They do. Sorry for shaky writing, I'm typing up an estimate for a job and editing it as I'm posting. If I get into a verbal confrontation with somebody, it's usually not in a social environment with somebody I don't know. It's usually with somebody I'm either associated with at work, or am friends or acquaintances with. In all honesty I'm not really worried about serious harm in those situations, but the emotional burden of causing a crap ton of drama I think is what bothers me. I make it a practice to not get into verbal confrontations with people I don't know in social settings, mostly by keeping myself out of social settings xD. However, I've been in some really shady/dangerous areas, or around groups of people actively looking to do harm to others in which it was likely I had to defend myself or find a way out of the situation, and the shakiness never occurred in those situations.
There isn't anything that will ever prepare you for that adrenal feeling other than getting into real confrontations. Even controlled RBSD scenarios, as great a learning tool as they are, won't give you that exact same feeling because you know you have a safety net. However competitive fighting at a full contact level teaches you alot about yourself. You learn how effectively you can hit another human being while defending yourself. You learn how important fitness can be to dictate how a fight ends. You learn just how much punishment you can take. Joke or not, rules matter little when the techniques you implement under consistent pressure have the ability to break skulls. Literally. However the biggest thing I have taken away from competitive fighting is the level of confidence I have gained from the experience of competing which allows me to deal with confrontation with much more maturity and cool headedness than I might have done otherwise. Unfortunately working security means I deal with confrontation on an almost daily basis. Never once have I ever needed to be physical or really assert myself. Because I'm confident enough in knowing I can handle myself if things get rough due to competitive pressure testing, I relax alot more when dealing with confrontation which the offenders see and generally relax a little more themselves. I don't look like someone who is tense or itching for a fight and body language is a massive factor in de-escalating a confrontation. It's worth noting I have also served in the military. So I have experienced confrontation on several levels. Be it professionally, competitively, or provocatively. I would say that too probably has a big effect on how I deal with confrontation nowadays, though I would say I was a lot more volatile when I first left the forces when it came to dealing with confrontation.
I once wrestled with a Judo instructor. When he grabbed on my wrestling jacket, I used a "soft punch" to hit on his shoulder to break his grip. He said that I should not punch him. He then refused to wrestle with me after that. If different rules can cause problem, no rules will cause even more problem. If both opponents can agree with a set rules, a safe match can happen even between strangers. Here is an example of "soft punch" used in Chinese wrestling. It may not be allowed in Judo but I didn't know that back then. [ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyAES5iRe1w&feature=youtu.be"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyAES5iRe1w&feature=youtu.be[/ame]
IMO, size matters a lot more in real confrontations than techniques. It also has the psychological intimidation factor. There's a reason why most doormen and bouncers etc. are all big and muscular.
Ero-sennin....you sound the exact opposite of how most people react to confrontation. You contrarian you. Most people aren't too fussed by verbals with people they know but get big adrenal dump in potentially violent situations with strangers.
My experience is the same. Social confrontation stresses me a lot and I'm very uncomfortable with verbal conflict, but actual violence even up to close gunfire doesn't really do it. The adrenaline is there but it has more of a focusing effect in the latter whereas it has a disturbing effect in the former. Couldn't really say why.
I could be wrong (I mean it's rare though ) but I read it as Ero finds he gets more adrenalised through verbals and build up when the situation isn't clear cut and he has time to compute the social and emotional ramifications but ok when he knows the proverbial is going to hit the fan and he can switch on for go time/resign himself to the inevitably of violent action. I could be projecting though as that's how I feel too. I hate arguments with friends or colleagues and always find verbals far more difficult to deal with than when it just goes almost immediately to physicals.
I hope in my prior posts I didn't come off as saying combative sport wont prepare you for real life conflict. I am a huge advocate of participating in martial arts with a competitive aspect for people who want to be able to hold their own in a fight. While consistent training isn't going to cover the nature of violence in an uncontrolled environment, it will keep you from freezing up because you don't know what to do or at least give you options. In actual confrontation half the fight is reacting, which you can't do if you don't know what you need to do or what you do is ineffective. The pressure testing also helps tremendously. The last bit you wrote is particularly interesting to me because I was thinking about how I was after service compared to now. I haven't participated in martial arts or even regularly active social activities (besides work) since my injury, and I was assessing my mindset now compared to after service or when I'm training. I keep myself aware of my surroundings still, but thinking of ways to hurt somebody if things go south is no longer my primary mode of thinking although it's always in the back of my head. Part of the reason is because of the anxiety I've been suffering. For lack of a better term, the switch that gets flipped when I'm thinking about hurting somebody tends to put my mental fortitude in a volatile state that makes me more susceptible to an anxiety attack, part of it is because after my injury I've developed quite a bit of empathy towards injured people and I don't really want to cause suffering to others, and the rest of it is that it's just not the best way to deal with things as an adult which I believe is just maturity development. Thanks for your post, it was particularly insightful for me.
I just wanna' be normal :cry::cry::cry: I think Knee Rider explained it better than I was. That's pretty much how I feel. I think I'm going to bring this topic up with my psych on our next appointment as we've drifted from this subject in our sessions and have been tackling more of the mundane, every day life obstacles over the last year. One of the things we initially had talked about when I first started seeing the psych was about a situation I think best describes how I get in volatile situations. Our team was running a mission where we had Explosive Ordinance (EOD) blow a bunch of IEDs we had found in the area we were operating, and we staked the ridge line out at night to see if anyone came up to do a battle damage assessment on the traps they put in during the night. There was no moon out so we were operating in near pitch black conditions, and after a few hours of waiting nobody came around so we started heading back. On the route back one of our guys stepped on an IED and it basically blew him in half. I didn't know at the time but it had knocked me out briefly. All I remember is hearing a noise, then I was picking myself up off the ground and my legs hurt. After checking my legs out to make sure I was ok (I was) I heard voices over the finger of the hell we had been crossing over and it sounded like another language so I thought we were being ambushed. I yelled to the guys around me to get ready to move over the hill to engage, but then the voices started clearing and it was English again so I set people in security positions. I ended up spinning an infrared chem light for the med evac.. The 15-20 minutes we waited for the helo, making sure we weren't getting ambushed, and watching them try to save the guy who go blown up while listening to him saying he didn't want to die felt like an eternity and I ended up doing a whole lot of thinking. The thing that bothered me most at the time was that I felt absolutely nothing. I was completely in the moment, scanning the ridge line for potential threats, directing the people around me, and doing my part for the helo landing. I wasn't scared, I didn't feel remorse for the guy who had just got hit (that bothered me the most), and even when we got back to base I still felt nothing. I had to keep away from everyone for a while afterwards because they were having a hard time with it and I didn't want to seem callused because I was ready to go out and operate the next day if we had to. It took a while to grapple with how I reacted, and I think I'm still trying to process it completely still. Anywho, luckily I haven't had to find myself in any situations like that in quite some time which is nice ^__^
Not in mine. Also, I've seen some small women being very canny on the door. Some people see big guys as a target and a challenge.
When you get into an argument in a bar and then agree to go outside and fight someone in the parking lot.
Story about that. When my instructor was younger, he did just that. When my instructor turned his back to go out the door first, the other guy hit him in the back of the head with a beer bottle. The only way we know if violence was consensual is in 20/20 hindsight. We know from 20/20 hindsight that if helps to have a referee and rules of engagement clearly understood beforehand. On the other hand, what someone agrees to in a bar during an argument doesn't usually meet this expectation.
I'm of the opinion that you don't know,unless you KNOW. Hard sparring will tell you a bit about how you'll react,full contact competition a lot more,but at the end of the day you'll only know how you'll react if you've been in those sort of situations. Just train hard,learn all you can,use your go-to techniques in hard sparring and competition if possible. I can't see any better way to stack the deck in your favour. Unless you live in a free country,then just buy a gun and learn to use it.
Remind me again - how many people are shot dead in your country by children under the age of eight every year?
Not many,I don't live in a free country,we cattle aren't allowed anything that we could use to hurt ourselves with.
FWIW training with a gun in hard sparring and competition (as well as seamlessly integrating your shooting skill set into all the others) is as important as it is with striking or grappling. No good carrying if you get stuffed on the draw or can't identify the moment to fight while talking and moving.
Isn't it just that the adrenal response is designed (as it were) to deal with physical, rather than social danger? It's the same reason that stress and is such a big issue - because the our bodies' default response (the famous fight or flight) is inappropriate in a most situations. So, and I'm just spit-balling here, the reason you get "stressed" by verbal conflict is not because you have an adrenal response, but conversely because you have to suppress your response; whereas in the case of actual violence you can just let it work.
Animals do the same thing...They don't always want to fight because I'm the wild and injury can mean death so they "posture" or use verbals (roars etc...) Instead to trigger the adrenal response So it's like any bar in city centre Manchester really
