The Gift of Fear is a home, school, street, and workplace survival guide; available at countless retail locations or from your local library.
Or, read the book for free if you’re an Amazon Kindle Unlimited subscriber.
Or, perhaps best yet, watch up to eight and one-half hours of The Gift of Fear Master Class videos; no subscriptions, credit card numbers, or anything else required. I watched all thirteen video classes, 511 minutes’ worth, and there was no request for payment. I looked for the catch, but there was none. Gavin de Becker sincerely wants to help people.
I’m not an affiliate of Gavin de Becker or any of his companies, and I don’t get paid if you buy his book or watch his Master Class videos based on the book, The Gift of Fear. However, Mr. de Becker excels at showing people how to predict and avoid violence, which coincides with the intent of PsychopathSavvy.com; to identify and avoid predators or heal from their attacks.
First published in 1997, The Gift of Fear has sold millions of copies, been translated into more than twenty-five languages, and remains one of the best books ever written about how to stay safe from violence. And you can read the first 20 to 30 pages for free on Amazon to see if you even like the book. Or, as I said above, Kindle Unlimited Members can read the entire book for $0.00 as part of their monthly subscription. I’m not suggesting that you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited for $11.99 per month, just that it’s an option. But if you read the book, regardless of the format or purchase price (or wait time at your local library), you’re in for a superb experience.
You can see and listen to Mr. de Becker share survival strategies with former trauma victims in his 13-segment video series, The Gift of Fear Master Class. Whereas the book covers a broad range of violence prediction and prevention, the Gift of Fear Master Class videos are more specific to women protecting themselves from men. And since many victimizations are unpreventable no matter how well we train ourselves, the Master Class videos also concentrate on healing. The Master Class comprises 13 video segments, totaling eight and one-half hours of viewing, free to watch, study, and repeat.
Mr. de Becker has aced the school of hard knocks and makes his and many others’ horrible experiences vicariously available to you. That is, you don’t have to see a man shot and another beaten and kicked into unconsciousness, or see a friend struck near lethally in the face and head with a steel rod, or see your mother become a heroin addict, or see your sister beaten, or get beaten yourself for more than half your life, as Gavin did, all before the age thirteen, to benefit from his hard-won expertise.
Through his lifelong analyses of his and others’ experiences with violence, de Becker teaches us to tune into the signals that presage violence. He and his firm have performed threat assessment and violence protection for the U.S. Supreme Court, the CIA, numerous celebrities and heads of state, and thousands of others. De Becker is a master at danger assessment and protection. But the best is that he provides the means to do your own risk assessment and evasion.
The book and Master Class videos will teach you to distinguish between commonplace anxiety and imminent danger signals. But Gavin doesn’t stop there. He’s created a computerized domestic violence threat assessment service that you can use for free—right now. If you’re an oldster like me, you may have already heard of it. Gavin de Becker and Oprah Winfrey collaborated in 2010 to make the MOSAIC Method for Domestic Violence situations available to the general public. This free service is based on similar (but paid) programs to protect congressmen, Supreme Court Justices, and other elements of the public sector.
Here’s how the free MOSAIC Method for assessing domestic violence situations works: Go to www.mosaicmethod.com and follow the prompts. You will input essential information (highly safeguarded), and the computer-generated program (MOSAIC) will effectively predict whether your domestic situation might escalate into great harm or even death. Your personalized threat assessment—based on thousands of real-life scenarios and how they worked out—could be an eye-opener that will prompt you to lifesaving action. To alert a friend or loved one, input their domestic history and share your findings with them, but always follow the prompts to keep this process secret from the aggressor.
It’s important to note that the MOSAIC Method for Domestic Violence accommodates input for either male or female offenders. Although biological and cultural factors and reported assaults tip the scales (heavily) toward male-committed violence, Mr. de Becker also provides prediction tools for female-committed violence.
It’s my opinion that none of us is immune from questionable behavior. For example, I engaged in overtly criminal behavior for many decades. And now, I’m trying to protect people from the same violence I used to dish out. You can read the fictionalized version of how I was forcibly enlightened in my Memoir of a Repentant Psychopath, available on Amazon.
But here’s the takeaway: no matter how badly you get beaten down, don’t let anybody destroy your will to live! Sometimes you’ve gotta fight for your right just to breathe; I’ve been there. Find somebody to listen to your plight and help if you’ve got a predator circling and gnawing at the edges of your life. If you’re in a deadly situation, and they’ve got their fangs in deep, use the hotlines and help resources on the PsychopathSavvy.com home page.
If you’re being physically or emotionally abused, regardless of gender, age, or time in the relationship, I strongly urge you to see Gavin de Becker’s Gift of Fear Master Class videos. They’re free, and you don’t have to watch all thirteen segments to begin figuring out a plan to save yourself and maybe others.
Please send me your story if you want to be heard or have ideas for avoiding and surviving predators’ attacks. I believe in putting ones suffering into words. It lets off pressure from the inside and keeps a person from going mad.
Lastly, I’m not a religious man, but Godspeed, anyway. I’ve heard it said there aren’t any atheists in foxholes in wartime. And sadly, that’s what predators make of life.
Robert Red Act