By Gavin King, 2nd Dan Go So Kempo

Any self defence practitioner worth their salt will tell you that awareness is the most important ally you will have on the street. The ability to recognize trouble before it starts is the key to its avoidance. Many however fail to address the factors that can alter our state of awareness, alcohol and narcotics being obvious ones.

Various substances can greatly alter our mental state and our ability to perceive the world around us and avoidance is an easy cure. Our mental state however can be hugely affected by the simplest of daily occurrences. This all boils down to another kind of awareness that is often over looked, personal self awareness.

In this article we will first look at how our mental state affects the world around us, followed by how our stresses can build and led to confrontation and finally a way of analyzing the validity of our emotional baggage.


THE CYCLE OF INFLUENCE

When going about our usual routines our mental state will have a direct impact on our behaviour. When interacting with others our behaviour will stimulate the mental state with which they percieve the outside world. As with ourselves the mental state of those around us will have a direct bearing on their own behaviour, which in turn will affect the mental state of those around them, including ourselves. This then takes us back to the beginning of the cycle whereby our mental state affects our behaviour, allowing the cycle to repeat itself. The Cycle of Influence shows us that emotions are contagious and given the right environment will spread like wild fire.

If you take the simple act of holding the door open for someone, this is generally considered a polite and courteous act. How annoying is it when someone just blanks you after you’ve held the door open? How often have you walked on and muttered under your breath “It’s thank you, arsehole!”? Now because you’re narked, you barge through the next door you get to, pissing off the poor soul who’s just held it open for you. Now they storm off and slam past the next innocent door opener. One person’s foul mood has just spread to three other people within a few minor interactions. Maybe that’s a bit melodramatic, but it should serve to show how our attitude affects everyone around us.

So let’s take a look at this cycle at figure out where we can break it. The cycle of influence is self nourishing, with each step fuelling the next. So the question has to be, “How do we break this cycle?” The answer is simple, remove the fuel! Like a fire, this cycle needs fuel, so cutting the fuel supply will starve the next element. Without fuel the cycle cannot sustain itself. Removing the fuel needs to be done at the source, our mental state, the beginning of the cycle. This is the only part we have control over.

EMOTIONAL I.O.U’s

In trying to cut the fuel off at the source requires an understanding of our good selves. We are the only person who actually experiences and feels the things we do, so really we are the only person who can truly understand the rhyme and reason behind our actions.

In reality most people really don’t have any understanding of themselves at all. Some will claim they do, but on closer inspection many fail to justify even their most basic actions. Sometimes seemingly trivial things can cause them to fly off the handle: people not thanking them for holding the door open, an old biddy driving her car at twenty miles hour in a forty zone or maybe spotty teenager short changing them at a burger bar. Each of us have our little pet hates, little things that make our blood boil. Sometimes however, in retrospect, our reactions to minor annoyances are grossly out of proportion.

Take the situation of being short changed. I’ve seen people having stand up arguments with shop clerks over this; real heated rage filled exchanges. If you were to stop and question the “victim” of this injustice afterwards as to why they went into such a rage the dialogue would probably go something like this:

“Mate, why did you loose it back there?”

“They gave me the wrong change!”

“Yeah, but why get so upset?”

“Because they gave me the wrong change!”

“Ok, I get that. But why so upset????”

“BECAUSE THEY SHORT CHANGED ME!”

This is a situation that most of us have had, whereby our response to a minor annoyance is completely out of proportion to real harm it has caused us. If pressed about for the reason behind our rage, we will generally not respond much further than explaining the immediate event in question. In the case of the incorrect change, when pressed for further justification the “Victim” kept reiterating the short change incident, then became upset when asked to provide more. A more honest answer could have gone along the lines of;

“But why so upset????”

“Oh, it’s been a crap day! I couldn’t find a space so I had to park out on the road and got a bloody ticket! Then I had to queue for about six hours to pay for a pair of poncy shoes the missus has been going on about for months. Then to top it all off that spotty little git short changed me!”

So the shop clerk wasn’t really yelled at for short changing our hot headed friend. What they were really shouted at for was the fact that the Shoe Buyer was having a bad day. The poor little shop clerk became a justifiable target for our Shoe buyer to vent all of his aggression into.

Dr. Eric Berne (The god father of Transactional Analysis) wrote a classic book “Games People Play”. In this book he lists various “games” which people play in their everyday lives. One is called “Now I've Got You, You Son of a Bitch” or NIGYSOB for short. This is a game that needs at least two players; in our example our irate shoe shopper and the shop clerk. Our shoe shopper was already having a bad day because he was out shopping the wife (a bad start to any day!). Then he couldn’t get a space so was forced to park on the road, which resulted in a parking ticket. Next he was forced to queue for something he didn’t want to buy, and finally he was short changed. The poor shop clerk was the preverbal straw that broke the camels back!

As a species we seem to have a real problem with dealing and expressing our feelings. When something annoys us we’d rather bottle it up instead of airing it. Eventually this bottle of pent up frustration needs to be emptied, but most of us simply don’t know how to do this. Every time we fail to deal with the frustration is like writing yourself a little I.O.U, building up a little debt with each occurrence. Over time these I.O.U’s build up and your body will reach the point where it closes the bank. We all have a physical limit on the amount of emotional debt we can carry.

Going through life suppressing any emotion or feeling that is too painful for them to deal with requires us to push it deep down inside. Unfortunately there is only so much room inside us for negativity and only so long we can store it. Once we are full of frustration every new annoyance will simply spill over and manifest itself. When we reach this stage we start lashing out at every little thing that puts our back up. You’ll be so pent up that you’ll be actively looking for confrontation to release your aggression into to. You’ve now gone from a person seeking to avoid conflict, to one that is proactively hunting for it! Your training now becomes the study of self offence rather than defence.

MAY FOLD UNDER QUESTIONING

Leaning how to deal with emotional baggage is far beyond the scope of this article, however awareness of the phenomena can itself be of some relief. Being aware of when you walking around like a bear with a sore head will alter the way in which you perceive others behaviour. You should always ask the question “Actually whose being the asrehole here, them or me?” A bit of self interrogation never goes a miss here.

Like a cheap two bit hood, emotions without substance will generally fold under questioning; we saw this in the example of the Shoe Buyer. His defence failed when pressed. When you feel yourself about to fly off the handle, stick yourself in the interrogation chair. Grill yourself, “Why are you doing this?” “Is that REALLY why you’re doing it?” and more importantly “What is this going to get you?”

Honest Self Interrogation requires a tough Interrogator and you’re the only one who can get the job done. If it helps imagine yourself in an interrogation chair, being quizzed hard by some Nazi with an eye patch. Assume you’re lying, push yourself till you break. If the emotion is valid it’ll survive, if its not it’ll fold, break and fade away into nothing.

Being self aware to the point that you can feel when your judgement maybe impaired, strengthens and allows you to understand your own awareness better. As we mentioned at the very start of this section, awareness is your most important ally on the streets!