Teaching IMPACT skills to a group of young men who don’t really know what they are getting themselves into can feel like a wobbly tight rope walk. Young men come into our classes being told messages that haven’t been serving their safety for most of their lives and we spend much of the class breaking down and analyzing those messages. Some have been parroted to them for so long that it can be tough to melt them away. In these classes, there’s a lot of unasked questions that need to be answered and a lot of guards that need to be let down. Often, learning and growing look like finding middle ground.
“The barrier of ‘this class isn’t for me’ or ‘I can handle myself’ is a tough one to chip away at.”
Many young men feel equipped to deal with dangerous situations, even if they have no training or self-defense knowledge. I was discussing this phenomenon with a lifelong friend the other day. We talked about how, at the time, we felt invincible and like we would come out of any situation okay, and how lucky we were that a lot of the scenarios we found ourselves in didn’t turn on us. We felt protected by weapons that in hindsight were much more likely to be used on us. For us, and for many young men, the danger is part of the adventure; to such an extent that it’s not a good adventure unless something dangerous happens. This way of thinking not only makes people less safe but it also makes them more likely to escalate a situation, seeking that danger feeling.
The barrier of “this class isn’t for me” or “I can handle myself” is a tough one to chip away at. We often pose the question “where could this go wrong for me if…?” when we come up against the idea that we need to physically defend our ego or honor and not think about our safety. We discuss the social pressures that might come into play if someone is disrespecting them. Our goal is to try to give our students agency over a situation like this, so they have control over their reactions and they can choose a more calculated response that is more likely to keep them out of harm’s way and less likely to put their future in jeopardy.
As their instructor, I hope to give them strong physical self-defense techniques that they can use in worst case scenarios. However, my biggest personal goal in class is to change the way they think about safety. I want them to be able to think about the realities of physical violence in a calculated way, to have thought of some realistic outcomes before they are in a situation that could turn on them. I want them to think about the way messages about how to be sexual as a man can lead to them being sexually coercive even if that’s not what they mean to do. I want them to see escalated situations as opportunities to use de-escalation skills, not only for themselves but for other people that are vulnerable or being targeted. I want them to feel comfortable saying what they want and need to people they know and to strangers. I want them to be able to talk about the scary or traumatic things they have experienced instead of bottling up their emotions. At the end of the day, I want them to take the things that are serving them and their safety and leave the other stuff behind.
When I started my journey as a self-defense instructor, I wasn’t considering these lessons as the core of my role. I think that’s mostly because of the narrow scope through which I was looking at self-defense then. When we broaden that scope like we aim to do in our classes for young men, we can see that self-defense is not just about reacting to bad situations that someone else has put us in. Rather, it is a way of thinking that prioritizes our safety and the safety of others. It challenges us to confront norms that make harm more likely. And ultimately, at its best, it allows us to live bigger, more intentional lives, and connect to each other in healthier ways.