Self-defense is not just physical – it’s verbal, emotional, psychological, spiritual.  A lot has to be transformed for most women before they can ever defend themselves physically.  We have to believe that we are worth defending, that defense can work, and that we can live with the consequences of setting and defending our boundaries before we can even imagine taking defensive action.  There’s a saying that change happens in this order:

 #1 Awareness

#2 Acceptance

#3 Action

My favorite advice columnist, Cary Tennis at salon.com, expresses this in a wonderful way in his response to a letter from a woman who describes being sexually harrassed by her boyfriend’s “friends.”

 I especially like the way he refers to our innate will to protect ourselves as a “pure moral reflex”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Theory, denial, self-care, training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.