Feelings are not the same as emotions. An emotional response is physiological, involving physical changes to the body’s natural state, such as a release of adrenaline (a cocktail of hormones) into the bloodstream. A feeling is the conscious interpretation of this state. Adrenaline will be released into our system, when our “fear” system identifies a threat that it believes requires a fight or flight response. Our interpretation of the threat, determines whether we become afraid or aggressive/angry.

It is worth noting that our fear system can be educated, in fact many fears are learnt e.g. nobody has an inherent fear of snakes this is something we are taught and learn. Our fear system can also become over-educated, such as in phobias, where a person with a fear of snakes begins to identify things that resemble the shape and movements of snakes, as snakes – such as electrical cables, pieces of rope etc. The media and news reports also serve to educate us e.g. if there is a report about teenagers in hooded tops being responsible for assaults in a particular neighborhood, our fear system may trigger an adrenal release whenever we see such a group (even if none of their other actions or behaviors are potentially aggressive or violent). Having a realistic understanding of your environment and the potential threats within it is essential if you are to respond effectively to real threats and not react to things which contain no harmful intent.

Whenever I teach seminars or courses to people who have never trained before one of the first tasks I have to do, is to explain to them what violence against their particular demographic actually looks like. This is especially true when teaching women whose primary concern is learning to defend themselves against a random assailant who attacks them without warning on a street or deserted place. Whilst such attacks do occur, they are not the most common ones. Assaults against women are mainly committed by people they know in their homes or in somebody else’s. Having an awareness of this, means that you are able to respond much quicker if you are attacked in such a location; if you aren’t aware that a friend or acquaintance can assault you in your home you will be slow to identify what is happening to you as you first have to get over the initial state of denial, that this can’t be happening to you.

I remember being taken off-guard when an ex-business colleague sent a mutual acquaintance to threaten to assault me, at my place of work: 1. I didn’t perceive the person as a threat and, 2. I didn’t expect the threat of violence at my place of work. My “model” of violence didn’t include this situation as one to be careful of/in despite the fact that there were several pre-violence indicators I should have picked up on e.g. their general tone, the fact that they wanted to speak to me alone etc. When we discount the possibility of violence in a certain situation/location, we can be slow to respond, and not even realize that we are or were in danger. Even though are fear system may have been triggered and we are working in an adrenal state, our mental state is one of confusion, rather than even recognizing whether we are afraid or angry.

Acceptance of the possibility of violence will help us recognize when we are adrenalized and accept the fact rather than keeping us in a state of denial and confusion. In the next blog post we will talk about the different ways in which adrenaline is released into our system, its effects and the ways in which we can manage it.