lets the door close in his face. I've got to be nice. I don't want him to think I'm not nice.' 

And so human beings will get into a steel soundproof chamber with someone they're afraid of, and there's not another animal in nature that would even consider it." 

Gavin says that "eerie feelings" is exactly what he wants women to pay attention to. "We're trying to analyze the warning signs," he says. "And what I really want to teach today and forever is the feeling of the warning sign. All the other stuff is our explanation for the feeling. Why it was this, why it was that. The feeling itself IS the warning sign." 

What happens over and over again is that women dismantle their OWN internal safety system by ignoring it. The longer she ignores it, the more 'over rides' it receives and retrains the brain to ignore the fear signal. Once rewired women are at tremendous risks of all kinds...risks of picking the wrong men, of squelching fear signals of impending violence, shutting off alarms about potential sexual assaults, shutting down red flags about financial rip offs, squeeking out hints about poor character in other people...and the list goes on. What is left after your whole entire safety system is dismantled? Not much....

Women, subconsciously sensing they need to have 'something' to fall back on, swap out true and profoundly accurate fear signals with the miserly counterfeit and highly unproductive feeling of worry/anxiety. 

LADIES-- WRONG FEELING! 

Then they end up in counseling for their 4th dangerous relationship and wonder if they have a target sign on their forehead. No they don't. They have learned to dismantle, rename, minimize, justify, or deny the fear signals they get or got in the relationship. As if their ability to 'take it' or 'not be afraid' of very dangerous behavior is some sort of win for them. As if their ability to look danger in the face and STAY means they are as tough or competitive as he is...

No--it means they have a fear signal that no longer saves them. Their barely stuttering signal means it's been over-ridden by her. She felt it, labeled it, and released it all the while staring eye-to-eye with what she should fear most. 

Then later, or another day or week passes and she has mounting anxiety--over what she wonders? She has a chronic low grade worry, whisps of anxiety that waife thru her life. She can't put 2+2 together to figure out that ignoring true fear will demand to be recognized by her subconscious in some way---an illegitimate way through worry and anxiety that does nothing to save her from real danger. Her real ally (her true fear) has been squelched and banished. 

When coming to us for counseling she wants us to help her 'feel safe'again when actually, we can't do any of that. It's all in her internal system as it's always been. Her safety is inside her and her future healing is too. 

She will sit in the counselor's office denying true fear and begging for relief from the mounting anxiety she is experiencing. She doesn't trust herself, her intuition, her judgments--all she can feel is anxiety. And with good reason! True fear is her true intuition...not anxiety. But she's already canned what can save her and now on some level she must know she has nothing left that can help her feel and react.

Animals instinctively react to the danger signal--the adrenaline, flash of fear, and flood of cortisol. They don't have internal dialogue with themselves like "What did that mean? Why did he say that? I don't like that behavior---I wonder if he was abused as a child." 

An animal is trained to have a natural reaction to the fear signal--they run. You don't see animals 'stuck' in abusive mating environments! In nature, as in us, we are wired with the King of Comments which is the danger signal. When we respond to the flash of true fear, we aren't left having a commentary with ourselves.

"The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.” - John Schaar

Courage

By Tanya Warrington

Today I want to salute all those women, men, teenagers and children who have had the courage to tell about their abuse. Courage. It takes bravery to do what you thought you could never do.

The first time that I was told that I was courageous--I thought the other person was crazy. At that point, I felt fear in huge heaping doses. I had driven away from my home with my three children in a desperate effort to keep my children safe from my abusive spouse. I felt panicked. I was in the grips of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but no one would label until a couple of months later my intense fear that haunted me both in my waking and sleeping hours.

I didn’t feel brave at all.

I had thought that I was brave when I endured abuse and didn’t cry. That type of courage I had learned as a preschooler when my dad sexually assaulted me and told me “big girls don’t cry.” I thought I was brave when I kept horrible secrets deep down inside, because I didn’t want to be responsible for “killing” mother by telling her things she could not bear to hear. I thought I was brave when I kept my life somewhat together when a teenage boyfriend raped me when I was 17. I thought I was brave when I wouldn’t let my husband see my pain, because he fed off signs of pain or weakness. I put up a strong, feel nothing, say nothing front…until the day I understood that my children were in danger because of their father’s worsening “anger problem.”

Now, years later, I understand the courage the friend saw in me. I see it now in other courageous individuals. It takes tremendous courage to believe that there is a better way of living and to risk everything you have and that you know in order to seek that different, abuse-free life. 

Bravery is necessary to leave all that is familiar and plunge into an unknown future. 

Guts are essential to reveal the buried secrets. 

Tenacity is needed, holding onto what feels like a tiny edge, while feeling waves of fear and pain in the aftershock of embarking on the road of truth.

Coping, ever coping, while feeling totally weak and exposed as you ask for help from strangers at shelters or counseling offices or in an emergency room. 

The pain feels like more than you can survive. The reality that you told yourself could not be--is the ugly truth. And facing the truth of abuse can’t be done with anything less than courage.

So, to all of you who have faced the unbearable, I say well done. No matter where you are on the journey of healing, I see the courage in you. Bravo! Bravo! You are making it. You are taking steps toward a better future. You are learning new ways. You are doing things you didn’t think you could do. 

You are like the shaking child at the top of the high dive who finally jumps off and raises to the top of the water to hear the sound of the pool patrons clapping. That kid was terrified, but did it anyway. Others saw the fear and then the courage. They saw and they clapped.  If you and I were in the same room right now, you’d see a big smile on my face and my hands clapping for you.