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

by Gavin De Becker

  A few years later, after the Supreme Court adopted the MOSAIC program I designed, I met with Justice O’Connor in her office. Michael Perry, by then convicted of the five murders and sentenced to death, had come back into her life in an interesting way. Prison officials ordered doctors to give Perry medication so that he would be lucid enough to know what was happening on the day he was executed. The doctors refused, reasoning that since the medication was being given just so he could be killed, it was not in their patient’s best interest. The matter went all the way to the Supreme Court, and in one of history’s most impartial decisions, the justices ruled that the murderer who had stalked one of them could not be forced to take medication just to be executed. Michael Perry is alive today because of that ruling.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  The Perry case shows that even the most public of crimes are motivated by the most personal issues. Though the odds are overwhelming that you’ll never appear on the death list of some mass killer, I’ve discussed the case here to add to your understanding of violence, and to reveal the human truth in the sensational stories we see in the news. Reports of such murders on TV, presented in one dimension without perspective and without the kind of detail you’ve just read, usually do little more than add unwarranted fear to people’s lives. And people hardly need more of that.

  ▪ CHAPTER FIFTEEN ▪

  THE GIFT OF FEAR

  “Fears are educated into us, and can,

  if we wish, be educated out.”

  —Karl A. Menninger

  We all know there are plenty of reasons to fear people from time to time. The question is, what are those times? Far too many people are walking around in a constant state of vigilance, their intuition misinformed about what really poses danger. It needn’t be so. When you honor accurate intuitive signals and evaluate them without denial (believing that either the favorable or the unfavorable outcome is possible), you need not be wary, for you will come to trust that you’ll be notified if there is something worthy of your attention. Fear will gain credibility because it won’t be applied wastefully. When you accept the survival signal as a welcome message and quickly evaluate the environment or situation, fear stops in an instant. Thus, trusting intuition is the exact opposite of living in fear. In fact, the role of fear in your life lessens as your mind and body come to know that you will listen to the quiet wind-chime, and have no need for Klaxons.

  Real fear is a signal intended to be very brief, a mere servant of intuition. But though few would argue that extended, unanswered fear is destructive, millions choose to stay there. They may have forgotten or never learned that fear is not an emotion like sadness or happiness, either of which might last a long while. It is not a state, like anxiety. True fear is a survival signal that sounds only in the presence of danger, yet unwarranted fear has assumed a power over us that it holds over no other creature on earth. In Denial of Death, Ernest Becker explains that “animals, in order to survive have had to be protected by fear responses.” Some Darwinians believe that the early humans who were most afraid were most likely to survive. The result, says Becker, “is the emergence of man as we know him: a hyperanxious animal who constantly invents reasons for anxiety even when there are none.” It need not be this way.

  I learned this again on a recent visit to Fiji, where there is less fear in the entire republic than there is at some intersections in Los Angeles. One morning, on a peaceful, hospitable island called Vanua Levu, I took a few-mile walk down the main road. It was lined on both sides with low ferns. Occasionally, over the sound of the quiet ocean to my left, I’d hear an approaching car or truck. Heading back toward the plantation where I was staying, I closed my eyes for a moment as I walked. Without thinking at first, I just kept them closed because I had an intuitive assurance that walking down the middle of this road with my eyes closed was a safe thing to do. When I analyzed this odd feeling, I found it to be accurate: The island has no dangerous animals and no assaultive crime; I would feel the ferns touch my legs if I angled to either side of the road, and I’d hear an approaching vehicle in plenty of time to simply open my eyes. To my surprise, before the next car came along, I had walked more than a mile with my eyes closed, trusting that my senses and intuition were quietly vigilant.

  When it comes to survival signals, our minds have already done their best work by the time we try to figure things out. In effect, we’ve reached the finish line and handily won the race before even hearing the starting pistol—if we just listen without debate.

  Admittedly, that blind walk was in Fiji, but what about in a big American city? Not long ago, I was in an elevator with an elderly woman who was heading down to an underground parking garage after business hours. Her keys were protruding through her fingers to form a weapon (which also displayed her fear). She was afraid of me when I got into the elevator as she is likely afraid of all men she encounters when she is in that vulnerable situation.

  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.

  I strongly recommend caution and precaution, but many people believe—and we are even taught—that we must be extra alert to be safe. In fact, this usually decreases the likelihood of perceiving hazard and thus reduces safety. Alertly looking around while thinking, “Someone could jump out from behind that hedge; maybe there’s someone hiding in that car” replaces perception of what actually is happening with imaginings of what could happen. We are far more open to every signal when we don’t focus on the expectation of specific signals.

  You might think a small animal that runs across a field in a darting crisscross fashion is fearful even though there isn’t any danger. In fact, scurrying is a strategy, a precaution, not a reaction to a fear signal. Precautions are constructive, whereas remaining in a state of fear is destructive. It can also lead to panic, and panic itself is usually more dangerous than the outcome we dread. Rock climbers and long-distance ocean swimmers will tell you it isn’t the mountain or the water that kills—it is panic.

  Meg is a woman who works with violently inclined mental patients every day. She rarely feels fear at her job, but away from work, she tells me, she feels panic every night as she walks from her car to her apartment. When I offer the unusual suggestion that she’d actually be safer if she relaxed during that walk, she says, “That’s ridiculous. If I relaxed, I’d probably get killed.” She argues that she must be acutely alert to every possible risk. Possibilities, I explain, are in the mind, while safety is enhanced by perception of what is outside the mind, perception of what is happening, not what might happen.

  But Meg insists that her nightly fear will save her life, and even as she steadfastly defends the value of her terror, I know she wants to be free of it.

  GdeB: When do you feel the fear?

  Meg: As I park my car.

  GdeB: Is it the same every night?

  Meg: Yes, and then if I hear a noise or something, it gets ten times worse. So I have to stay extra alert. Living in Los Angeles, I have to stay alert all the time.

  (Note her reference to Los Angeles—a satellite.)

  I explain that if she’s scared to death every night, focused intently on what might happen, then no signal is reserved for when there actually is risk that needs her attention. Ideally, when there is fear, we look around, follow the fear, ask what we are perceiving. If we are looking for some specific, expected danger, we are less likely to see the unexpected danger. I urge that she pay relaxed attention to her environment rather than paying rapt attention to her imagination.


  I know Meg is feeling anxious, and that is a signal of something, though not danger in this case. I ask her what risks she faces as she walks from her car each night.

  Meg: Isn’t that a dumb question coming from you? I mean, there are so many risks. Los Angeles is a very dangerous city, not a place I’d choose to live.

  GdeB: But you do choose to live here.

  Meg: No, I have to; I’m trapped by this job. I have to live here, and it’s so dangerous, people are killed here all the time, and I know that, so I’m afraid when I walk to my apartment, terrified, actually, and I should be!

  GdeB: Certainly anything could happen to anyone anytime, but since you’ve made that walk more than a thousand times without injury, the terror you feel is likely a signal of something other than danger. How do you normally communicate with yourself?

  An agitated Meg says she doesn’t understand my question, but that she doesn’t want to discuss it anymore—she’ll think about it overnight. When she calls the following afternoon, she not only understands my question about how she communicates with herself, but has found her answer. She agrees that her intuition is indeed communicating something to her, and it isn’t imminent danger; it is that she does not want to stay in Los Angeles or in her job. Her nightly walk from her car into her apartment is simply the venue for her inner voice to speak most loudly.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  Every day, my work brings me into close contact with people who are afraid, anxious, or just worrying. My first duty is to figure out which it is. If it’s real fear they feel, there is important information for me to glean, possibly relevant to safety.

  There are two rules about fear that, if you accept them, can improve your use of it, reduce its frequency, and literally transform your experience of life. That’s a big claim, I know, but don’t be “afraid” to consider it with an open mind.

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

  Fear summons powerful predictive resources that tell us what might come next. It is that which might come next that we fear—what might happen, not what is happening now. An absurdly literal example helps demonstrate this: As you stand near the edge of a high cliff, you might fear getting too close. If you stand right at the edge, you no longer fear getting too close, you now fear falling. Edward Gorey gives us his dark-humored but accurate take on the fact that if you do fall, you no longer fear falling—you fear landing:

  The Suicide, as she is falling,

  Illuminated by the moon,

  Regrets her act, and finds appalling

  The thought she will be dead so soon.

  Panic, the great enemy of survival, can be perceived as an unmanageable kaleidoscope of fears. It can be reduced through embracing the second rule:

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

  Take anything about which you have ever felt profound fear and link it to each of the possible outcomes. When it is real fear, it will either be in the presence of danger, or it will link to pain or death. When we get a fear signal, our intuition has already made many connections. To best respond, bring the links into consciousness and follow them to their high-stakes destination—if they lead there. 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.

  Surveys have shown that ranking very close to the fear of death is the fear of public speaking. Why would someone feel profound fear, deep in his or her stomach, about public speaking, which is so far from death? Because it isn’t so far from death when we link it. Those who fear public speaking actually fear the loss of identity that attaches to performing badly, and that is firmly rooted in our survival needs. For all social animals, from ants to antelopes, identity is the pass card to inclusion, and inclusion is the key to survival. If a baby loses its identity as the child of his or her parents, a possible outcome is abandonment. For a human infant, that means death. As adults, without our identity as a member of the tribe or village, community or culture, a likely outcome is banishment and death.

  So the fear of getting up and addressing five hundred people at the annual convention of professionals in your field is not just the fear of embarrassment—it is linked to the fear of being perceived as incompetent, which is linked to the fear of loss of employment, loss of home, loss of family, your ability to contribute to society, your value, in short, your identity and your life. Linking an unwarranted fear to its ultimate terrible destination usually helps alleviate that fear. Though you may find that public speaking can link to death, you’ll see that it would be a long and unlikely trip.

  Apply these two rules to the fear that a burglar might crash into your living room. First, the fear itself can actually be perceived as good news, because it confirms that the dreaded outcome is not occurring right now. Since life has plenty of hazards that come upon us without warning, we could welcome fear with “Thank you, God, for a signal I can act on.” More often, however, we apply denial first, trying to see if perhaps we can just think it away.

  Remember, fear says something might happen. If it does happen, we stop fearing it and start to respond to it, manage it, surrender to it; or we start to fear the next outcome we predict might be coming. If a burglar does crash into the living room, we no longer fear that possibility; we now fear what he might do next. Whatever that may be, while we fear it, it is not happening.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  Let’s go one step deeper in this exploration of fear: In the 1960’s there was a study done that sought to determine which single word has the greatest psychological impact on people. Researchers tested reactions to words like spider, snake, death, rape, incest, murder. It was the word shark that elicited the greatest fear response. But why do sharks, which human beings come in contact with so rarely, frighten us so profoundly?

  The seeming randomness of their strike is part of it. So is the lack of warning, the fact that such a large creature can approach silently and separate body from soul so dispassionately. To the shark, we are without identity, we are no more than meat, and to human beings the loss of identity is a type of death all by itself. In his book Great White Shark, Jean-Michel Cousteau calls the shark “the most frightening animal on earth,” but there is, of course, an animal far more dangerous.

  Scientists marvel at the predatory competence of the Great White, praising its speed, brute strength, sensory acuity, and apparent determination, but man is a predator of far more spectacular ability. The shark does not have dexterity, guile, deceit, cleverness, or disguise. It also does not have our brutality, for man does things to man that sharks could not dream of doing. Deep in our cells, we know this, so occasional fear of another human being is natural.

  As with the shark attack, randomness and lack of warning are the attributes of human violence we fear most, but you now know that human violence is rarely random and rarely without warning. Admittedly, danger from humans is more complicated than danger from sharks; after all, everything you need know about how to be safe from sharks can be spoken in five words: Don’t go in the ocean. Everything you need to know about how to be safe from people is in you too, enhanced by a lifetime of experience (and hopefully better organized by this book).

  We may choose to sit in the movie theater indulging in the fear of unlikely dangers now and again, but our fear of people, which can be a blessing, is often misplaced. Since we live every day with the most frightening animal on earth, understanding how fear works can dramatically improve our lives.

  People use the word fear rather loosely, but to put it in its proper relation to panic, worry and anxiety, recall the overwhelming fear that possessed Kelly when she knew her rapist intended to kill her. Though people say of a frightening experience, “I was petrified,” aside from those times when being still is a strategy, real fear is not par
alyzing—it is energizing. Rodney Fox learned this when he faced one of man’s deepest fears: “I was suddenly aware of moving through the water faster than I ever had before. Then I realized I was being pulled down by a shark which had hold of my chest.” As the powerful predator took him from the surface, a far more powerful force compelled Rodney to caress the shark’s head and face, searching for its eyes. He plunged his thumbs deep into the only soft tissue he found. The shark let go of him immediately, but Rodney embraced it and held on tight so it couldn’t turn around for another strike. After what seemed like a long ride downward, he kicked away from it and swam through a cloud of red to the surface.

  Fear was pumping blood into Rodney’s arms and legs and using them to do things he would never have done on his own. He would never have decided to fight with a Great White shark, but because fear didn’t give it a second thought, he survived.

  Rodney’s wild, reckless action and Kelly’s quiet, breathless action were both fueled by the same coiled-up energy: real fear. Take a moment to conjure that feeling and recognize how different it is from worry, anxiety, and panic. Even the strongest worry could not get you to fight with a shark, or follow your would-be murderer silently down a hallway.