It was funny, I ran into three different mentions of this book in about a week…one, while reading a *Joan of Arcadia * TWoP recap, one while watching Oprah (I was at the gym and *Law & Order * on TNT was on commercial) and again here on the boards.
So, I picked up the book and I was very impressed. It made a lot of sense, and I plan to buy copies for my SILs, and I’ve urged Ivygirl to read it.
I asked Ivylad if he’s ever walked down a dark street at night by himself and felt nervous. He looked at me like I was crazy and said, “No.” I told him I do, all the time, and he seemed very surprised. I don’t think the men in our lives truly understand how much more alert we as women are to potential danger.
If you haven’t read it, please do. If you have, please share your thoughts. I think the best thing we can do is to stop ignoring that little voice in our heads that’s telling us we’re being silly, everything is fine, not to worry.
I’ve read it and share your opinion of the book. I’ve recommended it to many other women, and have discussed it with several male friends. The gulf between the way they perceive certain situations and the way I do is significant.
Yeah, I picked it up years ago and I think it’s a great book. Don’t spend your whole life in fear and a forced paranoia, but pay close attention to your intuition, because it’s telling you that something is off. I really learned a lot from it.
I’m one of those that has a hard time getting rid of persistent attention because I don’t like to make a fuss and “be rude”–this book really helped me to see that it is a good idea to be rude when someone is forcing unwanted attention on you.
My husband and I read the book together several years ago. I highly recommend it. As a sensitive man, my husband was quite shaken to learn how women differ in their perception of the world around them. We had the same conversation–are you often or ever scared alone at night? His answer, at 5’11’ or so and about 260 pounds of muscle, was ‘no’. Mine, out of shape, short, and female–‘yes’.
The things that remain with me from reading the book were yes, the gut feeling of unease should be paid attention, and the other was stop being polite when you’re uneasy. I know I definitely hate to cause offense, and that can be a detriment to one’s personal safety.
The thing that I picked up is that most normal men know not to approach a strange woman where she may consider herself vulnerable. The first story in the book, about a woman approached by a strange man in her apartment building, who “only” wanted to help her with her groceries, was quite chilling.
It makes sense…the animals who blew off their Danger Danger instinct got eaten. We’ve evolved to have a fear instinct, and just because we have cell phones and internets and cars doesn’t mean the fear instinct is irrelevant.
It’s an excellent book - it’s really hard for me to take the advice to “don’t afraid to be rude”, though, because, you know, you’re not raised that way! But it’s good advice.
I once drove my male coworker down to where his car was parked at 10 at night. We drove into the deck and he said, “Don’t you just love parking decks at night? I think they’re the most fascinating examples of modern architecture and form!” I looked at him like he’d grown another head.
Yes, I liked how he pointed out that when you’re being “rational” and dismissing all that superstitious intuition nonsense, you’re really being irrational and deliberately obtuse. Your intuition is just your subconscious picking up little clues and knowing that they aren’t right, that something is dangerous. That intuition has a purpose!
I have read “The Gift of Fear” (about four years ago) and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I actually can relate to the book better than a lot of guys, since I am dimunitive, out of shape, and do understand the concept of danger from bigger, stronger people – at least, more so than a big brawny guy ever would. Ha!
You know, I may dig through some stuff and find my copy. It deserves a rereading!
I haven’t read the book, but am reacting to the posts here. One of the disadvantages to my antidepressant meds is they have taken away some of the healthy fear that causes watchfulness and obsessiveness. On the other hand, they have made me more able to express my own concerns, so I hope that evens out to me being less worried about being rude if I call someone out!
It’s interesting that men feel safe walking around in the dark by themselves while women don’t, because men are much more likely to be assaulted by strangers than women are.
If we went by the facts, women would feel much more uneasy around their SO’s and male relatives, and men would be afraid to walk down dark alleys alone.
Haven’t read the book, but I do tend to consider the general crime rate and take that into account as to whether I should feel cautious/fearful about being out and about. My suburb has a very low violent crime rate, and I just don’t feel unsafe at night. People I convey this sentiment to in person seem to find my lack of concern very irritating. I just don’t see why it’s more dangerous for me to walk down the street alone than for my husband to, when statistically speaking neither of us is realistically at any great risk of harm at all. And yet it seems like a lot of my friends, especially female ones, would rather that I be scared than that I be logical.
I’m not sure why, but it seems like a lot of people are conditioned to be way more fearful of violent crime from strangers than their circumstances would warrant. However, I do always try to stay in decently lit areas, and carry myself with confidence, and I do think the message that we should act on our instincts in specific situations is a good one.
i have walked the streets of the city all hours of the day and night. mostly home to work, work to home. there are a few ways i will go. in my paths i have my “run to areas”.
there is a police station midway between home and work, no matter which path i take i pass with in 1 block of the station.
there are at least 5 guarded apt. bldgs on my routes. evenly spaced. about 3-4 blocks from each other. i pass a major trama hospital.
these are my run to places. if i get that “cold fist” in the stomach feeling i head for which every “port” is closest.
i have had the feeling twice in all the years. both times i was closest to one of the apt. bldg.s, i headed straight for it.
first time was a man who was walking in the same direction i was, about a half a block ahead of me. as soon as i saw him, i got that, “run now!!!” feeling. i quickened my pace, crossed the street and went straight to the building. when he got to the corner he turned and started walking parallel toward me.
by that point i was only 2 lanes away from the building, i did something very unusual for me, i jayjogged across the lanes of traffic (it was 6am, not much traffic) and went into the building. explained the sit. to the guard, waited 15 minutes and then continued the 5 blocks left to my office.
2nd time was a very spooky truck that kept reappearing. when it circled back on me the wrong way on a one way street, i bolted for the building. didn’t even look for traffic, once again 6am thankfully.
i read the book when it came out. always nice to have paranoid tendencies vindicated. should be required reading for everyone.
I bought it because you mentioned it in another thread awhile ago, ivylass, and I plan on having my daughter read it this summer, before she goes away to college.
It’s a great book. I like the way he does NOT feed paranoia or do the what I call fear porn–there is nothing exciting about his explanations of certain situations. He is very analytical and reassuring. Definitely a must read.
I go walking around my neighborhood at night and never feel worried, since it’s a perfectly fine area. I didn’t when I lived in a different area (where I was routinely hassled in daylight hours), so it’s all about where you are.
But the book’s whole point is that you shouldn’t be afraid all the time; you should be going about your business and paying attention to your feelings about what’s going on.
Yeah…I’ve mentioned it on the boards several times myself. I’ve re-read it every year or so for the past 10 years, and have given away multiple copies. I think it’s one of the most valuable books ever written.
Many of the people I’ve mentioned it to have said that they don’t want to read it because they think it will by scary. It really has the opposite effect. It actually makes you LESS fearful.
gigi–You should definitely read it. One of deBecker’s major themes is the difference between anxiety and fear. Your meds may have cut down your anxiety level, but I doubt they’ve had any effect on your fear response. And it gives you some very practical tools for assessing situations for genuine danger.
I also liked the section about needless worry. I tend to think up these completely bizarre situations and fret about them. Ivylad just rolls his eyes at me. In reading the book, I realized that doing that was silly, and I’m working on controlling that.
I had some fear when my son left for college, and I was so stressed out because he went out with his friends the Sunday before school started, and he didn’t call. I was fretting that he got into a car accident, or slept through his first day of classes, or something other horrible thing.
Then, I had an epiphany. If something were wrong, we’d be informed. It was like a weight lifted…now, if he doesn’t call, I don’t worry. I still miss him, but now I assume that if he doesn’t call, everything’s fine.
Idlewild, there are also chapters in the book regarding danger from loved ones. He has caused some controversy by dismissing the battered woman’s syndrome and by saying the first time a woman is hit by an SO she is a victim…the second time, she is a volunteer.
I do see why some people may find that offensive, but he had examples of women in his book moaning and wailing about being beaten by their husbands, and in investigating the women’s cases, there were warning signs (including one woman who married a man who had killed his first wife!) that were ignored.
There’s another thing women do…I’ve caught myself doing it, when I was dating. It’s the “Oh, I’ll be the one to change him” or “He’ll be different with me.” I could have saved myself a lot of heartache if I’d taken guys at face value.
One thing I forgot about the book - I used to work in a different library and we had quite the creepy patron for a while. (This was before I was a public librarian, so I wasn’t nearly as accustomed to “creepy”.) We were all really ooged out about him but couldn’t put our fingers on it, except that he’d always be leaving right when we were, which we really didn’t like. (He’d wait until closing and leave right before us - sometimes he’d even come in like ten or twenty minutes to close… and leave right before we did.) Other than that, nothing we could define, but we were definitely creeped out by him. One day when I wasn’t working, one of my coworkers noticed him following her home. She pulled into the police station and he drove on by, and we got him kicked out of the library. A few weeks after that I read The Gift of Fear and realized that all the things that we hadn’t been able to vocalize were right there - he was always saying “We”, like, what we? Forcing us to be a “we”. That’s just one that I remember. Next time I feel personally creeped out by somebody in that specific way (and it happens fairly often here at work, except that we have a real security force here) I’ll be a lot more able to explain why I’m upset by it and determine the actual threat level.