How Fear Can Help You to Predict and Avoid Malicious Intentions

Lessons learned from Gavin de Becker’s ‘The Gift of Fear’.

“Technology is not going to save us. Our computers, our tools, our machines are not enough. We have to rely on our intuition, our true being.” — Joseph Campbell

It seems like a lifetime ago, I was only 19 when I found myself standing outside of Heathrow airport, with only a backpack and ten dollars. I had just flown in from Belgium and was on my way to a youth hostel where I had a reservation for the night. Hungry and not looking forward to navigating yet another foreign subway system, a handsome man impeccably dressed in an expensive suit, in his 40’s at least, approached me, asked where I was going and suggested we share a cab together. He said he was going in the direction of my hostel and could drop me off.

I said yes.

As soon as we were in the back of the small taxi, I knew it was a mistake accepting his offer.

He quickly asked rapid-fire questions, eager for me to change my plans. “Was I meeting anyone,” “Was anyone meeting me at the youth hostel,” “What were my plans for the next day,” “Did I have plans to meet friends,” “Why don’t I come over, we could make dinner at his place,” “You don’t have to stay in a youth hostel, I have a huge house we can stay in.” I kept saying no, and he kept asking the same question (Can you come to my house?) in a different way each time.

I was under no delusion that just because I had said “yes” to sharing a cab that that “yes” required me to say “yes” to going to a stranger’s house. Not only was he not hearing my “no’s,” but he was also acting far too familiar with me, using the pronoun “we” when we had just met.

He was forward, in control, calm, and I remember thinking he was very charming, good looking, and friendly, and yet, I felt a fear so complete that it replaced every feeling in my body.

Every part of my being knew that if I went home with him, I would be harmed somehow and possibly never see my family again. Had the taxi driver not been there, I’m not sure how it would have turned out, but I kept saying no as politely as I could in a hundred different ways; “no,” by making excuses, telling him I had plans, “sorry, no I just can’t.”

Every ‘no’ possible. I directed the taxi driver to my youth hostel, where I had a reservation. I got out of the cab, thanked him, and was never so glad to sleep in a room full of 15 strangers for the night. I was meeting my mom the next morning at Heathrow to tour England, France, Germany, and Belgium for the next few months. And yet, all night I just couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling he gave me — his refusal to hear my first no, my second, third, and fourth.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the alarm signals that registered deep in my body were a gift — my internal knowing. My intuition told me not to trust him, and I didn’t question it, I listened to my body.

Intellectually, I was too naïve and young to know that his refusal to hear my nos and his use of we in such a short time after the meeting, was predatory behavior and an attempt to control me.

However, my body registered it loudly, and I listened.

The Gift of Fear

A few years later, I picked up a book by Gavin de Becker, The Gift of Fear.

Rarely do I read a book in one sitting. I’m a slow reader. I like to read and register every single word, and sometimes I stop to highlight sentences and paragraphs that resonate. But from his first sentence, I was gripped.

De Becker starts the book recounting the story of a woman who survived rape. The first sentence, “He’d probably been watching her for a while,” had me reading for the next several hours. For the first seven pages of the book, de Becker details the multiple tactics the rapist used to get into the woman’s apartment.

I’ll summarize.

She entered her apartment building with a handful of groceries from a day of shopping and started up the long flight of stairs. She lived on the 4th floor. As she approached the third landing, one of her grocery bags ripped, and her groceries tumbled down the stairs. As she watched lemons and cans of cat food tumble down the flights she had just climbed, she heard a man say, “Got it! I’ll bring it up!”

Immediately, something didn’t feel right to her.

She had not seen him when she entered the building, and no one came in behind her. She was positive; she latched the front door that only opened with a key to the building.

A nice-looking man came bounding up the stairs and said, “Let me give you a hand.” To which she replied, “No, I’ve got it.” To this, the man responded with, “You don’t look like you’ve got it. What floor are you going to?” She hesitated but answered, “The fourth, but I’m OK, really.”

“I’m going to the fourth floor too,” then, he took hold of one of the bags she was holding. She repeated, “No, really, thanks. But no, I’ve got it.” She held onto the handle of the bag as he said, “There’s such a thing as being too proud, you know.” She then let go of the handle.

De Becker,

“For a moment, Kelly didn’t want to let go of that bag, but then she did, and this seemingly insignificant exchange between the cordial stranger and the recipient of this courtesy was the signal — to him and to her — that she was willing to trust him. As the bag passed from her control to his, so did she.”

“We better hurry,” he said next, as he walked up the stairs ahead of Kelly, “we’ve got a hungry cat up there.”

Once at the door of her apartment, which was now open, she said, “I’ll take it from here,” hoping he’d hand her the groceries and leave.

Instead, he said, “Oh no, I didn’t come this far to let you have another cat food spill.” She hesitated. He quickly said, “Hey, we can leave the door open like ladies do in old movies. I’ll just put this stuff down and go. I promise.”

He didn’t keep his promise. After the rapist caused three hours of suffering for Kelly in her apartment, she listened to a small instinct she had that saved her life.

After he raped her and had already held a gun to her head, “he got up from the bed, got dressed, then closed the window. He glanced at his watch, and then started acting like he was in a hurry and said, ‘I gotta be somewhere. Hey, don’t look so scared. I promise I’m not going to hurt you.’”

Kelly knew he was lying and that he was going to kill her.

He then said, “don’t you move or do anything. I’m going to the kitchen to get something to drink, and then I’ll leave. I promise.”

De Becker explains,

“But the instant he stepped from the room, Kelly stood up and walked after him, pulling the sheet off the bed with her, ‘I was literally right behind him, like a ghost, and he didn’t know I was there. We walked down the hall together. At one point, he stopped, and so did I. He was looking at my stereo, which was playing some music, and he reached out and made it louder. When he moved on toward the kitchen, I turned and walked through the living room.’ Kelly could hear drawers being opened as she walked out her front door, leaving it ajar. She walked directly into the apartment across the hall (which she somehow knew would be unlocked). Holding a finger up to signal to her surprised neighbor to be quiet, she locked their door behind her.”

Kelly knew he was going to kill her because her body registered the subtle signals.

For example, the promise not to harm her, it came out of nowhere. The fact he shut the window even though he said he was leaving. That drawers were being opened in the kitchen when he had supposedly gone to the kitchen for a drink, she knew he was looking for a knife because a gun would be too loud.

What made her think he was concerned about noise? He shut the window.

De Becker explains,

“Since he was dressed and supposedly leaving, he had no other reason to close the window. It was that subtle signal that warned her, but it was the fear that gave her the courage to get up without hesitation and follow close behind the man who had intended to kill her.”

That one small survival signal saved her life.

The rest of the book is about listening to this intuition we all have. De Becker describes case after case of violent behavior, pointing out the signals our intuition naturally registers and can save our lives when listened to, when we most need it.

We’ve all had experiences with intuition and have uttered the phrase, “Somehow, I knew.”

This phrase is used to describe “the chance meeting we predicted, or about the unexpected phone call from a distant friend, or the unlikely turnaround in someone’s behavior, or about the violence we steered clear of, or, too often, the violence we elected not to steer clear of.”

Like most animals, we know when we are in the presence of real danger.

You have the gift of a “brilliant internal guardian that stands at the ready to warn you of hazards and guide you through risky situations.” De Becker teaches you to predict violent behavior in his powerful book.

We are all capable of seeing the signals because there is a universal code of violence in our society. Sadly, there are many instances of violence to learn from, especially in America. By the time you finish reading this, ten women will be raped in the United States alone, and 78 in the next hour. The Gift of Fear is an especially important read for women.

Intuition is a Powerful Tool

Intuition is a powerful tool, it can save your life. It connects us to the natural world and to our nature.

‘Intuition is a process more extraordinary and ultimately more logical in the natural order than the most fantastic computer calculations. It is our most complex cognitive process and, at the same time, the simplest.’ — de Becker

At the beginning of de Becker’s book, the woman survives because she listened to her body, prompted by primal fear. It told her to get up and out as quietly as she could, she knew he was going to kill her. The only way to save herself was to leave. Because she knew. Like she knew on the stairs, so many things about this man were wrong, from his voice to his refusing to hear no, to his use of the word “we.” These are strategies predators use to gain control of their victims.

The Gift of Fear is one of the most essential books I have read on how to stay safe in an ever-increasing violent world. It should be mandatory reading for teenaged girls and older.

My teenage daughter and I listened to it on Audible on a recent road trip, and she was just as intrigued about human behavior as I was (and still am) when I first picked up the book.

‘Sometimes a violent act is so frightening that we call the perpetrator a monster, but as you’ll see, it is by finding his humanness — his similarity to you and me — that such an act can be predicted. You will see that even esoteric types of violence have detectable patterns and warning signs.’ — de Becker

I think about The Gift of Fear often when I’m out and about in the world, the knowledge it taught me gives me greater confidence and empowers me to know what signals to listen to.

I still occasionally think about that man who refused to hear the word no.

“This above all, to refuse to be a victim.” — Margaret Atwood

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