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

by Gavin de Becker

BE DIRECT Instead of simply informing an employee that the decision to fire him has been made, some employers sidle up to the issue so delicately that the person doesn’t fully realize he has just been fired. After listening, he might say he understands he has to improve his performance, to which the employer responds, “No, you don’t understand; we’re firing you.” This can make the fired employee feel foolish on...

The whole theme of the termination meeting should be that you are confident he will succeed in the future, find work he will enjoy, and do well. (You may actually feel he has emotional problems, is self-defeating, and will always fail, but there is nothing to be gained from letting these messages surface.) The tone of the meeting should be matter-of-fact, not solemn and depressing: “These changes are part of professional life that we all experience at one time or another. I’ve been through it myself. We know you’ll do well and that this needn’t be a setback for you.”

TO THE DEGREE POSSIBLE, CITE GENERAL RATHER THAN SPECIFIC ISSUES Many employers want to justify to the terminated employee why they are taking this action, as if they could possibly convince him that his being fired is a good idea. Others use the termination meeting for more efforts to correct the employee’s attitude or improve him, turning the termination meeting into a lecture. Many employers give more frank and constructive criticism at the moment of firing someone than they ever gave that employee while he was employed. Forget about that—it’s too late. A wiser course is to describe the decision in general terms, saying it is best for all parties. Say employment is a two-way street and the present situation isn’t serving either side. Say he is obviously a capable person but this job is not providing the best environment

REMEMBER THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE In consideration of the security and safety of those handling the firing, the employee should not be aware of the termination meeting ahead of time. Believe it or not, many employees are summoned to their firing meeting with the words “They’re going to fire you.”

TIME IT RIGHT A firing should take place without notice, at the end of the day, while other employees are departing. This way, when the meeting is over, the fired employee cannot immediately seek out those he feels are responsible. Further, he will then be going home at the same time as usual as opposed to finding himself home on a weekday morning, for example. I suggest firing at the end of the work week. If fired on a Friday, he has the weekend off as usual so he doesn’t feel the impact of having no place to go the next morning. Unlike on a weekday, he will not awaken with the knowledge that his former co-workers are at the job (and possibly discussing him). He won’t have the experience of everything being different from usual, different shows on TV, familiar people not at home, etc. Though some believe that firing on a weekday is advisable, I find it makes possible targets of aggression available to him at work while he is still at a point of high emotion.

CHOOSE YOUR SETTING A firing should take place in a room out of the view of other employees. It should not be in the office of the person doing the firing, because then there’s no way to end the meeting if the terminated employee wants to keep talking. The person doing the firing needs to have the ability to stand up and leave if it is no longer productive to stay. One experienced executive I know avoids using his office ...

CHOOSE YOUR CAST Who should be present? I suggest that a higher level manager than the employee usually worked with should make the termination presentation. It should be someone distant from the day-to-day controversies that surrounded the terminated employee. It should be someone who is calm and can retain that demeanor in the face of anger or even threats. When workable, a second participant can be someone in management the fired employee is known to admire, or someone with whom he has a good relationship. The reason for this second person is that the employee will act his best self in front of someone he feels like...

The primary leverage of employers is the ability to fire, but once they do it, once that power is exercised, their one shot has been fired and the gun is empty.

Given the industriousness of lawyers and the prevalence of wrongful termination suits, some companies have been more concerned about litigation than hazard. When a fired employee threatens a lawsuit, he may get more attention than for other threats, but this is ironic, because in the context of the kind of employee we are discussing here, the threatening of a lawsuit is actually good news. As long as he is focused on a lawsuit, he sees alternatives to violence. The problem with lawsuits comes not when they start, but when they end. We know that eventually, particularly when claims are unreasonable or outrageous, the employee will lose the legal battle. Then the company may have to face that person’s anger again. When employers avoid provoking or engaging a fired employee, however, time itself will heal most wounds, hopefully including those to his dignity and identity.

It is also important to let the threatener know that he has not embarked on a course from which he cannot retreat. A good theme is “We all say things when we react emotionally; I’ve done it myself. Let’s just forget it. I know you’ll feel different tomorrow.”

Also, counter-threats make things worse. Think of violence as inter-actional. The way you respond to a threat might up the ante and turn this situation into a contest of threats, escalations, and counter-threats. It is a contest employers rarely win, for they have far more at risk than the terminated employee and far more ways to lose.

He could have benefited from the wisdom of Oliver Wendell Holmes: “The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”

“The difference is that your daughter has you—and you don’t have you. If you don’t get out soon, your daughter won’t have you either.”

Earlier I noted that America has tens of thousands of suicide prevention centers but no homicide prevention centers. Battered women’s shelters are the closest thing we have to homicide prevention centers.

One of the most common errors in selecting a boyfriend or spouse is basing the prediction on potential. This is actually predicting what certain elements might add up to in some different context: He isn’t working now, but he could be really successful. He’s going to be a great artist—of course he can’t paint under present circumstances. He’s a little edgy and aggressive these days, but that’s just until he gets settled.

Even the phrase “crime of passion” has contributed to our widespread misunderstanding of this violence. That phrase is not the description of a crime—it is the description of an excuse, a defense. Since 75 percent of spousal murders happen after the woman leaves, it is estrangement, not argument, that begets the worst violence. In the end, stalking is not just about cases of “fatal attraction”—far more often, it is about cases of fatal inaction, in which the woman stayed too long.

Restraining orders are most effective on the reasonable person who has a limited emotional investment. In other words, they work best on the person least likely to be violent anyway. Also, there is a substantial difference between using a restraining order on an abusive husband and using one on a man you dated a couple of times. That difference is the amount of emotional investment and entitlement the man feels.

There’s a lesson in real-life stalking cases that young women can benefit from learning: persistence only proves persistence—it does not prove love. The fact that a romantic pursuer is relentless doesn’t mean you are special—it means he is troubled.

Popular movies may be reflections of society or designers of society depending on who you ask, but either way, they model behavior for us. During the early stages of pursuit situations in movies—and too often in life—the woman is watching and waiting, fitting in to the expectations of an overly invested man. She isn’t heard or recognized; she is the screen upon which the man projects his needs and his idea of what she should be.

Stalking is how some men raise the stakes when the woman doesn’t play along. It is a crime of power, control, and intimidation very similar to date rape. In fact, many cases of date-stalking could be described as extended rapes; they take away freedom, and they honor the desires of the man and disregard the wishes of the woman. Whether he is an estranged husband, an ex-boyfriend, a onetime date, or an unwanted suitor, the stalker enforces our culture’s cruelest rule, which is that women are not allowed to decide who will be in their lives.

Looking for Mr. Right has taken on far greater significance than getting rid of Mr. Wrong, so women are not taught how to get out of relationships. That high school class would stress the one rule that applies to all types of unwanted pursuit: do not negotiate. Once a woman has made the decision that she doesn’t want a relationship with a particular man, it needs to be said one time, explicitly. Almost any contact after that rejection will be seen as negotiation. If a woman tells a man over and over again that she doesn’t want to talk to him, that is talking to him, and every time she does it, she betrays her resolve in the matter. If you tell someone ten times that you don’t want to talk to him, you are talking to him—nine more times than you wanted to.

When a woman rejects someone who has a crush on her, and she says, “It’s just that I don’t want to be in relationship right now,” he hears only the words “right now.” To him, this means she will want to be in a relationship later. The rejection should be “I don’t want to be in a relationship with you.” Unless it’s just that clear, and sometimes even when it is, he doesn’t hear it. If she says, “You’re a great guy and you have a lot to offer, but I’m not the one for you; my head’s just not in the right place these days,” he thinks: “She really likes me; it’s just that she’s confused. I’ve got to prove to her that she’s the one for me.” When a woman explains why she is rejecting, this type of man will challenge each reason she offers. I suggest that women never explain why they don’t want a relationship but simply make clear that they have thought it over, that this is their decision, and that they expect the man to respect it. Why would a woman explain intimate aspects of her life, plans, and romantic choices to someone she doesn’t want a relationship with? A rejection based on any condition, say, that she wants to move to another city, just gives him something to challenge. Conditional rejections are not rejections—they are discussions.

An axiom of the stalking dynamic: MEN WHO CANNOT LET GO CHOOSE WOMEN WHO CANNOT SAY NO.

The way to stop contact is to stop contact.

Sending the police to warn off a pursuer may seem the obvious thing to do, but it rarely has the desired effect. Though the behavior of pursuers may be alarming, most have not broken the law, so the police have few options. When police visit him and say, in effect, “Cut this out or you’ll get into trouble,” the pursuer intuitively knows that if they could have arrested him they would have arrested him. So what’s the result of the visit? Well, the greatest possible weapon in his victim’s arsenal—sending the police after him—came and went without a problem. The cops stopped by, they talked to him, and they left. Who got stronger, the victim or the pursuer?

Pursuers are, in a very real sense, detoxing from an addiction to the relationship. It is similar to the dynamic in many domestic violence situations in which both partners are addicted to the relationship. In date-stalking cases, however, it is usually one-sided; the stalker is the addict and his object is the drug. Small doses of that drug do not wean him, they engage him. The way to force him out of this addiction, as with most addictions, is abstinence, cold turkey—no contact from her, no contact from her designates, and no contact about her.

The victim, it turned out, was walking along listening to an Ozzy Osbourne tape on headphones when he was struck by a train. On the news clipping, a dark-humored associate of mine had written the words “killed by heavy metal, literally.”

In the brilliant book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman describes seven key abilities most beneficial for human beings: the ability to motivate ourselves, to persist against frustration, to delay gratification, to regulate moods, to hope, to empathize, and to control impulse. Many of those who commit violence never learned these skills. If you know a young person who lacks them all, that’s an important pre-incident indicator, and he needs help. Another predictor of violence is chronic anger in childhood. If you know a child who is frequently or extremely angry, he too needs help.

The single most reliable pre-incident indicator of parricide is child abuse.

Another young boy who killed a parent told Mones that living in prison is better than living with the abuse at home. He describes himself as “locked up but free.”

Joey had another hugely significant risk factor, one that is often overlooked: the absence of a father in his life. David Blankenhorn, author of Fatherless America notes that 80 percent of the young men in juvenile detention facilities were raised without fully participating fathers. Fathers are so important because they teach boys various ways to be men. Sadly, too many boys learn from the media or from each other what scholars call “protest masculinity,” characterized by toughness and the use of force. That is not the only way to be a man, of course, but it’s the only way they know.

The way circus elephants are trained demonstrates this dynamic well: When young, they are attached by heavy chains to large stakes driven deep into the ground. They pull and yank and strain and struggle, but the chain is too strong, the stake too rooted. One day they give up, having learned that they cannot pull free, and from that day forward they can be “chained” with a slender rope. When this enormous animal feels any resistance, though it has the strength to pull the whole circus tent over, it stops trying. Because it believes it cannot, it cannot.

Children are often seen as burdens to society, no more than hapless victims of their circumstance, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Recognize that children are the primary child-care providers in America. Siblings caring for siblings and children caring for themselves represent an important part of our economy. They also care for the elderly, cook meals, take cigarettes out of the hands of sleeping parents, and contribute in countless other ways.

Like those of a daredevil, all of an assassin’s worth and accomplishment derive from one act, one moment. This is also true for most heroes, but assassins and daredevils are not people who rise courageously to meet some emergency. The assassin and the daredevil create their own emergencies.

1) It is nearly impossible to successfully attack a public figure, and if you do it and survive, you will be a pariah, despised, reviled, and forgotten. 2) It is very easy to successfully attack a public figure, and if you do it, you’ll not only survive, but you’ll be the center of international attention.

Conversely, guarded by federal agents (just like the president), whisked into waiting helicopters (just like the president), his childhood home shown on TV (just like the president), the type of gun he owned fired on the news by munitions experts extolling its killing power, the plans he made described as “meticulous”—these presentations promote the glorious aspects of assassination and other media crimes. Getting caught for some awful violence should be the start of oblivion, not the biggest day of one’s life.

I understand her fear and it saddens me that millions of people feel it so often. The problem, however, is that if one feels fear of all people all the time, there is no signal reserved for the times when it’s really needed. A man who gets into the elevator on another floor (and hence wasn’t following her), a man who gives her no undue attention, who presses a button for a floor other than the one she has selected, who is dressed appropriately, who is calm, who stands a suitable distance from her, is not likely to hurt her without giving some signal. Fear of him is a waste, so don’t create it.

Rule #1. The very fact that you fear something is solid evidence that it is not happening.

Rule #2. What you fear is rarely what you think you fear—it is what you link to fear.

When we focus on one link only, say, fear of someone walking toward us on a dark street instead of fear of being harmed by someone walking toward us on a dark street, the fear is wasted. That’s because many people will approach us—only a very few might harm us.

The wise words of FDR, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,’ might be amended by nature to “There is nothing to fear unless and until you feel fear.”

Worry is the fear we manufacture—it is not authentic. If you choose to worry about something, have at it, but do so knowing it’s a choice.

1) When you feel fear, listen. 2) When you don’t feel fear, don’t manufacture it. 3) If you find yourself creating worry, explore and discover why.

Near the end of his life, Mark Twain wisely said, “I have had a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”