Mental Self Defense

When you are under physical attack you usually do not have time to stop and think. The way that self defense training works overcomes this problem is through relentless and endless drills. You do so many drills that when you are attacked from a certain angle, you automatically counter the attack with a defensive move, without needing to think about it.

The same sort of thing can give you automatic defenses for fending off mental attacks.

Most of us have people in our lives who do things that make us feel bad. Some of these people may be people you don't have to option of staying away from all of the time. 

This can be a problem when the person who makes us feel bad does it a lot. Some people try to make themselves feel better by making other people feed bad. It can be harmful to you if you have one of these in your life and are constantly having to deal with feeling bad because of their mental attacks on you.

It is possible to work out mental forms of self defense, that are much like the physical self defense techniques used in self defense and martial arts.

I post about staying healthy as an important part of emergency preparedness. I concentrate on physical health most of the time, but mental health is as important, if not more important.

The most useful of these techniques is what I call, "the broken record". Current usage should probably be more like, "the broken CD, or other media storage". When one of these things has a scratch in it, it can get stuck and keep repeating the same thing over and over. This is the effect we want for this mental self defense technique.

When you sense a mental blow coming at you, your broken record can automatically ward off the damage without you having to stop and think about it.

Here is a fictitious attack and defense to give you the idea of how it works:

Attacker: "You sure are ugly. You are about the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Your Mama must have scared by a train wreck when she was carrying you."
You: "That's okay. At least MY Mama loves me." Or: "I'm sorry that bothers you, would you like a blindfold?"  Or: "I could go to a  plastic surgeon and fix that, but what are you going to do about being ugly inside?"

Every person and every situation is different, so you will need to figure out your own broken record to use. You have to figure out exactly what to say ahead of time and practice it and get it in your head so that it will come out automatically when the next attack comes. 

I expect this is obvious to most people, but I don't want to get anyone beaten to a pulp. You need to make your broken record something that will let you survive. If you attacker is very large or can fire you, your broken record needs to be more tactful. 

The biggest advantage about a broken record is that it allows you to avoid much thought about being attacked and the attack itself. Since it comes out automatically, it stops you from having to be upset over the attack. 

Your broken record pops out at the right time and you don't even have to think about the mental attack. You can just go on with your life in spite of the attack and not waste your mental and emotional energy on it. This is much healthier than spending time and energy brooding over what is happening.

This will keep you healthy before a disaster hits your area and leave you better able to cope with it. This is a way of doing mental self defense to protect yourself. Mental self defense can be a part of your every day life that you can use to make yourself better prepared for emergencies.