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About LinkBacksThe answer to the question "how do we know we won't freeze up" is - you won't know until it happens but you must train your mind!
Personally I like the saying: "The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war"
This is a discussion on How do we know we won't freeze up? within the Concealed Carry Issues & Discussions forums, part of the Defensive Carry Discussions category; The answer to the question "how do we know we won't freeze up" is - you won't know until it happens but you must train ...
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The answer to the question "how do we know we won't freeze up" is - you won't know until it happens but you must train your mind!
Personally I like the saying: "The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war"
EDC - S&W M&P .45
"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take." Thomas Jefferson
http://www.gunrightsreport.com
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I believe in running through scenerios in my head and making the call before hand. Instead of deciding "is this ok?" on the spot, think it through.
What will cause you to draw your weapon? Will you wait until you threatened, or when you feel threatened? Are two men asking you to give them a cigarrete with their hands in their pockets enough for you to put your hand on the grip and ready yourself?
What will cause you to fire at another human? Will you instanty fire if you see a gun? Without hesitation, what will make you fire that weapon? When is your no brainer reflex going to be SHOOT NOW.
How many shots will you fire? Two? Six? What?
Will you say something to the BG if forced to draw on him? What would you say to let him know that his best option is to run like hell and not look back?
"Stop or I will shoot"? "I am not afraid to kill you"? "Get away or you are dead"? What will you say?
My GLOCK goes BANG every time!
In the abstract, I doubt seriously if I would say a word as that would be a wasted motor and sensory skill.
“Monsters are real and so are ghosts. They live inside of us, and sometimes they win.”
~ Stephen King
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You bring up a good point. I already know from past experience that I probably won't freeze up, but unless you've already been in that situation it's hard to tell. Even if you have been in that situation, it's no absolute guarantee of how you will react in the future.Originally Posted by 1911luver
In my humble opinion, preventing freeze up is a combination of training and mindset. The training gives you the confidence to know that you can use your weapon to defend yourself, but you also have to be mentally prepared to pull that trigger and possibly take another person's life.
While I hate to quote movie lines as any sort of example, in the movie The Outlaw Josey Wales, the charactor played by Clint Eastwood said, "Now remember, when things look bad and it looks like you're not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. 'Cause if you lose your head and you give up then you neither live nor win. That's just the way it is." That pretty much sums up the proper mindset part of the issue.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. ~ Albert Einstein
Sig P229 DAK - .40 S&W
Ruger SP101 - .357 Mag
I believe any number of things can contribute as to whether a person will freeze or not at the moment of truth.
One factor I truly believe is a person's relationship with God. I'm not talking about blind faith or a simple belief in a higher deity, but what is your relationship with the Lord. Are you prepared if you are called home today or are you truly afraid of dying?
Another factor is training and confidence in your skills. It is true that in a crisis, the brain will default to it's level of prior training. If you are not trained and have nothing ready to offer by way of counter attack, your brain has nothing left to default to except to freeze, or panic.
Another factor is prior performance in similar or high stress crisis situations in the past. If you have very few high stress crisis situations where you have been forced to perform in during in your life, you have less likelihood performing during that rare, once in a lifetime crisis situation.
Now, there is all kinds of anecdotal examples of people performing above and beyond despite having little or no training and just as many examples of the opposite. Where people who have performed heroic feats of courage in times past, have unexpectedly froze up and basically became catatonic in the heat of battle.
So, bottom line... no one is going to be 100% for sure how they will respond, however, I believe one can have an insight as to how they will respond based on their training, mindset, relationship with the Lord, and past performances.
-Bark'n
Semper Fi
"The gun is the great equalizer... For it is the gun, that allows the meek to repel the monsters; Whom are bigger, stronger and without conscience, prey on those who without one, would surely perish."
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Best answer I can give:
BTDT and I am still here! Did I lose sleep for years and wake up with screaming nightmares, Yes!
I can say that before I always talked tough and wish now that I had not.
You can train and prepare as best as possible but, until that critical half second that you have to act you truly do not know how you will react!
I well and truly thought that I had made my decision years before and found I was wrong! No one can say whether they will or not! All you can do is prepare and train as best you can!
As a corollary thought, how do you know when you will fall in love?
Neither question can be answered until afterward!
William Wallace
Do not stand between Me and Mine!!
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You say "if we freeze up--god forbid". There is always the "what if" but situational awareness and remaining very very "unmacho" will get you further than the potential for the 'what if". You run away from confrontation--you do not stand in front of it or go towards it. I have said this before, but I am 68 years old having lived most of my life in urban NYC and NJ, not exactly the garden of eden. I have NEVER been put into a situation where the need for a firearm has ever crossed my mind. Only in the last 2 years have I ever even touched a firearm and now have several along with a CCWP. There is always a "what if" but it has more to do with these forum threads than real life, IF, and I stress IF, you stay very aware at all time, and you clearly understand your limitations with your firearm (and you had better know this because hesitation and forgetting what you practiced will bite you badly) and the firearm's limitations itself. You do not go where you suspect trouble, you always look ahead, you are aware of everything around you at all times and this whole "what if" becomes the stuff of legends on this forum. Some may disagree but I'm just sayin.
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1) Be honest with yourself... How have you acted in the past.
2) Practice until it becomes 2nd nature.
This is an excellent post. We are about the same age. I too spent a great deal of my time in NYC, an urban setting "not exactly The Garden of Eden." As you say, if you stay very aware and don't go where you will find trouble, most of the scenarios talked about here are unlikely rare events.
Still, the question by the OP is valid. It can be phrased a bit differently than "how do I know I won't freeze." It can be rephrased,
"how do I know I'll make the right decision and do whatever needs to be done--flee, stand, shoot?"
The answer was suggested by Rebel Rabbi-- you look at the other decisions you have made in your life. You look at other emergencies you have handled, such as a near calamitous auto accident.
My own personal fear in these matters is not that I will freeze but that I will react from "raw fear" instead of "calm." Fear clouds judgment. Going back to the impending auto accident analogy, a firm belief that you are about to be killed can allow you to remain calm. It is a paradox, but that is how it works for lots of folks.
E.g., Think about the pilot who landed a commercial jet on the Hudson river. I'm sure he "knew" he was about to die but that fact enhanced his ability to fly and not the other way around.
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Although I have never had bullets fired at me, and hope the day never comes that I do, I have had many occasion to go in harm's way and the best way I could describe it is this...
You'll know when you get there.
When you open the door to the bedroom on the second floor at 2:00 in the morning in the dark, the heat, and the smoke, and the devil climbs out the door, across the ceiling and down your back to take a big bite out of your keister, you're either the type who says "I OWN you!" or the type who says "I'll be back later...".
Training and mindset both go hand-in-hand. If you don't have one or the other, then it just doesn't work. You can be the most trained person in the world, but when the door opens up, that training is meaningless if you're jumping over the top of me to get back out the front door. You have to have that "Bulletproof Mind" AND the training to do what you need to do when it needs to be done.
Whether you're going into combat, going into a structure fire, or simply being the "in the wrong-place at the wrong-time" armed Joe, fear is going to be your biggest enemy. Don't let anyone tell you that they wouldn't have any fear in any of those situations. They'd be lying. It's the mindset and the training that helps you rise above the fear and get the job done. Fear is going to be there. If you train consistantly and keep a good mindset you'll have plenty of time to take care of business and be scared later once the battle's over, the fire's out, or you're the one left standing.
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear." - Mark Twain
Firefighter/EMT
"You've never lived until you've almost died. For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the protected will never know" - T.R.
<----My LT was unhappy that I did not have my PASS-Tag at that fire. But I found the body so he said he would overlook it. :)
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One simple question to ask yourself. " Are you going home to your family or is your family going to make funeral arrangements for you? "
I AM GOING HOME!!!!!
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This I agree with. I've been in different emergency situations. Some I reacted well, with calmness and handled it. Others, I panicked. I lost it.
Training, mind-set and a good dose of prayer, I hope, will condition for those life or death situations.
In order to avoid the 'freeze'; we have to have an idea of what we're going to do, before the situation arises.
Trust in God and keep your powder dry
"A heavily armed citizenry is not about overthrowing the government; it is about preventing the government from overthrowing liberty. A people stripped of their right of self defense is defenseless against their own government." -source
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Many assume that a person is as likely to freeze and be incapable of defense as anything else.
I'm of the opinion that you won't know until you know, but that any attack or terrible situation in your prior history can be a strong indicator. If you've been attacked previously and have experienced the raw, exposed emotions and chemical dump (of adrenaline, etc) involved, you've got a fairly good idea of what's likely.
Though, as some have pointed out, each situation can be different. Prior response isn't necessarily the way you'll react in future to even a similar situation.
I have been attacked on a couple of occasions, though not with firearms involved. I prevailed in each instance because of my strong, determined response to the attack. I have a fairly accommodating nature, but there is also an absolute brick wall "out there" beyond which I won't allow someone to push me. While I cannot be certain, I am reasonably sure that I'll be one ugly son of a gun in such a situation of self-defense, refusing to go down without a fight.
Your best weapon is your brain. Don't leave home without it.
Thoughts: Justifiable self defense.
Explain: How does disarming victims reduce the number of victims?
Reason over Force: The Gun is Civilization (Marko Kloos).
NRA, GOA, OFF, ACLDN.
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Do you guys feel like people freeze at the worst moment due to lack of training,or poor mind set? As is in they don't practice enough with their side arm and they don't have the proper mind set going into it? So I guess I'm saying that given I've never been to a school like gunsite yet given what I've stated here am I prepared for a confrontation?
__________________1911luver
^^^^No,
I believe it will be because someone honors life and in the heat of the moment, depending on the circumstances,(do they have a fomidable weapon?, is one of your loved ones caught up in the drama, and endangered?,ETC,,,,,,)
may hesitate and not immediately pull the trigger
We never do know.
But I believe if you train, you are much more likely to fall in the category of those folks we constantly reaqd about he suddeenly became heroes. "I'm no hero, I just did what I had to do." "My training just kicked in." We have read that countless times over the years.
Serious training and meaningful visualization tends to lead to performance.
Lack of training and living in a Peter Pan world tends to lead to vapor lock.
__________________bandolero
I don't know if I neccesarily agree with that 100%.
If you ever remember reading about someone jumping into raging, rushing floods , and saving someone, they did not neccesarily train to go jumping into raging waters, they just did it because at that moment in time, it, to them seemed like the thing to do to preserve that person in needs life.
.....oneshot
Sixto for President!
cupcake
^^^^and ccw9mm for his V P^^^^^
oneshot
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1911luver
I'm far from a pacifist but I'm not a person who WANTS to kill another human being,I don't think any rational person is. That being said I have the mind set that I WILL defend my life and that of my loved ones by any and all means at my disposal. I've even discussed this with my priest and he concurred that self defense is not murder,under gods law. I feel if someone attacks me and tries to take my life I will defend myself to the best of my abilities. This thread is very informative and also gives a lot of food for thought,I'm glad i started it.
The object is not to kill, but to stop the threat. If the perp happens to die then so be it. I see that you are religious...the commandment translates to "thou shall not murder", it is not "thou shall not kill"...BIG difference.
Mindset, preperation, awareness, and knowledge are your greatest assets for survival.
^^^^^^^^^^^this is correct^^^^^^^^
In Bold
I have no extensive training insofar as any formal SD classes, As of yet.
Money being the primary reason, but believe that I will do what would be neccesary to defend against evil,
If something "goes without saying," why do people still say it?
If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
Washington didn't use his freedom of speech to defeat the British, He shot them!
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." -- Ernest Benn
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I have seen people freeze up and I have seen people do some very heroic things. They all had close to the same level of training. I have also personally done both. I think the key factor has already been said, do you really believe that if you do not act you or someone you care about will die. The first time I froze up was not an immediate life or death situation. It could have been bad and perhaps I would have acted differently, but it wasnt and I didnt. The first time I was put in a situation where I was talking to God, I reacted as anyone would hope to. Training is great and when you do go into fight or flight you will fall back on that, but if your fight or flight mechanism is never triggered and you dont have a plan you will freeze.
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