The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

by Gavin de Becker

when you spend time with the world’s most violent and dangerous people, the ones you might call monsters, the ones who committed acts you might think you couldn’t have imagined. Many of them are locked up at Atascadero State Hospital in California. I founded and fund a program there called Patient Pets, which allows patients to care for small animals. Many of these men will be locked up for life without visitors, and a mouse or bird might be all they have. I recall the way the patients reacted to the death of a particular guinea pig who had been one of the first pets in the program. When they noticed the old animal was sick, they wanted to find a way to keep her from dying, though most knew that wasn’t possible. The program’s coordinator, Jayne Middlebrook, sent me this report: One patient, Oliver, made it his job to be sure the ailing animal had everything she needed. Oliver asked to keep her in his room, “so she won’t be alone at night, just in case she decides to die then.” Eventually, the old guinea pig was unable to move and her breathing was labored. Oliver gathered several patients in my office, and the guinea pig died in his arms, surrounded by an unlikely group of mourners. There was not a dry eye in the ward as the patients said their good-byes and silently left the office. I have often shared with you the effects these events have on the patients, some of whom, moved by the death of one of the animals, cried for the first time about the harms they had committed ...