from flying apart.
Knowing this instructor’s method of practice and ideas regarding fighting, Wilder believes that he sought perfection in the situation when it called instead for whatever it took to get the job done. While you normally can’t do that and expect to prevail, the reason the guy took a beating is less important than how he handled it afterward. There were physical injuries to deal with, of course, but the blow to the man’s self-esteem was particularly severe.
What happens if you lose a fight? How much it affects you depends a lot on your worldview. If you’re an average guy or faced weapons or multiple opponents, you might consider yourself lucky to have gotten through it in one piece, shrug things off, and go on about your life. Perhaps you’ll be a bit more careful about where you go and/or whom you hang out with, but it likely won’t be a world-changing experience for you. At the very least, you will take self-defense a bit more seriously and will make a better effort to avoid fighting in the future by working on such things as your situational awareness and verbal de-escalation skills.
Losing a fight can be very scary. It can leave physical as well as emotional scars. Oftentimes you will be motivated to study martial arts or pick up a knife or a gun so that you will have the ability to fight back. If you decide to go that route, examine your motivation carefully. While it’s great to be able to defend yourself, it’s easy to slip into vigilante mode, subconsciously looking for opportunities to get payback for your loss or otherwise prove your manhood in another fight as Bernard Getz may have done. Don’t start doing dangerous things like cutting through alleys or hanging out in the wrong bars in order to provoke another attack where you might get a chance to redeem your honor.
Self-defense is really about not being there, using awareness, avoidance, and de-escalation to eliminate the need to fight. Fighting is what you do when you’ve totally screwed up your self-defense.
Guns, knives, and martial arts skills do not ward off danger. They help you deal with it more effectively, and only in select circumstances. Never forget that self-defense is really about not being there, using awareness, avoidance, and de-escalation to eliminate the need to fight. Fighting is what you do when you’ve totally screwed up your self-defense. If you train yourself to fight or decide to carry a weapon, you are working on the two to five percent of the time that those skills will come in handy. Don’t get us wrong; those skills are great, oftentimes lifesaving. Just don’t go looking for opportunities to try them out unnecessarily.
If you ultimately decide to carry a weapon, be sure to do your homework first, researching the applicable laws in the jurisdictions where you live, work, and frequently travel. Be sure to obtain the appropriate licenses or permits where applicable too. Use of a contraband weapon can turn what should have been a legitimate case of self-defense into a long prison term or possibly even a death sentence. While all fights can have repercussions, odds of serious consequences dramatically increase when weapons are involved.
If you think of yourself as a “fighter” and then wind up getting beat down, things may be much worse for you mentally. If you are a big time martial artist like the aforementioned aikido instructor, if that is the center of your whole world, losing a street fight can be extraordinarily traumatic. It’s a major blow to your self-esteem, much more so than a regular, everyday person would typically suffer. You will probably begin to have thoughts like:
• I can’t believe that (technique) didn’t work!
• What did I do wrong?
• What will the other guys at the
• I’m such an idiot!
• What I know has no street value; I’ve been wasting my time all these years!
• What the hell is wrong with me?
If you were badly hurt or otherwise failed to protect yourself or someone you care about, it can be pretty rough. It’s important to put things into perspective. Use the loss as a learning opportunity. After all, anything you live through can be a good thing so long as you learn something from it.
Begin by taking a hard look at yourself and your actions before the fight. Did you do everything you could to calm things down or were you raring to go, looking for an opportunity to prove how tough you are? Think about things like why you got into the fight in the first place. Did you do everything you could to de-escalate the situation? If it was unavoidable and you were simply outmatched, that’s a different story than if you set yourself up for the fall. Past behavior predicts future behavior unless you make a concerted effort to change it. If you find that you need to make a change, commit yourself to doing so.
Let’s say that you did everything right, all you could do to avoid fighting but found yourself in an altercation anyway. And you got beat down hard. Now what?
Losing a fight can affect people in different ways. If you’re an average guy or found yourself hopelessly outmatched, you may be less traumatized than if you considered yourself a real “fighter” yet got beat down regardless. Anything you live through can be a good thing so long as you learn something from it. Wallowing in misery does you no good. Wait a few days to regain your emotional equilibrium, dispassionately evaluate your objectives, and then figure out what, if anything, you should do differently in the future.
There are many bad martial artists out there, but few truly bad martial arts. If you think your art let you down in a fight, it is most likely the other way around. You probably haven’t learned it correctly. For example, if you don’t truly understand the strategy and architecture in which your tactics and techniques can be most effective, you have not yet mastered your art. You can do what looks like the right thing but totally miss the mark. In such cases, it’s important to refocus your training to understand not only the techniques but also the nuances that make them work. In addition to working with your instructor, the book
You may have a different problem though. As we’ve stated previously, there’s a big difference between sport, fighting, and combat. It’s easy to be good at fighting or good at sport, but really tough to be good at both simultaneously. If you’ve been approaching martial arts from a sports perspective there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s great exercise and provides positive feedback, trophies, and other rewards for strong performance. The challenge is that it’s not necessarily going to be your best bet for self-defense on the street if things get violent.
Wait a few days to regain your emotional equilibrium, and then try to evaluate your objectives dispassionately. If you really want to learn street defense but realize that you are practicing a sport, perhaps you’re in the wrong
By sorting out your objectives and figuring out what you might do in the future, you are taking proactive steps to get over the loss. That’s all for the good. Hand wringing, second-guessing, and beating yourself up are dysfunctional pursuits. The faster you regain your equilibrium after a traumatic event, the less likely you are to have long-lasting negative effects. Consequently, wallowing in misery doesn’t help. Setting a course of action does. Debriefing, counseling, psychotherapy, or other forms of mental health treatment may be necessary as well. We will address these issues a bit in the next section.
Dealing with Psychological Trauma
