Latest Column from Darcy: "Obscene risk"

Obscene risk

I understand when parents and guardians get frustrated with their kids, I’m a dad and there’s times I’m frustrated too. With that said, there’s no excuse for what I witnessed the other day. A young kid had frustrated his dad, he had not crossed the road with his dad, and now dad was angry at one side of the road with the kid in tears on the other side of the road scared to cross by himself. His dad was trying to coax him across the road which was failing. This is usual stuff, but this is where it turns. The dad became frustrated enough to turn his back on his kid and start to walk away, which in an instant prompted the kid to run across the road. The kid wasn’t hit by a car, but it was certainly heart in the mouth stuff and a clear act of stupidity, whether intended or not, on the dads part.

Sometimes we are frustrated with our kids behaviour, but we cannot ever put them at risk to teach them a lesson. I was reading recently of a lady who was frustrated by her daughter always coming home later than agreed, and on night, locked the door and left it locked. She chose not to answer it though she could hear her daughter knocking – as she was frustrated enough to decide this to be her daughters lesson. The daughter then chose to do somewhere else for the night, but never arrived there as someone sinister found her on the way. Never ever put your loved ones at risk to teach them a lesson.

Conversely, let your kids know, that no matter what, they can always call you any time for a lift home, sure, they might still get a growling for something, but there’s no you won’t come, no matter the distance, no matter the time.

Darcy Mellsop

Protect Self Defence NZ

Want to meet the Wellington Instructor? Darcy has put together some videos talking about his Monday night classes and upcoming Safe for Life course, view them here...

http://youtu.be/zkc64VRnpeA

 http://youtu.be/a-iiD4zMMoM

http://youtu.be/SPoR8rzQ8n0

Protect and IFP Group support Youthline

The team from IFP Group/Mills Display NZ after the 'Self Defence FUNdamentals' workshop on Saturday. This was a joint fundraising initiative between Protect and IFP, raising money for Youthline's new South Auckland project which will help thousands of South Auckland youth. Very cool initiative and a SUPER cool group at IFP! Thanks team, it was awesome working with you all!

Darcy's Column: "Going Training"

How many of us invest in some self defence training for ourselves and our families? Perhaps not many – it doesn’t (yet) seem as mainstream as getting your first aid certificate. Consider that violence is like car accidents: totally unplanned events, can have devastating consequences and affects most of us at some stage in our lives.

Proper training doesn’t need to take months or weeks. You can have extremely effective training within a full day, as long as you know what to look for, so let me provide you with some tips.

Most importantly, a self defence course should be about lifting your belief system – an event where you discover and prove to yourself what you are capable of. Ask the provider how their training will definitely lift your capability. Ask also what the training covers. Proper training will cover all the elements of self defence: Avoidance, Defusion, Physical response and Post event issues including the law.

Though the training has to be “real” that doesn’t mean forsaking safety, both physically and emotionally. You have to be assured that you will be safe and have full control while you are training.

Ask about the types of physical techniques taught. Techniques which are so complicated that can’t be remembered in a week are useless. I’d have serious doubts if words such as: Wrist/arm locks, blocks, pressure points and throws were used to describe the techniques.

Importantly, do some research on the Instructor. Try to determine that they will be someone who’ll make it a great days training for you.

Darcy Mellsop

Protect Self Defence NZ

Column 41 – "Reading violence"

Self defence is about being able to interpret, understand and protect ourselves from violence.

For too many, violence is used as their medium of communication. Like not being able to speak French we'd struggle in France; not understanding violence means that we'd miss vital pre-incident indicators that are present in all situations that lead to physical violence. Only when we understand violence can we see and comprehend the early warning signs.

You can detect what you have been trained to see. It's about knowing what is about to happen and being able to pre-empt it. Anyone can learn this language. Knowing it doesn't make you more violent. Without knowing how to interpret violence and the pre-cursors of violence, we can't accurately predict intentions of predators, which means that we can't act appropriately to stop it, either with the appropriate verbal or physical response.

So let me give you some insight now. If a predator is trying to change the environment: coerce you to go somewhere, physically drag you somewhere, or establish privacy such as shutting your curtains, these acts provide massive insight into their intentions. What is their intent? To take material items from you or is it to do with your being, such as physical or sexual assault? It's far likely to be the latter. When you can detect intent (prior to the physical violence) would that fuel your response? Of course. A honed response helps, blanket hope counts for nothing. This is just one aspect, but: never ever let the environment change.


Darcy Mellsop
Protect Self Defence NZ

Hello. Remember the first day we met?

This is a post for the ladies. It is not designed as a scare tactic, instead it is designed to inspire thought on many different behavioural aspects of predatory behaviour...
From 'Safe For Life'...

Hello.

Remember the first day we met?

I do. I knew we were meant to be together from the moment I layed eyes on you.

The world has become quite small since we’ve met. By sheer luck we had shared one friend and now I share most of your friends and know quite a few family members too. I know your family secrets, pets, habits and fears. You’ve come to depend on me. I listen to you. I sympathize with you when your heart is broken.

I make you laugh when I see you’re about to cry. You’ve come to depend on me. I do favors for you and soon you will be doing favors for me. You owe me. I spend most of my time thinking of you and seeing to your every need. One day it will be my turn. You better be ready. I haven’t done all this for nothing you know. I could go elsewhere but I’ve chosen you. You were nothing before me and have grown into a better person because of me. But you already know that don’t you?

I see the way you’ve been looking at me lately. You’ve been teasing me with those long looks of yours. I see through your facade of playing hard to get. You want me so bad it almost makes you look cheap the way you throw yourself at my feet. I know your little jealousy game. You’re such a child. You think I don’t see through you. I know you want to make me jealous when you speak with those other men whom you call co-workers and friends. It’s not working. You merely look like a stupid little schoolgirl.

You deserve to be treated as such. You’re a slut. A schoolgirl slut who deserves what she’s gonna get coming to her!


Actions speak louder than words.

Listen to your intuition; it is in direct result to something, which you may or may not be consciously aware of in the moment...

'Every Woman's guide to Being Safe...For Life' available at Whitcoulls or Amazon.com

Latest Column from Darcy Mellsop - "See no evil"

"See no evil"

I was recently reading about Piha residents who have launched a campaign to remove a convicted child sex offender from their midst.

It reminded me of the same sort of incident in Kapiti recently where it was discovered that a convicted sex offender was living close to a school. I contacted the school to offer a session for the parents on what we could do to keep our kids safe, but it didn’t happen because the sex offender moved on. I didn’t contact the school for that one sex offender, I contacted the school about all the sex offenders that potentially lived near by. Commonly it’s the case of, if the known offender has moved, it’s all safe now. Those in the know, know that it’s not the case at all. There is some saying about an ostrich having its head in the sand, but I can’t remember it right now, but I’m sure you know it.

I could spend hours writing this column, but it’s important that I make this point.

I know that to many that this might sound like I’m trying to sell courses, but it’s actually about Avoidance. The key to Avoidance is consciously recognising a threat and taking effect action to avoid it.

Obviously, denial is not an effective strategy – though a much chosen strategy. It’s very quick and very easy. Job done.

Thinking that we are safe when the sex offender moves on is denial. You know the saying “I’ll believe it when I see it” well, when it comes to the protection of our kids, when it’s about things we wouldn’t do ourselves and therefore aren’t familiar with the strategies of sex offenders, it’s more like “I’ll see it when I believe it”. When you and your kids know what to look for, then you have a better chance of seeing it if it is present.

We know that we might be in a car accident, so we put on our seatbelts. Because we know that it’s possible to be in a car accident, we see things on the road that worry us – people cutting through late orange or red lights, not following the road code when giving way, aggressive drivers, those that follow to close behind, and so on. We see these threats as we know, we clearly know that they elevate the chance of a very real accident happening. That’s not denial. Also, knowing this doesn’t stop us from driving. But our acceptance of the possibility means that we can change the balance of possibility of being involved in an accident. We see a threat, and usually give a very wide berth.

Alternatively being completely unaware increases the likelihood of being in an accident – or even causing one and not knowing it.

So let’s use our energy correctly. Let’s be real so we can see reality. Let’s appreciate that most people are good, but there are many (plural) around that are dangerous.

Do not confuse the energy used to chase out of town a single convicted sex offender with the energy that is used to arm our kids with the tools to indentify when they are being scoped by any sex offender. Those energies are mutually exclusive – the former deals with perhaps an element – if they are not reformed, the latter focuses on the reality – those not yet caught.

Latest Article from Darcy Mellsop - "Spiders and stuff"

"Spiders and stuff"

If a spider builds a web, and it’s not catching any bugs, the spider basically has two choices: Do nothing and learn to survive on nothing or; rebuild its web in another place.

I was talking with a friend recently, and we were talking about Avoidance and he put it to me that Avoidance is pretty common sense really, just don’t do stuff like walk down dark alleys. But is it really that simple? I mean, we know this already, and most act on this advice, but there is still a heck of a lot of violence about, so what’s going on?

If you are the bad guy waiting in the dark alley, and you are getting bored waiting as everyone is heeding the advice not to venture there, are you going to remain there or go hunting? And if you are hunting in a different environment, such as bars, clubs and streets – generally where people
are, would you use the same strategies as you would have used in the colloquial dark alley, or do the strategies change and adapt to the environment?

We know that they change. Yes, we can change the balance of probability of being in locations safer than others, but predators do roam and scope. Predators have many skills, which they train and honed, especially verbal skills such as the manipulation strategies I’ve exposed in previous columns.

Understand this, predators aren’t all around us, generally good people are - but predators are everywhere. Scoping and evaluating. Good Avoidance stems from acknowledging this.

"Let’s talk about violence" - Latest column by Darcy Mellsop

Let’s talk about violence.

I wonder if we talk enough about violence. I wonder why it isn’t main-stream conversation. We talk about other things prevalent in our society which affect us. We talk about sport, sex, politics, travel, our work, but not violence anywhere to the same degree.

When we do talk about violence, it’s usually to cover 3 things: justice (because we’ve read about something horrible that’s recently happened), what that person should have done to stop it from happening to them and what we might have done.

Is this enough to provide us valuable insight? Or are we simply picking over the bones of something that doesn’t offer us much value – talking about stuff that’s happened is reactive, we are really focusing on aftermath and also, it’s depressing stuff.

I think that we don’t have enough conversations that lead to us educating each other. Ok, so what’s the plan? Let’s share information. When we are talking about violence, talk about what we know. Talk about the things that some guy did that made us feel uncomfortable during the date and why we are not going to go out with him again. Or the time that our ego got in control of us and started to escalate a road rage incident. Challenge and discuss what you and others understand about keeping ourselves safe. Challenge, think and discuss lots. Simple. Because knowing violence, and knowing the early signs of violence, is extremely effective in reducing the balance of probability of being involved in violence.

A few recent public events...

Photos of the awesome teams from the 'Safe For Life' Women's self defence courses in Auckland and Christchurch in Feb, the amazing team at the YWCA 'Fundamentals of women's self protection' seminar (it's a "funny photo" but i still haven't figured out what the hell I was doing in it) and the legendary crew at the 'Self Defence MEGA Weekend' in Auckland in Feb (Advanced Mega Weekend in April). Thanks to all who attended these and our other events in February, you guys are all amazing!

7 year old girl fights off attacker! Great job!

Great work by this girl! Listen to the last thing she says... "My school taught me...etc" She did what she was taught and it saved her. Yet still we have to BATTLE to get our education into schools or to get many parents to invest in their children's safety. Apathy and denial are the biggest threat to our kids...Check this great job out:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/1442200775001/

and here's the link to Whitcoulls online for our book 'Empower Your Kids to be Safe...For Life'. CLICK HERE