General Would my vet be able to protect me from an angry crowd?

[EveHarrington]

@EveHarrington - clearly at least where @Never_falter is living - y...

It wasn't clear to me and that is why I asked the question. It's better to ask if one is unclear as to a situation as its not good to assume. I asked rather than assumed.

 

[Never_falter2]

Thanks for your answers.
Re "Germany unsafe". I do not know how safe or unsafe it really is. I know statistics about this differs a lot depending on who you ask and I am not in a position to find out which is true. There has been a rise in the crime rate lately, especially in rapes, and a even bigger rise in gang rape. All political groups agree on this, but there is no agreement on how bad it really is and what caused it. Some say crime rose only a bit and it's normal it raises and declines with time. Not sure which numbers I can trust.
There also have been a number of terrorist stabbings and in some cases western dressing women where attacked, for example in Würzburg when a terrorist first attacked Chinese tourists and later he attacked a women wearing a kneelength shirt at whom he shouted "infidel bitch". In other cases women wearing revealing clothes have been attacked from behind, kicked down stairs and so on I think this was related to the attackers idea of sexual morality, like they think a woman is not supposed to dress like this. This is not about race by the way, because some of the women have been middle eastern but dressed like westerners.

There have been a lot of "crowd related" incidents lately. I never heard of things like this happening before. To take an example of what happened yesterday. A man tried to sexually harras a woman and an of duty cop saw it and wanted to tell him off. Suddenly a group gathered around him and threw him in the ground and started stomping his head. He is in hospital with head injuries now. I hope he is okay and will not end up with PTSD.

I don't know if this crowd related incidents just did not happen before or they just were not reported, but it is scary and There have been a number of polls that show most women are scared. For example an Emnid poll showed 58 percent of women do not feel as safe as they used to, 48 percent said they avoid certain areas of their town in the evening and 16 say they carried a pepper spray when going out in the evening.

I really don't want to feel unsafe. I have always been a person with a open heart who has much trust in people and I want to keep this. I wan't to believe that humankind is good. You know, I don't want to loose this feeling, because I think once you lost that, you lost something important.

 

[Never_falter2]

@Sighs and @Friday. Thanks, it is just what needed to hear.

@Sighs: You say, vets do not freeze. Mine does when he feels overwhelmed. Yes, and I do think it could be dangerous in case of emergency, but I don't know if he would freeze in an emergency. He does freeze in case of crowds or loud noises or thinks that startle him, sometimes if he has to go trough a door.

Here is some things he sometimes does when he is stressed and I wonder if they could be dangerous:

*freeze
*hit himself
*jump up when it makes no sense, jump up to hit himself
*be unable to walk trough a door, approach door from besides. What if someone snatches me and he has to follow him trough a door?
*creep along the wall instead of entering a open space. What if someone snatches me and takes me to an open space? He has always to have something on his back, for example if we are in the restaurant he needs to have a place near the wall
*search for a chewing gum or something else, focus intensely on that, forget about everything else
*do something completely stupid and unrelated, like start doing the dishes

When he is relaxed he does not do those things, but when he stressed he does. You think when he is megastressed he would stop and focus on what is to do?

 

[Never_falter2]

Do you think I could discuss it with him or is it insulting?

 

[Never_falter2]

I have a personal alarm, which gives a shrill noise, and a tactical flashlight. That is a very strong flashlight which allows you to blind a person. My husband things that this is the best option for a woman wanting to protect herself. A pepper spray would be not a good option according to him because with the pepper sprays available here, you can only use them if an attacker is already near you and he could snatch it from you and use it against you.
Brass knuckles and so on are not allowed in Germany.

I also would not feel comfortable with owning like this. Self protection. Not sure, I am not a fighter and if I learned self protection I would give too much thought to it, you know?
I don't want to focus on perceived danger or change my life.

 

[Never_falter2]

Last paragraph was about self protection classes. Sorry. I cannot edit.

 

[Neverthesame]

be unable to walk trough a door, approach door from besides. What if someone snatches me and he has to follow him trough a door?

That would be a fear of whether there is a dangerous thing behind the door. No need to worry about it.
The only thing to worry about would be not breaking all of his knuckles whilst beating the shit out of whoever grabbed his wife.

creep along the wall instead of entering a open space. What if someone snatches me and takes me to an open space? He has always to have something on his back, for example if we are in the restaurant he needs to have a place near the wall

The fear of being snuck up on goes away when you can clearly see that it's in front of you.

*search for a chewing gum or something else, focus intensely on that, forget about everything else
*do something completely stupid and unrelated, like start doing the dishes

I doubt it will be an issue in a real emergency.
These are behaviors learned to keep from overreacting to a threat that he knows doesn't actually exist.
He feels it is there, but consciously he knows that he is afraid of nothing. So distracting himself with things like chewing gum or household chores is to break his focus on the irrational fear of false danger. To stay in control of himself because the situation doesn't warrant combat.

His wife being in real danger is a very different thing. He's not going to try to turn off or distract himself from the feeling of danger, because now it is justified. It's no longer irrational. Someone has his wife. She is in danger.
The woman he loves, the mother of his children, is in danger. Whatever he does to that person(s) that are harming you, won't be an overreaction.

He can tell the difference between a rude kid at a store, or a violent person physically assaulting his wife.
One deserves to have the shit beaten out of them, the other doesn't.
I would be far more concerned if he wasn't trying so hard to remain calm or distracted when he's out and about in everyday life.

These weird habits are not the cracks showing through his sanity. They are tools being used to maintain it.

His mind is screaming at him that he is in danger all the time. But he is aware that it's not true. He just can't get himself to ignore it.

When there really is danger, he's just going to act naturally to it. Which in the case of military trained people like your husband, is probably going to be to start fighting. For his life, your's and your children's. Because the best way to keep all them alive is to run at the danger and fight it.

At least that's what I understand about military training. Something I have seen repeated here countless times by the combat vets who post here. They fight. Hard. With all they have, all they are.
I'm sure there are exceptions, but I haven't seen any.

I hope I didn't overstep my bounds with the vets here saying all of that. Please correct me if anything I said was wrong.

 

[Never_falter2]

Like everything, everybody wrote on this thread so much. Hope I will have time to answer very soon.

 

[Deleted member 41765]

Those self-defense classes literally saved my life before and helped me prevent myself from being thrown out a window, in addition to other things.

Agree with @Casey_03. I've trained in martial arts for decades (I am also petite) and, as any martial artist knows, it's not only about strength. It's about speed and technique. Apologies for the off topic chime-in, but I feel it's important for those reading.

 

[Renestel]

I have to agree with others stating that there are many options here-self defense classes where you are taught to bash someone in the nose or groin and run, regular martial arts but I think these ladies meant don't take one and act like you can take on a gang of men, you need to really spend time on it and then the confidence to fight people much bigger than you comes, but I personally agree with the whole mentality perspective. I think it's so dangerous actively saying Im depending on my husband or someone to protect me-- its essentially in one way or another giving up your power at a level. In that statement, yes I do agree with the ladies that say, this is a scary place to be. Is he going to protect me or not. Because you gave that up. You are actively saying, I'm hoping and letting him run the show when stuff goes down. For me, I actively try to always be learning. I had my husband take me to the shooting range many times, I know how to rack, load, unload, fire and reload all of his guns. Well, what do you know, someone busts down our fence one night, runs through the yard and we opened our backdoor to see our fence bashed open. We panicked and looked through the front yard after missing him jumping through the rest of the back. We both were in the front of the yard when a cop came screaming past in his car, and my husband immediately runs over to talk to him. Well I come to, and realize, we left the back door open and our two dogs are in there. He could be in the house. I just react and ran in the house, grab his gun and throw a clip in place, and actively cleared the whole house by myself. I thank my PTSD a lot for that, it definitely chimed in to where I didn't even think, but I MORE SO thank me making a point to learn all of this and gain confidence so that in any moment, whether I am alone or if my husband gets hurt, or if we are just working as a team, I can just jump into action. I don't 100% agree that any woman can't take any man. I just don't. In America I've seen some amazing fighters in MMA where I trained for a bit. But I agree that females should take the smart before strength approach anytime they want or need. It's gotten me out of some really crazy situations.
@Never_falter - with the scary situations about rapes and gang rapes- valid fear--in that case I would absolutely buy something like pepper spray as someone suggested. Sorry it is so stressful over there.

 

[Sideways]

@Never_falter - I think that you're in the best position to know what your husband will or won't be offended by. But if it were me? I'd be pretty open to someone close to me wanting to understand how my particular ptsd symptoms impact me in different situations.

So maybe think about your idea of discussing this issue with him. If he knows that you have a concern about your safety in public (he probably does), then he may well be open to a discussion about "How does your hypervigilence impact you when you're threatened/in pubkic or if I were threatened?"

Perhaps try to avoid leaning towards suggestions that his ptsd might make him inadequate. When asking someone about a health condition they have, ptsd or anything, it's important not to turn the conversation into "This might make you inadequate, or less safe for me..." you know? Obviously he can't just get rid of his ptsd, and it would be reasonable for him to be upset if he thought that his ptsd was making him seem like an inadequate husband! It's more like a fact-finding mission: how does the hypervigilence affect him? He's in a good position to answer that question so long as it's asked with love, acceptance and an open mind.

 

[Never_falter2]

Thank you all for your answers guys. They mean a lot to me. I just needed to talk. Should I talk with him about the topic. Yes, I think I will. Any advice on how not to make it sound like he is broken as @Ragdoll Circus adviced me not to do?

Pepper spray for self protection is officially illegal in Germany. The only kind of pepper spray allowed is anti animal protection spray but I know a lot of people carry that for self protection. It has however a small radius, an attacker has to be near you so you can use it. My husband thinks that carrying pepper spray is not a good idea, because an attacker, who is already near you could snatch it from you.