Using fury as fuel for decisive action and other lessons from the zombie apocalypse
“You’ve got to keep moving. No matter what. Just keep moving. That’s how you survive.”
I was reading through a pile of zombie apocalypse books my dad had gifted to me for my birthday when I came across these words (more or less).
I forget the exact scene. I want to say the main character was fighting to secure an airport tarmac from a horde of the undead when he said those words.
And maybe it’s because I was still stuck in my marriage when I read it or maybe because I’m a woman (the entire collection was written by men, specifically men retired from the military) or maybe because we were a month in to the first global quarantine (you know when’s not a great time to work through your zombie TBR pile? March of 2020), but I remember these words struck me so hard it jarred me from the page.
All I could think was, “That might be true … ifyou’re a man.”
Because I, like all too many of us throughout this lifetime and lifetimes past, know that as a woman the rules of the game are different.
We’ve inherited a legacy where our words and our actions have at best, gotten us belittled, blamed, ignored, shamed, and silenced. And at worst, stoned to death, burned at the stake, killed in the name of honor.
In the reality of that legacy, sometimes how you survive is to shut up and shut down. Go still. No sudden movements. Keep your mouth shut. Make yourself as small as possible, pressed up as far as you can against the back of your cage. Stay out of reach. There you’ll be safe.
And like all of us who have had our backs pressed against the wall, gone still in a choke hold, we inevitably reach a moment where we know: to stay there is certain death as well. What once kept us safe, is now what’s killing us.
To stay still is to die. If not physically, than spiritually, emotionally, mentally, sexually, financially.
So then, you fight. You fight like hell.
———————
It’s easy to pass judgement. It’s easy to say we would’ve handled things differently, if it were us.
But the truth is, we can never be sure how we’d actually respond until it happens to us.
It’s also true that different attacks call for different responses. Each situation is unique, dynamic.
Fight, flight, freeze, acquiesce, faint—the five main survival responses—are all viable options for a reason: they work. They keep you alive.
Sometimes, how you survive is freezing, going still, shutting down. Sometimes, running is the brave thing. Sometimes, giving them your purse is how you walk away with your life.
Sometimes, jumping to fight is how you get killed.
There’s a multitude of ways any given scenario could play out, the many different paths it could take. Each decision, each action, changing the course in a new direction, towards a new outcome.
In survival, there is no one right answer, there is no right or wrong. There’s only survive or … don’t.
All that being said, I believe we all come to self defense with at least one basic thread in common: we want to be able to defend ourselves. We want to survive. We want to be safe.
But more than that, we want to know better, do better. We want what happened to us before to never happen to us again.
Never again.
So, what do we do?
One, we make the decision ahead of time. We make the decision that we will do whatever is necessary to protect and defend ourselves should we need to.
This is simple, but not easy. And it’s going to look different for every single one of us.
Take the time to define what that looks like for you. What are you willing to do? What are you not? Are there lines you’re not willing to cross? What can you live with at the end of the day? Whatever you decide for yourself, make peace with it.
For me, I know—because I have already made the decision ahead of time—that if you attack me, if you come after me, your life is forfeit. This doesn’t mean I’m going to fight back until you’re dead, or that I even want you dead. But what it does mean is that once that threshold is crossed, physically or emotionally, you no longer have the privilege of my consideration for your wellbeing.
I don’t want to destroy you, but I will—and by almost any means necessary: teeth, nails, fists, elbows, weapons. If it’s between you and me, I will choose me. Every. Single. Time. And I will sleep just fine at night.
Two, we learn. We learn what violence is, what it looks like, how it unfolds. How we can take agency to prevent it, to diffuse it.
For instance, we learn that studies show that women who are victims of sexual assault sustain the same amount of injury whether they fought back or not.
So, why not fight back?
Three, we train. We train scenarios again and again, so we can fine tune our responses and work through the kinks in a safe environment, all while still under the effects of adrenaline stress. So that we learn that we can feel activated and still take decisive action.
If there’s one thing I learned during the course of my undergraduate studies in psychology that I carry with me to this day, it’s this: the only emotion strong enough to overcome fear is anger.
Physiologically, fear and anger feel remarkably similar in the body—increased heart rate, lack of rational thought, increased speed and strength, sweating, trembling, heavy breathing, tunnel vision, reduced activity in the pain receptors.
So, to make that switch, isn’t as hard as it might sound. Try it next time you watch a scary movie.
And then train to use it to your advantage, to wield it as a weapon instead of a liability. Instead of being paralyzed by fear, use it as a cue to tap into your rage, that killer part in all of us.
Use anger as a catalyst out of fear paralysis and into decisive action.
Don’t get sad, get even, as the Taylor Swift lyric goes.
Or better yet: don’t get scared, get angry.
And ultimately, we observe, we orient, we decide, and we act.
Once we’ve done all we can do to prevent, diffuse and escape, we assess and then we act—immediately, ballistically, and asymmetrically.
If that trip-wire is triggered, we act.
No doubt. No second guessing. No consideration.
If x, then y.
If threatened, then we act.
Even if we’re afraid.
———————
“Anger makes you stupid. And stupid gets you killed.”
– Michonne, The Walking Dead
This line has also stuck with me throughout the years.
And while I, for one, would never argue with Michonne (umm … hello? Have you seen the way she wields that katana and leads her people with integrity and grace?) there is a key difference between blind rage and decisive action fueled by fury, and that is: choice.
Earlier, I talked about the legacy we’ve inherited. A legacy marked by a decided lack of choice. A legacy based on fear and subjugation.
But legacies can be changed.
And it begins with choice. To choose, to make a choice—a conscious choice—we have to be in control. Not of anyone else, but of ourselves and of our actions.
I believe this is the crux of my issue with the blanket just keep moving to survive sentiment. Because power isn’t just making what you want to happen happen, it’s also the ability to make what you don’t want to happen stop. It’s knowing when to act and knowing when not to.
Sometimes, the best choice you can make is to wait for your moment. The moment when you can leverage a power point to your advantage, to do the most damage. And sometimes, that does mean laying in wait. Sometimes it does look like freezing or acquiescing while we wait for the gap to close, while we wait for the moment we can throw our opponent off balance when we strike.
Another simple, but not easy, task.
This is where, I believe, the real power in Empowerment Self Defense comes from. In ESD, we learn, through a series of evaluations and choices, how to shift the locus of control back to conscious thought.
We want it to be a choice. Our choice.
We want to bring our actions within the realm of our control—not reactionary, not subject to the whims of vestigial conditioning and programming or fear.
Choice begets control. Control begets choice.
“You’ve got to keep moving. No matter what. Just keep moving. That’s how you survive.”
So, yes, maybe there is some truth to be found in these words, after all.
Make a choice. Choose your course. And make it count.