Book Summary: The Gift of Fear
Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence
The Gift of Fear : Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence
June 1, 1997, by Gavin De Becker
“Lisa did not know that the police sergeant had looked across the counter into plenty of bruised faces before that night. She thought her situation was unique and special and she was certain the department would act on it right away, particularly when she explained that her husband had held a gun to her head. An hour earlier, after climbing out the window and running down several darkened streets. She had looked around and realized she was lost. But in a more important sense, she was found. She had rediscovered herself, the young woman she had been 15 years before; before he had slapped her that first time, before he escalated to choking her, and before this incident with the gun. The children had seen that one. But now they would see her stronger, supported by the police, she thought. They would see him apologize, and then it would be okay. The police would talk some sense into her husband and force him to treat her right, and then it would be okay. She proudly told the sergeant “I’m not going back to him unless he promises never to hit me again.” The sergeant nodded and passed some forms across the counter. “You fill these out”, he said, “fill them out completely.” And then I’m going to put them over there. He pointed to a messy stack of forms and reports, piled on a cabinet. The sergeant looked at this young woman, the woman planning to go back to her abuser, back to the man with the gun he claimed he bought for self-defense, but really was for defense of the self. The sergeant then said the words that changed Lisa’s life. The words that a decade later, she would go back and thank him for speaking. The words that would allow her to leave her violent abuser. He said: “You fill out these forms and go back home, and the next time I look for them it will be because you have been murdered.””
That is how Chapter 10, “Intimate Enemies,” ends. It’s not what I expected to learn when I bought this book. Nor did I expect to peek into the disturbing minds of other violent men, and a few violent women. The stories are about violence toward strangers, intimate partners, toward celebrities, and against parents. I learned that parents are far more often killed by their children than the reverse. But a parent murdering a child is much more likely to get national media attention.
I bought the book after seeing the author interviewed by Mike Rowe. I will link to it at the end of this article. The author, Gavin De Becker, is experienced in predicting and managing violence. He has served on the President's Advisory Board at the U.S. Department of Justice and the Governor's Advisory Board at the California Department of Mental Health. Currently, he leads a consulting firm that advises government agencies, universities, police departments, corporations, and media personalities on threat and hazard assessment.
Fear, he writes, is distinct from worry and anxiety. Fear—genuine fear, is a gift because it protects us from real danger.
Gavin De Becker, is a friend and advisor to many famous people, including Oprah Winfrey, an early promoter of his book.
I have long been interested in two topics they discussed: fear and intuition.
The type of fear I am interested in, however, is of a different kind—unwarranted fear. This fear, if it makes us avoid things we shouldn’t fear, carries high costs. It makes us miss out on business opportunities, experiences, relationships, and many other things. As author George Addair wrote: “Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.”
De Becker’s book is about real fear - and his advice is to heed our intuition, but also to discern real fear from unwarranted fear. People get in trouble and are sometimes killed when they ignore their feeling that they are in danger. They don’t want to appear silly, because they can’t explain the feeling. But a feeling can be an intuition.
I’ve long known that intuition is subconscious thought, not some magical mystery. I’ve solved too many problems while thinking about something else, or even sleeping, to think otherwise. Subconscious thought is far superior to conscious thought. Sometimes I know things, but I don’t know why I know. It’s common to hear someone say “I want to sleep on it” before making a decision. I never make a major decision without one good night’s sleep. Sometimes I will go to sleep with a problem and wake up with the answer having surfaced into consciousness. But sometimes I just know but I don’t know why or how. I just know.
“A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. But intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.” - — Albert Einstein, in a letter to Dr. H. L. Gordon (May 3, 1949 - AEA 58-217), as quoted in Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007) by Walter Isaacson, ISBN 9780743264730
I relayed this to my wife, who was the target of so much family violence as a child that I’m amazed she is not violent herself. She said: “I’m glad you told me. It gives me permission to pay attention to my feelings of danger.”
Gavin De Becker himself had a violent childhood. In just one incident, his mother fired a gun at his father and missed. He writes about how he himself could have grown up violent. He recounted a meeting with a man, a killer, who said that they’d grown up under similar violent circumstances. “Why are you sitting over there and I’m over here? I’m wearing handcuffs while you’re wearing an expensive suit and probably drive an expensive car.” It was a good question, the author wrote—one for which he can only offer plausible explanations.
De Becker advocates for listening to unexplainable feelings of danger. Some people make decisions based on what they call their “gut”. That’s usually not intuition. Intuition comes from our brains. In my business experience, when a man says, “I’m going with my gut,” he usually is just indulging in a personal preference. He is rationalizing a want. Intuition is something else—especially when intuition is one of impending danger.
The author gives one example after another of someone ignoring their feeling of danger, and it costing them—sometimes their life.
Another memorable lesson in The Gift of Fear is that being famous is far more dangerous than I or almost anyone else thinks. The author writes that when the press reports that a celebrity is being stalked, it’s just because they learned about it and it’s a slow news day. Virtually all famous people are stalked all the time, he says. Some stalkers are dangerous, and others are not. As a security expert, it is his job to tell if a delusional stalker is dangerous or harmless. He tells the amazing story about an actor he was working for. He determined that the obsessed fan she told him about was very dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that he didn’t think he and his team could protect her at her home. So, they escorted her to a hotel. Then they searched the hundreds of acres behind her home, looking for the potential murderer. They found not one, but two obsessed stalkers in those woods—and neither was the guy they were looking for! They did eventually catch the dangerous stalker, but only because he had an unrelated confrontation with a man, the police got involved, and he was arrested.
De Becker blames the press for the manner in which they cover assassins. They are motivated, he writes, by infamy. And with every national news story about the life of an assassin, the next assassin is encouraged to seek fame as well.
He has nothing good to say about local TV news programs, which stoke unreasonable fear, and does not watch any local TV news himself. Neither do I. Nor do I watch any cable news, which is as bad or worse.
In The Gift of Fear, the author explains that in order to kill someone famous, the assassin first must believe he can do it. If he thinks there is no way to get by all that security, all those Secret Service agents, then he won’t try. This book was written in 1997. It was, however, updated in 2022. The author must have been paying attention recently when inept Secret Service agents allowed an untrained civilian to mount a rooftop in plain view with a rifle and nearly kill Donald Trump. If he is right, then other would-be assassins are more likely to proceed with a murderous plan. Not only is Donald Trump in increased danger, but so is anyone supposedly protected by the Secret Service. That’s because, the author says, it’s not about the victim, but about the act and the fame.
In one section of the book, De Becker presents his counterintuitive position that uncivilized public behavior, such as outbursts at public performances, did not begin with social media. He makes an interesting case that it began in the 1940s with Frank Sinatra’s fans.
In this article, I mentioned violent criminals who stalk famous people first because they are the most attention-getting. But De Becker only writes about them later in the book. It is the first part of the book that is more useful to average men and women, but mostly women. It is about chance encounters on a street, in a hallway, or other seemingly non-violent settings where a stranger intends to harm his victim.
In the first chapters of The Gift of Fear, there is practical information for women about early warning signs in a relationship to watch for— such as when a man, early on, sees the relationship as far more serious than it is. One whose very identity is tied to the relationship. De Becker notes that a man who doesn’t take no for an answer in small things may also not take no for an answer in more important matters. A method abusive men use to make women feel obligated the author calls “loan sharking.” Why too much attentiveness and acting on everything a woman says, can be a warning sign. Why a dangerous relationship should be ended early. And why, if you don’t want a relationship with a suitor, you should be clear and offer no explanation. It is not a good idea to try and “let him down easy.”
De Becker offers these, and other insights and advice based on his vast experience.
He acknowledges that not all stalkers or killers are men, but since the majority are, he almost always refers to the killer as “he.” Most of the violent women he writes about became famous because the people they tried to assassinate were men who were famous. Sara Jane Moore and Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme each tried to kill President Ford in 1975 just 17 days apart. But not all. There are a couple of stories about women who stalked and killed, or tried to kill, celebrities.
You might think that ongoing hypervigilance will make you safer. The author’s message is the opposite. He says that being obsessed with fear about what could happen makes it less likely that we will notice what is happening. Most of the time he says you should be observant but not fearful. Real fear only shows up at the appropriate time.
“Trusting intuition is the exact opposite of living in fear. True fear is a survival signal that only sounds in the presence of danger.” – Gavin De Becker
The interview that got me interested in Gavin De Becker’s book is shown below: