After Sexual Assault – Establishing Personal Physical Safety (pt 2)

Recovery from, or prevention of, sexual assault - this is our concern, in this pair of videos. As my blog co-author, Michele Rosenthal, has told us, "‘self-efficacy’ refers to one’s ability to feel ‘effective’", and achieving that must be a part of your recovery or prevention project. She also referred us to psychologist Albert Bandura's assertion that self-efficacy derives from one's ability to feel confident in specific situations.

How to Defend Your Personal Boundaries

In part one, I noted that becoming effective in the face of potential sexual assault seriously challenges a woman, because when young men are learning assertion, aggression, and combat skill growing up, young women are learning almost exactly the opposite sort of skills. In other words, as I put it, "you're the wrong person for the job" of self-defense. However, when the time comes, the responsibility will be yours. What can you do? I stated that you will need to:

1. get a qualified consultant
2. learn how to prevent overt conflict
3. respond to the fact of risk in your life by acting decisively to reduce that risk

All this bring us to crux of the matter. In rock climbing, the "crux" of the climb is the hardest part, the part one must most prepare for, and get past, else your climb is over. In part two of this video, we will face that crux: dealing with overt aggression. When calculated avoidance fails, things get physical. What will you do? Be warned - this won't be "nice". But then, we're not dealing with tea manners here. We're dealing with being effective in defending your boundaries, in the face of a concerned invasion effort. If you're truly effective in dealing with this, you won't miss the "nice" part. There will be time for that later. But now it's time to face the dragon. We have work to do.

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