Balancing the "Calm" and "Violent" Mindsets

[GRV]

There are two elements of lethal-encounter attitude and mindset that often show up in conversation which I find somewhat contradictory.

One is the idea of being "calm". This is usually used to describe people who have seen battle over and over again and have become professionals at it through experience. There is a notion that calmness allows for efficient and correct execution of technique.

The other is the idea of being "violent". There's a lot of talk about "getting violent enough quick enough", with emphasis on an unspoken understanding of what it means to truly be violent. In some sense, I feel that this is critically tied to being "emotional". To be as violent as possible, it would seem you need to get enraged, to a certain extent. Violence almost crosses the line into an emotional or psychological property. I imagine violence in ECQ situations manifesting itself in tensed muscles and rapid, strong movements.

In some sense, the emotional nature of the "violent" idea seems to be at odds with the picture painted when talking about the "calm" professional. Even in so far as how I picture their physical manifestations.

How are these reconciled? Are they reconciled?

I've slowly been coming up with my own answer, but I'm much more interested in hearing others'.

[SeriousStudent]

Paging John Hearne.......

John delivers a fascinating talk about reactions under stress. I attended the 2015 RangeMaster Conference, and was fortunate enough to listen to the entire presentation.

Hopefully he has some time to contribute his thoughts to this thread.

[Backspin]

Ideally, the two mindsets can co-exist in the moment. What allows that is proper, realistic, and intense training. So when it's time to be violent, you do so with a purpose, instead of spazzing out.

[LSP552]

Being violent doesn't have to be an overly emotional event. It's just business, and I like to use the analogy of flipping the light switch. People who get overly emotional can loose control of that switch. We need to be able to flip it to on and back to off as circumstances and environments change.

[voodoo_man]

Ive sat through a few mindset talks covering this subject.

Tom Kier discusses having a "Deescalation mindset" where you go to 100% in your mind, as in knowing, planning and sometimes even overtly or stealthy defeating retention in order to conduct violent action, but waiting for a "trigger" to act upon.

There is a lot that comes into this and Id suggest finding someone who is good at explaining it for a seminar...

[Dagga Boy]

Controlled Violence is the goal. Emotional Violence is only good when you are literally losing horribly.

[Cookie Monster]

I was told in a class once that you should be able to beat the f out of someone or kill them with a sleeping baby in your arms and not wake or disturb the baby. More of an energy/emotional thing then a physical one.

[FNFAN]

Violence:"behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something".

Synonyms: "brutality, brute force, ferocity, savagery, cruelty, sadism, barbarity, brutishness."

None of the above apply to a law enforcement use of force in my opinion. It's the application of technique in order to gain compliance. It's vitally important to be able to 'jump to warp 9" in order to overwhelm the resistance you meet -but- just as important to be able to come to a "full stop" when you've gained compliance, whatever the level of force you had to deploy to gain that compliance was.

It sounds cold, but it's really nothing personal. If a level of force has to be used it's because of the subject's decisions, and thats on them. It's my job to resolve the situation by taking reasonable and appropriate action and I will not be denied.

[Talionis]

I think most guys at a reasonably high level when it comes to applied violence (whatever the context) will be able to confirm this, but in my experience there are multiple ways of reaching the end state of "turning it up to 11". Sure, becoming enraged is one of those, but it is generally the least effective and latest to happen. I think some people are more naturally able to go high order extremely fast and others have to train for it. I haven't lived nearly as interesting a life as many here, but my experience tells me that calmness and aggression/violence are definitely not mutually exclusive.

[Dagga Boy]

It actually takes work to take the emotion out of violence. Anyone can get enraged and go high order, happens all the time. It is hard to build a switch, and to hone how to turn it on and off. There is a deep learning curve and the hard thing is getting through the learning curve without getting hurt, losing a job, or being prosecuted.

[Erick Gelhaus]

There is an interesting spin-off to this ... people maintaining 'calm' during the fight. There seems to be an expectation that people will become overly emotional rather being able to go mechanical.

One very close friend had it arise in a civil suit ... the magistrate did not think the event should have resulted in the force used because the officer maintained control over his voice during the fight. Neither his commands to the suspect nor his radio traffic revealed him to be a quivering pile of goo. The judge did not like that.

Go figure.

[1slow]

There is an interesting spin-off to this ... people maintaining 'calm' during the fight. There seems to be an expectation that people will become overly emotional rather being able to go mechanical.

One very close friend had it arise in a civil suit ... the magistrate did not think the event should have resulted in the force used because the officer maintained control over his voice during the fight. Neither his commands to the suspect nor his radio traffic revealed him to be a quivering pile of goo. The judge did not like that.

Go figure.

Judge was a twit with no sense. If the officer had been emotional, Judge would have said he was out of control.
Like a test pilot you have to be cold and methodical.
One of my mentors said " You do not have to be angry to do the work. You do the work because it is necessary."

[GRV]

It sounds like my recent thinking is in line with what's being said (or maybe I'm reading that into it):

The simultaneous "calm" and "violent" is something well described by "cold". The physical part of violence, minus the emotion.

Emotional, enraged violence is useful only in very limited circumstance, for example: in extreme close quarters when there is a large skill gap against your favor. It is the final resort, self destruct, when you are bound to lose. In all other situations, it will likely do more harm than good to performance.

[GJM]

How much of this is emotional/psychological and how much is the body's physiological response to high stress?

[Malamute]

How much of this is emotional/psychological and how much is the body's physiological response to high stress?

I'm going to venture an opinion and say its variable with different people, and with different levels of experience. Just like some get "buck fever" and get the shakes or whatever when they see game they plan to hunt, and some simply do whats needed to get the job done.

[Chance]

The simultaneous "calm" and "violent" is something well described by "cold". The physical part of violence, minus the emotion.

Darryl has used the term "controlled", and I think that's the appropriate term. Fear is something that doesn't really go away, but people can learn to better channel its effects. Lots of research in this area. Glenn put together a good reading list just the other day here (https://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php?19501-Targeting-the-Families-of-Terrorists-(split-from-the-Trump-thread)/page7&p=415928#post415928).

[Chuck Haggard]

In the LEO world the calmer the better. You see emotionally driven violence during things like the end of a pursuit, and it's often not a good thing. The "fear biters" are another area where cops get themselves into trouble, and the people on the other end are often not deserving of the violence they receive.


This officer was obviously completely emotionally driven, and out of control;

http://www.activeresponsetraining.net/the-lisa-mearkle-police-shooting?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ActiveResponseTraining+%28Act ive+Response+Training%29

[11B10]

In the LEO world the calmer the better. You see emotionally driven violence doing things like the end of a pursuit, and it's often not a good thing. The "fear biters" are another area where cops get themselves into trouble, and the people on the other end are often no deserving of the violence they receive.


This officer was obviously completely emotionally driven, and out of control;

http://www.activeresponsetraining.net/the-lisa-mearkle-police-shooting?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ActiveResponseTraining+%28Act ive+Response+Training%29

Chuck, the Mearkle case took place approx. 10 miles from where I sit. It was amazing to see opinions go against her AFTER the tasercam was made available. Even though Lisa Mearkle is a big chick, she had absolutely NO confidence in her physical ability to deal with a pretty much broken down, skinny, middle-aged druggie. You can hear the panic in her voice. I still find it hard to believe she was acquitted.

[LSP552]

In the LEO world the calmer the better. You see emotionally driven violence doing things like the end of a pursuit, and it's often not a good thing. The "fear biters" are another area where cops get themselves into trouble, and the people on the other end are often no deserving of the violence they receive.


This officer was obviously completely emotionally driven, and out of control;

http://www.activeresponsetraining.net/the-lisa-mearkle-police-shooting?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ActiveResponseTraining+%28Act ive+Response+Training%29

Very well said!

[Odin Bravo One]

JD,

I'm away from a computer for a while and only spotty Internet for the time being. If you email that question to me, I'll try to provide my $0.02.

[RevolverRob]

It actually takes work to take the emotion out of violence. Anyone can get enraged and go high order, happens all the time. It is hard to build a switch, and to hone how to turn it on and off. There is a deep learning curve and the hard thing is getting through the learning curve without getting hurt, losing a job, or being prosecuted.

Truth. Violence comes in two major forms, in my experience. Irrational, emotional, and in large doses - or - calm, measured, and a-emotional. I've seen plenty of violence and had occasion to dole some out in my day too. The only way to use violence as an effective tool is calmly, with minimal emotional input, and in a measured way.


There is an interesting spin-off to this ... people maintaining 'calm' during the fight. There seems to be an expectation that people will become overly emotional rather being able to go mechanical.

One very close friend had it arise in a civil suit ... the magistrate did not think the event should have resulted in the force used because the officer maintained control over his voice during the fight. Neither his commands to the suspect nor his radio traffic revealed him to be a quivering pile of goo. The judge did not like that.

Go figure.

Some people think if you remove emotion, fail to panic, or are simply "mechanical" you are a psychopath, particularly when the action is violence. It's often not the case, but that is a biased perception based on mass-media portrayals of violence on TV/film/news etc. It weirds some people out if you can "flip the switch" and remove emotion and simply go to action in times of high stress. My wife has seen me do it maybe three times in 9-years together. It still disturbs her and she knows that I am nearly as far from a narcissistic psychopath as one can be.

Not being a police officer, I can't advice on cultivating the "switch" for violence. But I can say that cultivating the "switch for action" can be done if one partakes in other high-risk activities. For instance...try crashing a race car a few times and you'll start to have reactions that are so calm, measured, and emotionless, people will think you've gone insane. But some people will never get there. Those are the dangerous people out there...the people who shouldn't leave the house, because they just can't figure out how to remove emotion and importantly ego from the problem.

-Rob

[scw2]

JD,

I'm away from a computer for a while and only spotty Internet for the time being. If you email that question to me, I'll try to provide my $0.02.

Depending on what you share, would this be something you'd allow JD to share with the class? Understand if there is anything in there you don't want posted.

[David S.]

redacted.

[GRV]

In the LEO world the calmer the better. You see emotionally driven violence during things like the end of a pursuit, and it's often not a good thing. The "fear biters" are another area where cops get themselves into trouble, and the people on the other end are often not deserving of the violence they receive.


This officer was obviously completely emotionally driven, and out of control;

http://www.activeresponsetraining.net/the-lisa-mearkle-police-shooting?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ActiveResponseTraining+%28Act ive+Response+Training%29

The over the top cases are generally identifiable and clearly "bad". I think it's the middle of the road example cases that are much more harmful from a training perspective. That is, the ones where people are partly rational and partly emotional, where it's hard to tell the good and bad apart, and where numerous bad actions don't end badly for them.

From my own perspective, I think a lot of the language people use when talking about how to handle defense/UoF situations paints the wrong picture. I think a lot of the "at least condition yellow", "violent enough quick enough", and associated language has a high probability of being misunderstood and misapplied. The ideas are good, but I think there's a lot of context missing. Additionally, having participated in a fair deal of training drills intended to provoke a stressful response, I don't think trainers spend enough time correcting the stress response. It generally seems like they see the quasi-emotional stress response, consider it an indicator of success of the drill design, and then just say "see, that's what it's like" instead of explaining and demonstrating what a better reaction would have been. There's a tendency to brush it off as an automatic, uncontrollable response, even if that's not what they explicitly say.

The bigger point buried in there is that we have so many videos and examples of the wrong thing to do, but we have few if any videos or examples of the right thing. Even any UoF videos of "right" actors are only showing the total shitshow scenario. We have very very few examples looking at scenarios where right people did all the right things and things resolved without going to shit.

I believe that mimicry is a big part of the human learning cycle, which makes all of the above particularly dangerous.

Personally, thinking back to real situations I've been in, in many ways I think my natural response has been pretty good for a very long time. Since getting more involved in the training community, I think I've misunderstood how one "should" act, when in reality what I've done automatically for years was right to begin with. Of course, having said that, I've also learned a lot of good lessons from the training community that have improved my natural responses in absolute ways. The thing is, most of those have been from experiential training, not from reading about stuff. On the other hand, I've found that after figuring things out, going back an rereading old stuff has often unearthed it in a new light.

[Odin Bravo One]

Depending on what you share, would this be something you'd allow JD to share with the class? Understand if there is anything in there you don't want posted.


That's fine, the only reason is my phone is all I have for Internet for right now and I'm not typing a response to a question like that with my thumbs. I'm moving later this week and I hope the have better internet access where I'm going.

[SLG]

I'm reading into the original question, but some of this comes from Jeff Cooper's oft stated idea that you should become angry when attacked, and use that to win. Anger, according to Cooper, was the other half of fear, and if you can turn your fear into anger, you will do much better. I don't know if that is technically correct or not, but I think it is "true enough." The main thing that Cooper was getting at though, was that USUALLY, it was the people without experience who needed that mental trick to "flip the switch" from, inactive fear, to an active, useful response. It was designed, IMHO, to allow people to begin to take action when they might not have been doing so otherwise. Once you have some experience, I find that people are much better at knowing when to go, and how to go, so that mental trick is not needed as much. Kind of like, "focus on the front sight." If you can shoot at a high level, subconsciously, you don't need to tell yourself to focus on the front sight. If you are falling apart, and not getting the hits, then a mental note to focus on the front sight, might get you back in the fight and scoring hits. One of my mentors described this in one of his early fights. He was missing with his handgun, and so he told himself to focus on the front sight. The fight ended well shortly after that.

I'm very curious to read what Sean thinks about this, as he describes these things very well. My opinion is in line with many others already presented, which is that controlled, non emotional violence is the goal. I'm not a sociopath, and I don't enjoy hurting people at all. I do enjoy winning though, and if you are trying to hurt me or mine, I will win, regardless of what that means to your end state.

[GRV]

[...] USUALLY, it was the people without experience who needed that mental trick to "flip the switch" from, inactive fear, to an active, useful response. It was designed, IMHO, to allow people to begin to take action when they might not have been doing so otherwise. Once you have some experience, I find that people are much better at knowing when to go, and how to go, so that mental trick is not needed as much.

EXACTLY. I wanted to say that in my last post but didn't get to it.

I think the danger is that if you already have a proactive, defensive mindset, and you try to heed this advice without understanding who and what it is aimed at, you run a high risk of becoming overly aggressive and instigative.

[BaiHu]

I've mainly been lurking this thread due to my lack of professional BTDT, but I feel like weighing in. Feel free to critique.

To people who see cold, detached, violence from the "good guy" corner, as bad, I'd ask them to consider the roll of a doctor.

Cutting into a human being and rearranging the "machinery" is not your average occurrence. So the average person (without training-the key here) would either be incapable of doing such a thing or emotionally stressed/taxed by a large degree and therfore be bad at it. Lastly, the after effects would most likely linger longer and more intensely.

A trained doctor would simply do the job, grab a bite to eat and go on their merry way.

Similarly, someone trained in the understanding of violence, with the knowledge/skill set of how to stop said violence, will look very much like a doctor removing cancer.

The twist, I'd say, is that if the doctor or "good guy" were actually a "bad guy", most people would not see the difference without a great deal of context.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[Wondering Beard]

I'm reading into the original question, but some of this comes from Jeff Cooper's oft stated idea that you should become angry when attacked, and use that to win.

I believe anger, well used, is fuel but the thinking mind remains in control.

[JustOneGun]

The other is the idea of being "violent". There's a lot of talk about "getting violent enough quick enough", with emphasis on an unspoken understanding of what it means to truly be violent. In some sense, I feel that this is critically tied to being "emotional". To be as violent as possible, it would seem you need to get enraged, to a certain extent. Violence almost crosses the line into an emotional or psychological property. I imagine violence in ECQ situations manifesting itself in tensed muscles and rapid, strong movements.

.

The idea of being violent enough quick enough for the civilian is often different than the LEO and starts with book knowledge.

Many officers don't use the appropriate level of force because they are more afraid of their departments reaction to the media driven event than they are of the actual event. Civilians often don't get violent enough quick enough due to lack of knowledge of the law. They simply don't know when it is legal to use a certain level of force. This is how many ECQ incidents happen, warning shots and how we end up shooting at fleeing subjects. They saw it happening and just didn't react as the law allows them to.

With that in mind I believe it is more about not knowing when to throw that mental switch appropriately that then drives uncontrolled emotional reactions in many of the people we see.