The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker

When I wrote about fear and violence, people thought I might like to read more books about fear and violence. I didn’t want to read MORE about fear: I’m scared enough ALREADY, and I was still recovering from the flu-like symptoms of the Sam Harris article I’d read. But I am susceptible to such pressures, and so eventually I put both The Culture of Fear and The Gift of Fear on my library list.

I tried The Culture of Fear first, but after two page-sides I didn’t read any more. It was all questions, and I could answer all of them. Why oh why are we more afraid of airplane crashes than car crashes, when car crashes are more likely? Why oh why are we so bad at estimating the statistical likelihood of bad things happening to us? Yes, yes, I took Psych 101 too.

I put it into the library return bag and turned to the next book with a feeling of impending relief: I could perhaps dismiss this one just as briskly, and then I could turn my attention to more pleasing subjects. Yes indeed, the book opened with a Very Scary Story. I’m not reading this stuff, I don’t need more scaredness, I can safely ditch it.

…But I skipped ahead, to AFTER the scary story, and within half a page I was reading it with no intention of stopping. And I just finished reading the whole thing, and here is my conclusion: it SEEMS like the book will be scary and will make you more scared, and that it will make you think about things you don’t want to think about–but I ended up feeling a REDUCTION of fear (which is his goal/intention), as well as a dose of logic to counter future fears. There are occasional scary illustrative anecdotes, but you can skim/skip them if you want.

His main points:

1. It is very unlikely that anyone would want/try to hurt you.

2. If they DO want to, there are signals they’re likely to send you first.

3. Here are the signals.

I found that within the first chapter I felt FORTIFIED against guys who seemed like they were just trying to be nice and yet gave me the creeps. The author says that a decent man will not approach a woman in a scary situation (deserted stairwell, dark parking lot), or try to convince her to accept help or whatever after her first “No”—and that if he IS a decent man but just beyond-clueless, he needs to be taught by your reaction that his behavior is scary. Before reading this book, I would have been the woman getting more and more anxious as I tried to be gracious and not look like a weird freak-out. Reading it was like that scene in The Matrix where people get teaching programs uploaded to their brains: I am SCHOOLED.

For those of us who are often fretful and anxious, he lets us know that we are indulging ourselves in magical thinking: we’ve unconsciously noticed that the things we worry about don’t happen, statistically speaking, and so we unconsciously start to see a false correlation: if we worry about bad things, bad things don’t happen! Meanwhile, such thoughts make us more vulnerable to the few things that actually could hurt us, since we’re in the habit of thinking we’re being silly by worrying. Already I’ve noticed a difference in my anxious thoughts: when one occurs to me, I try to evaluate it for legitimacy—and the thought “This is magical thinking” is embarrassing enough to help knock the thought out for a bit. I’m not sure if even over the long-term I’ll be able to learn to effectively evaluate legitimacy, but it seems worth practicing.

Unlike in The Sociopath Next Door, the author doesn’t point out a problem but leave it pointed-out-but-unsolved: he gives specific tests for determining the actual danger-likelihood of situations, and then specific instructions for how to handle them. (He claims not to like checklists, but BOY he likes acronyms.) I found that while/after reading it I would think “ALARMED THOUGHT AS I RECOGNIZE A DANGER SIGN!!!” followed by “Wait. Does this person meet any of the qualifications for actual danger? No.”

My favorite new term is “Scriptwriter.” It applies to people where you feel like it doesn’t matter what YOU say, they go right on with the script in their head. I’ve noticed this in issue-based arguments: I can argue with what someone has just stated, but it bounces right off them and they go right on with their next point. Or someone is upset with me and I think “I just need to explain/clarify what I meant and then this will all be over,” but instead everything I say adds fuel to their fire and they don’t seem to be hearing me at all. It’s a Scriptwriter: the person IS NOT hearing what you’re saying, and it’s safe to disengage from the discussion knowing nothing can be accomplished.

Now I’m going to say a whole bunch of complaining/critical things, so many that it will make it sound as if I didn’t like / don’t recommend the book. So keep in mind that I DID love the book and DO think you all should read it, and that sometimes it takes a disproportionate amount of space to mention small complaints/criticisms.

I did feel as if what he was trying to teach other people was something that came naturally to him—and that as with all things that come naturally to us, it’s hard to teach someone else. “Here’s how to draw perfect life-like portraits!” It reminded me of people who say they think people should “just be” less anxious: it first reveals to us that they don’t suffer from that problem themselves, and secondly that the problem they DO suffer from is a lack of empathy and a lack of understanding about temperament. He thinks we should just learn which situations are genuinely dangerous—but I don’t think he realizes that a good part of that may be something not everyone can acquire. He gets a little frustrated, I think, that we’re not getting it. “Just draw it so it looks exactly her nose!!”

I also thought he was lacking some science/statistics for his anecdotes. He tells us the times when he thought danger was likely and it DID happen, and times when he thought danger was unlikely and it DIDN’T happen—but he leaves out times when he thought danger was likely and it DIDN’T happen, and times when he thought danger was unlikely and it DID happen. He might think this makes him more credible (because it seems to portray a 100% success rate), but it made me question his credibility completely (because I know he CAN’T have a 100% success rate, so it makes me wonder how much he’s leaving out).

And his stories about other people’s encounters seemed to contain a self-proving “duh” element: If they felt a pang of fear and checked things out and found them okay but they weren’t okay, DUH they didn’t look hard enough. If they felt a pang of fear and thought it was real but it wasn’t, DUH they were letting their imaginations run away with them. Whatever the outcome, the implication was that if it went well it was because they were following the author’s ideas, and if it went poorly it was because they weren’t.

In particular there was a story about a mother waiting with her son pre-surgery who kept having “CANCEL THE SURGERY” flash into her mind. She ignored that, and of course her son died in surgery. But…when Elizabeth was going to have her tonsils out, I REPEATEDLY had that same thought flash into my mind, and I didn’t cancel the surgery, and Elizabeth is fine. Again, the self-proving: if her son had been fine, this anecdote wouldn’t be in the book, or would be in the book as an example of us misinterpreting anxiety as actual danger; because he died, it seems as if it proves the author’s point about listening to signals. But what percentage of the time are those signals right? A very small percentage, is my guess. And not always something we can evaluate for legitimacy: in this anecdote the doctor was incompetent, but how can I evaluate that as I wait with Elizabeth in pre-surgery? I can still kind of get his point, but it’s undermined by the absolutely zero chance that I would in this case cancel the surgery and interview the doctors (at which point they would confess to me that they were covering for another doctor’s problems), and by the high likelihood that both I and my child would be feeling/acting weird and uncomfortable in a pre-surgery situation whether the doctor was incompetent or not.

Furthermore, his lead story niggled at my mind. He tells about a woman who had been raped, who realized when her attacker closed her window that he intended to kill her (because why would he mess with her window if he was actually going to leave her unharmed as he had just claimed?). But my question is: Wouldn’t he have closed her window before raping her? (Maybe he thought people would ignore rape sounds but not killing-with-a-knife sounds?) This bothered me throughout, and I felt similar issues with other anecdotes. They seemed overly obvious—which undermined their realness. I think the author hasn’t realized what my children haven’t realized: that presenting a 100%-in-favor-of-yourself/obvious story is actually LESS believable than a mixed story where you admit some error/doubt. His stories may in fact be true just as he’s telling them, but I had to constantly battle thoughts of “Wait, that doesn’t sound quite…true.”

His attitude about violent children and children who grow up to be violent is like this: “I’m NOT saying parents are to blame for violent children…but all violent children have violent parents, and if you don’t want violent children you shouldn’t be violent to them DUH.” And the problem is that the parents who were/are violent will not be reading this and thinking “Oh my goodness! I never realized! It’s all my fault!”; and meanwhile the parents who are NOT violent to their children-who-nevertheless-turned-out-violent will take it to heart and feel even more blamed than they already feel, as well as perhaps wishing they WERE violent so they could deal out a beating or two to this guy. It reminds me of the school notices that come home sharply rebuking all of us for the actions of 1% of parents: the 1% doesn’t care and isn’t going to change their behavior because a memo tells them to, and the 99% gets hurt and upset and resentful at spanked even though they’re being good.

He also does that thing that made me reject the first book: offering an incredulous “Why oh why??” that I feel has a reasonable answer. For example, he wonders why oh why a man would carry a gun and say it was so he could help others in an emergency, but not carry a trach tube. And when the man says he could never cut into someone’s throat, de Becker mocks him for being perfectly willing to put a bullet into someone instead. But I think that IS reasonable: there is a huge difference between being willing to injure someone who’s attacking us, and being willing to injure someone in a medical crisis. I would feel comfortable using a knife to cut a rapist, but that doesn’t mean I feel comfortable performing an appendectomy or even a mole removal. These are completely different things, and it’s not fair to accuse someone of being irrational if they’re willing to do one and not the other. I get his point that we should try to rationally consider things—but it was hard to get past the way he made it seem like he was someone who seriously couldn’t tell the difference between two very different kinds of intervention to two very different kinds of people. A better example would have been to tease someone for carrying a gun but not learning the Heimlich Maneuver.

One final objection: he interviews a stalker and asks him what the stalked person should have done differently, in order to avoid being stalked. But all the other anecdotes illustrated that it doesn’t matter what the stalked person does: whatever they do, the stalker incorporates it into their excuse for stalking: “She was cold to me! She’s a monster who must be destroyed!” “She seemed to be encouraging me! She’s a tease who must be destroyed!” “She’s perfectly nice! She’s an impostor who must be destroyed!” It’s Scriptwriting again: it doesn’t matter what the stalked person does, the stalker goes on with their script.

Let’s see, is that everything? Overall: GREAT book, and I want to go work for this guy, and I kind of love him, and I think he made very good points, and I feel like he taught me some very doable and easy methods for evaluating for actual danger. I think I’ll be temporarily extra-jumpy, and only time will tell if the ideas WORK—but already I feel LESS fear rather than MORE fear. I think I’d like to own a copy of the book so that I can refer to it as needed. But I mention all my objections because I hate to think of you reading the book and thinking “She didn’t object to this kind of arrogant attitude?” “Wait, does she think the parents are to blame??” “Did she not notice how he seems to think it’s reasonable that a child who was one time shoved into a heater (perhaps by accident; it isn’t clear) would grow up to shoot his parents in the head?”

16 thoughts on “The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker

  1. bluedaisy

    Very good summary of the book. I noticed some of the same problems you mentioned but like you, still felt better off for having read it. I liked what he had to say about what we teach our children- that the “don’t talk to strangers” adage is not really the best that we can offer our children. I like the idea of helping my kids develop their own instincts. Because even if none of us have perfect instincts, I am a big believer in paying attention to my own gut feeling about something. Thanks for sharing your thoughts :)

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  2. donna

    I read this book not too long after my divorce when I was anxious about living alone with a child.

    Yes, to most of your points. I felt the book was pretty sensationalized. But I had seen the author on Oprah and I liked his main point: If you are scared, who gives a darn if you look like an idiot? Better looking like an idiot than raped and murdered. We are the only species that puts our fear instinct aside for the sake of good manners.

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  3. Joanne

    Donna, the thing about us being the only animals putting our fear instinct aside is mostly what I took away from the author’s appearance on Oprah. I think it’s so, so smart and I find myself doing it all the time.

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  4. squandra

    My post will be a disproportionate representation, too, because I love everything you said. Yay, Swistle! And thank you for doing this review.

    But I do actually like his “Why not a trach tube?” thing because — whether or not this is actually his point — I take it to mean that we ought to GET comfortable/knowledgeable with such things, at least to the degree that we’re willing to get comfortable/knowledgeable with weapons, because they are likely to be more useful than a gun. (And we may well find ourselves in a situation where our non-expert help is better than nothing.)

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  5. Judith

    I have that book and also found it mostly excellent. I like how he demonstrated when fear is reasonable and when it isn’t, and how being able to recognize the unfounded fears helps to let go of them, while being more in tune with the »real« kind of fear.

    I’d totally forgotten the trach-tube example, but I don’t remember getting Duh!-vibe from his examples (wait, the one with the kid in the hospital felt wrong for me, too – I always have a bad feeling when someone close to me has a big surgery, and they’ve all come through perfectly fine). The trach-example simply pointed out that it is irrational to think like that, but I didn’t feel he made fun of anybody. I don’t remember if he gave much back-story about it (maybe that would hav been necessary and could make it feel wrong if you didn’t have it), but being able to use a gun successfully in a dangerous situation is infinitely harder than one would think, while learning how to use a trach-tube the right way would be pretty easy (and is not comparable to an appendectomy). So, for me at least, that example still holds.

    I took it to be mostly about assumptions we make, and that we assume the actions (or preparations) we take based on those assumptions are rational, but that they aren’t because we either didn’t actually go and check if those assumptions have a base in reality, or did check but then chose to keep believing what we believe because it »feels right«. The way I understood the example it is not only about our willingness, but also about our actual ability to do something, and how we can over- or underestimate those abilities without actually realizing it, thus acting or preparing in ways that seem rational but actually aren’t.

    Just think how many people in the USA keep guns in the house to be able to protect themselves, when the numbers show that this pretty much only increases the risk of a member of the family getting hurt or killed, while not increasing protection. Yet people still do that, because they assume it will be different in their case, and because they have heard of someone somewhere who could detain a robber – numbers be damned.

    The example in the first story also seemed perfectly reasonable to me. A gunshot is infinitely louder than the other noises they made during the rape, especially since she was being held at gunpoint, so was unlikely to scream. This kind of sexual assault isn’t very noisy in itself (as is the case with drowning, by the way – we always imagine a lot of splashing and gargling, but people usually slip under water pretty quietly, which is why it can happen in the middle of a crowded swimming pool). Since she was also living several stories up there was no likelihood of anybody walking by and hearing something out of the ordinary. But a gunshot is both loud and extraordinary enough that it presented enough risk to the attacker to close an open window he noticed in passing.

    And this was the signal the victim herself identified, who was in the situation and was getting the same signals about the environment as her attacker, and not something DeBecker looked at and picked out himself, so I didn’t feel like interpreted the event in a way that was most favorable to his theories. It was the thing she himself identified as the moment where her fear went away because it switched to the realization that the situation would lead to her death if she didn’t become active in some way, which also meant that no action she could take would me more risky than doing nothing.

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  6. Judith

    Since my above comment got so long the comment box wouldn’t accept it (ahem), I have to add this here: I hope you didn’t mind me writing all tha, I absolutely got that you were mostly happy with the book and those were actually minor points to niggle at. I didn’t mean to become so detailed, but I like his book enough to think it worth to talk about this stuff.

    I’m also glad that you talk about it and recommend it, because to me it is one of the books that everybody should read (and that people who would benefit a lot from might actually stay away from because they fear it might be aggravating). So thank you for reviewing it. I always enjoy your reviews, because you are so detailed in what you like and don’t like and especially why.

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  7. Christina

    Oh! I want to read the Scriptwriter chapter. It sounds like my mother to a T.

    I grew up with many anxiety issues which affected school and relationships. Counseling, therapy, medicines, etc. were a daily part of my teenage life. I used to be a much more negative, fearful person with those “signals,” like cancel the surgery. I used to CONVINCE myself that I was saving my own life by taking the stairs instead of the elevator, and when I got up to the floor and saw the elevator was still in perfect, working order I KNEW it was b/c I did not get on it, otherwise it WOULD have broken. The same with plane trips, long car rides, etc. I think, for me, it just got to a point where I was exhausted constantly living my life with a negative outlook that every scenario was out to get me.

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  8. Matti

    I also love this book and the author. And I think that you point out a few things that bothered me as well. Though I do think that the closing of the window in the first story was definitely an indicator of violent intent on the part of the rapist. As a previous commenter stated, up till this point she had been held at gunpoint and so the rape might have been mostly quiet.

    I also have to say, in the anecdote concerning the mother thinking “Cancel the surgery,” there were a few other pieces that the author was trying to point out as in need of attention. For example, the son himself was acting much out of character, refusing to speak to the doctor at all, and thus incurring the doctor’s increasing ire. Apparently this was very out of character for the son. Also, the doctor’s entire manner was abrupt and made them uneasy. I think deBecker is not trying to place more blame on the mother (neither am I), nor is the story as presented entirely self proving. What I think he’s getting at here, is that if the mother had perhaps postponed the surgery long enough to talk to this doctor’s colleagues, immediate superior, or another authority figure at the hospital they may have uncovered the problems with the doctor that came to light later on. I think his point is that people SHOULD listen to these signals and ASK the hospital (or others in a similar position of “expertise) to PROVE their expertise and not just accept it b/c of some title or assumption on our part. A good doctor (car mechanic, contractor, teacher, caterer, whatever) should not have a problem with reasonable requests to demonstrate their competence. His earlier point, that we put too much trust in institutions (the government, the police force, security guards) and not enough in ourselves.

    I’m almost done with this book (spurred to read it by your heart thumpingly awesome earlier post) and didn’t someone mention a second book by the same author with more advice? Like you, I’m already feeling better about my own fears and capabilities.

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  9. lifeofadoctorswife

    I think I said this (probably poorly) in a response to another post, but I a) just ordered the book and haven’t read it but for snippets on Amazon and b) am going to read it nonetheless… BUT I feel like the big problem I have ALREADY, that you have made me feel justified in having, is that the book seems largely to be about determining when to listen to the anxiety and when NOT to… and that seems an impossible task! I am over anxious, so I get that being fearful of everyone in a parking garage is probably silly, and may dull my ability to sense REAL danger. But what if I feel reasonable anxiety and ignore it because I think it’s just me being over anxious? IMPOSSIBLE.

    But I am cheered by your reference to acronyms and tests and such that should help. And anything that helps me be LESS anxious will be good.

    I loved this review very much. My favorite bit was this line: “as well as perhaps wishing they WERE violent so they could deal out a beating or two to this guy.”

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  10. Doing My Best

    lifeofadoctorswife–That’s the problem I am having! I went to a homeless shelter once to deliver some things, and EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING was SCREAMING “DANGER! RUN! GET OUT OF HERE!” But it was the middle of the day, my husband was with me, and nothing bad happened, so??? It’s so hard to know when to listen.

    Swistle–Can you tell us what the signals are, or were they different for each scenario? I KNOW I should read the book myself, but I also know that I’m already pushing the limits of my anxiety with the cleaning-of-someone-else’s-house I’ve been doing lately =(.

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  11. Swistle

    Doing My Best- I erased my first reply, because I was mulling it over and realized that without the context and explanations, the list doesn’t make sense: it’s scattered all over, with totally different danger signals from a stranger out in public than from a co-worker or family member. But more importantly, a list alone INCREASES anxiety: now in addition to being anxious, you have to memorize and keep an eye out for all these SIGNALS. Within the context of the rest of the book, it’s more like “Here is the issue—but don’t worry, now that I’ve read the book, these signals will now jump out at me.”

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  12. One Ring to Rule Them All

    I read this book in college, and I STILL remember the first story and many of the things that DeBecker was teaching me as I read along. What I liked about it was that it FREED me to listen to myself and to trust myself. I have to say that I refer back to this book in my mind on a regular basis.

    I honestly think it’s made me a stronger, more alert person, even 10+ years after reading it.

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  13. Megan

    I looked for this book at the library after hearing so many people talk about it on your blog and find it enthralling! I’m telling everyone to read it . . . I work in healthcare and am having this lightbulb moment, thinking back to a couple patients who gave me the willies. I think I would respond better after reading this. I love books like this that help you understand rather then just scare/depress you.

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  14. carika

    Hi, it was a relief to read your comments. Nice insight. It’s true everything seems to prove his points, as you lay out. There’s so much of value in his books, telling people to respect true fear and act, now. Giving you signs to look out for that buy you those crucial seconds in which you can escape or avoid a situation. All that. And yet– I found myself searching “Gavin de Becker not what he seems”. Some of what he writes about violence strikes me as odd. He talks about nagging feelings– I had a few reading the book. Feels like something is up, being played, a bit. When he encourages us to believe we are all potentially horrifically violent at the core- well, sudden defense of your kid when startled by violence is just plain different than planned violence against someone you think you can overpower. That felt like “forced teaming.” And so on.

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