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

by Gavin de Becker

women visit emergency rooms for injuries caused by their husbands or boyfriends more often than for injuries from car accidents, robberies and rapes combined.

We live in a country where one person with a gun and some nerve can derail our democratic right to choose the leaders of the most powerful nation in history.

We have a Department of Justice, but it would be more appropriate to have a department of violence prevention because that’s what we need and that’s what we care about.

“You know, there is one other person, and I don’t have any concrete reasons for thinking it’s him. I just have this feeling, and I hate to even suggest it, but…” And right there I could send them home and send my bill, because that is who it will be.

As long as there are parents preparing children for little more than incarceration, we’ll have no trouble keeping our prisons full.

We must learn and then teach our children that niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning. Like rapport-building, charm and the deceptive smile, unsolicited niceness often has a discoverable motive.

“No” is a word that must never be negotiated, because the person who chooses not to hear it is trying to control you.

I encourage people to remember that “no” is a complete sentence.

any reaction—even anger—from a decent man who had no sinister intent is preferable to continued attention from a violent man who might have used your concern about rudeness to his advantage.

Women, particularly in big cities, live with a constant wariness. Their lives are literally on the line in ways men just don’t experience.