The Post Conflict Phase of Violence

As optimistic individuals we often expect or believe our lives will follow the “happy path”, the route where everything goes to plan, and as expected. We also bring this optimism to our self-defense and martial arts training; that we will be successful in every conflict we have to engage in – after all we don’t train to fail. However reality, often doesn’t follow the happy path, exactly, if at all. If it did we wouldn’t need to think or care about self-defense in the first place. The reason we train and practice, is because we understand that despite all our personal safety and self-protection planning, bad things can still happen to us, and we need to be prepared to deal with them. We should also understand that, a fight/conflict, might not go in our favor, and that we might be shot, stabbed, concussed or severely injured as we fight to defend ourselves (and possibly others). If you haven’t given much thought to what happens after the fight, in the post-conflict phase of combat, you need to start seriously thinking about this e.g. how would you cope both physically and emotionally.

I believe everybody, involved in reality based self-defense should know how to decock a firearm and make it safe. I think it is a personal choice, whether to learn how to use a firearm tactically for self-defense purposes however if you are practicing a system that teaches gun disarming, you should at least know how not to become a danger to those around you, after you have successfully disarmed, and dealt with an assailant. The gun can be used as a blunt, impact tool to deliver concussive force, and does not by default have to be used as a firearm, but making it safe after the incident, so that you or anybody else in your environment isn’t endangered by it should be a skill you possess. This should be done before you walk into a police station with it – it is rarely safe to stay at the scene of an assault and wait for a police officer to come to you and relieve you of the weapon.

Perhaps one of the most important post-conflict skills you require is that of first-aid; without being over-dramatic this really could be the difference between life and death for you or someone else who was involved in the conflict. To believe that you will enter a fight where a weapon is involved, and not come out with some form of injury is naive at best. Your intention should not to get shot, stabbed or hit with a weapon, but it is not always possible to stay on the “happy path”, especially against an adrenalized and committed attacker, who wants to cause you serious harm. Being able to identify different injuries, their severity and their consequences, is a key survival and self-defense skill. Self-treating injuries without the correct information, can make them worse. This training should go beyond basic Red Cross type first aid and CPR, which you should have by default – imagine not taking the time to do a 4 hour CPR course and losing a friend or family member to a heart attack or similar, where you could have saved them. There are courses out there, which teach you how to deal with knife wounds and gun shots along with the other types of injuries you may experience, and if you are serious about your self-defense training, you should look into such courses and training (talk to your instructor about putting an event on at your school).

You should also start to think about how you will respond emotionally after an assault – if you have taken a serious beating in the process, it may take you some time to get over this both psychologically and emotionally (especially if your assailant was somebody you knew and trusted, such as someone who was a friend or family member – this does happen). Trauma occurs, when we are placed in high stress/emotional situations which we feel we are unable to exert any control or influence over. As social creatures, this causes us to feel ashamed and embarrassed. This is especially true if we feel and believe we should have been able to control events, due to our training. In some instances we look for reasons as to why the incident occurred, and self-blame, so that we can lessen our feelings of shame by transferring them into guilt (guilt is a form of personal/private shame, which is more tolerable to us than public shame). If we can find a reason as to why something we did, caused us to be assaulted, we gain back some control of the incident. This process is prevalent in many sexual assaults, where the victim (both adult and child) blames themselves for what happened e.g. it was because of what they were wearing, the way their actions and behaviors gave off certain signals to their attackers/abusers etc. By doing this a victim may adopt a view that they somehow deserved the assault, and that it is somehow their destiny to be assaulted again. In doing this they can adopt a victim profile that attracts predatory individuals and so self-fulfill their prophecy.

If you are somebody who only looks down the “happy path” and believes you will always be successful in a real-life conflict, you are in a state of denial, that may be as strong as that of someone who believes they’ll never be assaulted at all – and you both might get lucky. Far better to prepare yourself, and accept that you may have to deal, psychologically, emotionally and physically with a different post-conflict situation.