Taboo subjects...Not any more.

One of the toughest parts of my job is that I often need to tell people things that they don’t want to hear. Often these things cause resistance but they are vitally important to people’s safety that they know them. Sometimes too the topics may be very uncomfortable. Here is an example of one of the uncomfortable ones...

Yesterday a person I know, who has not had any Self Defence training before called me and asked if he could meet me as soon as possible. He had just been in a threatening situation that morning and was still very shaken up and confused by it. I won’t go into the details of the situation, except to say that it was certainly not his fault, and the extent of the physical assault on him was to be pushed up against a wall and slapped across the face by his male aggressor. With absolutely no training he responded how most people do, he froze and had no idea what to do. Fortunately the situation diffused and the aggressor left him alone, albeit very shaken. I have his permission to use his case as an example.

I met him and had him explain in detail what had happened. I helped him re-define the meaning of the event for him and explained some ways with which he could deal with the aftermath trauma that he was experiencing. I sensed though that he was telling me 99% of it but holding something back. I didn’t press him on it, knowing that he would tell me if and when he was ready. After a while it came out. He said to me “Mate, something else happened and I am so ashamed of myself”. I asked him what that was, knowing it could be any number of stress responses that he was referring to, all perfectly normal.

He reluctantly told me that he had wet himself during the incident.

He was embarrassed to tell me this, ashamed of himself.

This is another classic demonstration of the level of most people’s knowledge around real violence, or more importantly, their lack of it. Most of what people think they know about violence and Self Defence in a very large pile of bull manure.

The fact is, as I explained to my friend, this is a perfectly normal human stress response. If you have contents in your lower intestines during a highly stressful situation, it is very likely to go. Your body at that point doesn’t care about bladder (or often too, sphincter) control, and may just let go. And if that happens what do you do? Keep focused on dealing with the situation. If you know it is normal and are ready for it if it happens then it won’t catch you off guard. But when is the last time someone told you about this and warned you that it may happen? When was the last time you watched an action flick where the lead actor playing a tough guy, cop, soldier, or whatever, wet his pants in the midst of combat? Not often, if ever.

If you have ever dealt with injured or traumatised people as an ambulance officer, firefighter, or police officer, then you know that a significant number urinate or defecate themselves.

Because of the stigma attached to this most often it is not something that is shared or discussed, so when it does happen to someone and they are not prepared it can leave them confused and thinking “what’s wrong with me?” Well, now that you have read this you know that in fact nothing is ‘wrong with you’ if it happens, it is normal. There is power in just knowing how normal it is.

One of the most studied events in history would have to be the 9/11 attacks, and yet very few know that apparently most of the survivors lost bladder and/or bowel control. Now does that make them less courageous at all? Of course not. But if it does happen to us it would be good and useful to know that it is normal.

Violence is a toxic, corrosive, often confusing environment. It is time to cut through all of the rubbish and get to the point so that we can better prepare people mentally, physically and emotionally should they need it and that is what we are doing.