The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect us from Violence by Gavin de Becker Read Free Book Online Page B

something over on me with asbestos or nerve gas, I’ll be furious.” We will tolerate familiar risks over strange ones. The hijacking of an American jet in Athens looms larger in our concern than the parent who kills a child, even though one happens rarely, and the other happens daily.
     
    We deny because we’re built to see what we want to see. In his book The Day the Universe Changed , historian James Burke points out that “it is the brain which sees, not the eye. Reality is in the brain before it is experienced, or else the signals we get from the eye would make no sense.” This truth underscores the value of having the pieces of the violence puzzle in our heads before we need them, for only then can we recognize survival signals.
     
    We certainly care enough about this topic to learn the signals: A Harris poll reveals that an overwhelming majority of Americans perceive the greatest risks in the areas of crime and personal safety. If this is true, then we must ask some new questions about violence and about ourselves. For example, is it reasonable that we know more about why a man buys a particular brand of shaving lotion than about why he buys a gun? And why are we fascinated when a famous person is attacked by a stalker, which happens once every two or three years, yet uninterested when a woman is killed by a stalking husband or boyfriend, which happens once every two hours? Why does America have thousands of suicide prevention centers and not one homicide prevention center?
     
    And why do we worship hindsight (as in the news media’s constant rehash of the day, the week, the year) and yet distrust foresight, which actually might make a difference in our lives?
     
    One reason is that we don’t have to develop our own predictive skills in a world where experts will tell us what to do. Katherine, a young women of twenty-seven, asks me (the expert) a question nearly all women in our society must consider: “How can I can tell if a man I date is turning into a problem? Is there a checklist of warning signs about stalkers?”
     
    Instead of answering her question directly, I ask her to give me an example of what she means.
     
    “Well,” she says, “I dated this guy named Bryan, who got sort of obsessed with me and wouldn’t let go when I wanted to stop seeing him. We met at a party of a friend of mine, and he must have asked somebody there for my number. Before I even got home, he’d left me three messages. I told him I didn’t want to go out with him, but he was so enthusiastic about it that I really didn’t have any choice. We dated for about a month. In the beginning, he was super attentive, always seemed to know what I wanted. He remembered everything I ever said. It was flattering, but it also made me a little uncomfortable. Like when I mentioned needing more space for my books, he showed up one day with shelves and all the stuff and just put them up. I couldn’t say no. And he read so much into whatever I said. Once he asked if I’d go to a basketball game with him, and I said maybe. He later said, ‘You promised.’ Also, he talked about serious things so early, like living together and marriage and children. He started with jokes about that stuff the first time we went out, and later he wasn’t joking. Or when he suggested that I have a phone in my car. I wasn’t sure I even wanted a carphone, but he borrowed my car one day and just had one installed. It was a gift, so what could I say? And, of course, he called me whenever I was in the car. And he was so adamant that I never speak to my ex-boyfriend on that car phone. Later he got angry if I spoke to my ex at all. There were also a couple of my friends he didn’t like me to see, and he stopped spending time with his own friends. Finally, when I told him I didn’t want to be his girlfriend, he refused to hear it. He basically insisted that I stay in a relationship with him, and when I wouldn’t, he forced me into a relationship of sorts by