THE GIFT OF FEAR

"This book can save your life." Gavin De Becker

"[It] should be read by everyone who wants to triumph over fear."  Scott Gordon, Chairman of the Domestic Violence Council

I read this book after listening to an interview Mr. De Becker gave on the TODAY sand OPRA WINFREY shows. " Every story in the book is true. Men in all parts of the world are more violent than women. For this reason, the language in the book is gender-specific to men," notes De Becker.

His first example, and an incident he refers to many times in this book involves a woman named Kelly, who moves up the stairs to her apartment. She discovers that her door is unlocked: "the neighbors don't get it, she thinks. But carrying two bags of groceries, she is thankful she doesn't have to fish her keys out of her purse. She locks the door after she returns to her car to retrieve more groceries. As she approaches the fourth floor, one of her grocery bags breaks open, and cans roll down the stairs. 

A man approaches her; his arms are filled with cans. He told her he was going to the fourth floor as well. Her immediate reaction was apprehension, but he seemed so nice and helpful. He noticed cat food in one of the bags. He told her that if she had a hungry cat in her apartment, he would offer to carry the cat food in her apartment after she unlocked the door. She thanked him and hoped he would leave.  He promised her he would leave, but he didn't.

Kelly suffered a rape during a three hour attack. She admits that she found out later how he stabbed another woman to death. Kelly was twenty-seven years old at the time of the attack. She was a counselor for disturbed children and was unable to go back to work. When she met with De Becker, she told him that intuition had saved her life. When he went to the kitchen to have a drink, she escaped. She remembered how he had closed the window. She realized he had done that to keep the noise from other people.  Because Kelly had courage and followed her intuition, she survived.

De Becker notes that "more people were killed in the Viet Nam war than Americans who died from gunshot wounds. . . .Americans murder rate is ten times worse than that of other Western countries . . . . Nineteen children died in the Oklahoma bombing, but seventy children died that same week at the hands of a parent . . . four million children were abused in the year before, not an unusual occurrence."

De Becker relates how he counsels people who are concerned about their safety or have suffered violence by others. He asks them if they had any intuition or noticed subtle warnings.

He discusses the violence he and his mother suffered at the hands of his stepfathers and how his mother tried to commit suicide. He says, "his ghosts had become his teachers."

Gavin De Becker designed the MOSAIC assessment system designed to screen threats to Supreme Court justices. He trained hundreds of New York police detectives how to assess domestic violence. He trained those in government agencies, including the CIA. His other clients are prosecutors, corporations, movie stars, athletes, recording artists, college students and many more.

Fear and intuition help people because of their survival instincts. They sometimes unconsciously understand signals that are threats. De Becker tells clients to "listen to yourself . . . predict the danger you are in by noticing clues such as understanding that perpetrators may look like ordinary persons, such as Ted Kraczynski who became a brutal serial killer. Neighbors thought that he was normal and reporters thought so, too.

De Becker devotes an entire section of a chapter to charm and niceness.  Children are lured by strangers who offer them gifts, adults ignore the signals of strangers who approach them and men who tell them that you are too snobbish to talk to them, so you talk to them to prove that you are friendly.

Different categories of perpetrators are outlined so people can recognize the signs This 400 page best seller, trains readers to use common sense and feelings of fear to survive violent attacks.  Recognized as the leading expert on violent behavior, he trains how to protect themselves..

Read this book, buy it for family member, and suggest it to friends and acquaintances.  The information in this text may save their lives.