Attracting violence on an industrial scale
Published: Thu, 05/29/14
Geoff Thompson tells how he got into door work (we used to call it
'bouncing' but I believe the correct term today is
'door supervisor'). Geoff had major issues with fear and
he realised that his biggest specific concern was with physical
confrontation. So he decided to confront his biggest fear by
becoming a bouncer, in Coventry (Europe's most violent city) in
the 1980's (there has bee an big decline in violent crime since
then) in the city's roughest nightclubs and pubs. Geoff became
a bit of a legend as a bouncer which he immortalised in his book
'Mind My Back', which I highly recommend. The interesting
part of Geoff's story is that while he got very handy at
managing violence with even better violence he also realised that
he was creating the problem for himself. Over the 10 years Geoff
worked the doors he is supposed to have had at least 300 violent
encounters. Although the threat of violence was ever present in a
nightclub even Geoff's colleagues, a lot of whom were hardened
professionals with many year's experience, were puzzled at the
number of fights that Geoff managed to get into. It seemed that if
there was going to be trouble Geoff would be at the centre of it
somehow.
At work that was one thing but it spilt over into
'civilian' life too. In 'Mind My Back' Geoff
recounts how he got into a pretty vicious punch up at a family
christening party. A family 'friend' had a couple too much
to drink, was pestering a woman, got a bit aggressive when asked to
stop, Geoff was asked to have a 'word' with the man and one
thing led to another until this person was lying unconscious at the
bottom of the fire escape and minus several teeth. The story is
quite funny the way it is written but the serious point is made
that it was time to stop and try and work out what was going on.
Apparently it was his wife Sharon who pointed out to Geoff that he
was creating the situations with the highly aggressive energy which
radiated from him. Even if someone else was intent on violence
there is a big difference between escalating the situation by being
violent too and de-escalating the situation with a peaceful energy.
With that realisation came the beginning of the change from
legendary hard man to self-defence teacher with emphasis on
'defence against the self', eg being aware of the effect
your own energy will have on the situation.
Personally I have always known this intuitively and the period in
my life when I was attracting aggression was, thankfully, a
temporary aberration. Either way, whatever response we get from
other people in any situation it is worth asking ourselves honestly
what we are feeling inside at the same time and can we change that
feeling? It might make a bigger difference than you might think.
Can Stav training help with this process? I think so and I will be
happy to show you how on the day course on June 7th
http://www.iceandfire.org.uk/train.html
regards
Graham