📅 9 May 2025 • 📖 8 min read
Have you ever had an uneasy feeling while entering a place on “that” day? Or, felt suddenly unsafe when a stranger’s perfume swept by you on the subway?Maybe something stopped you from going on a third date with this person? Or it felt awkward when this nice person promised something you hadn’t asked them to?
We’ve all been in situations that didn’t feel completely safe, and the only thing that keeps us from getting hurt is the instinct we call fear.
Gavin de Becker’s book, The Gift of Fear: Surviving Signals That Protect Us from Violence, tells us about the life-saving signals your body sends before your mind can process danger. Violence and abuse happen in patterns, what de Becker calls “pre-incident indicators” (PINS).
And those signals are almost always right. Your initial reaction to someone is more reliable than your reasoned analysis.
“You have the gift of a brilliant internal guardian that stands ready to warn you of hazards and guide you through risky situations.”
Your Fear-Intuition Is Telling You Something
Gavin de Becker is sure: Your fear-intuition is the best safeguard against danger.
The intuition of fear, when properly interpreted, could save our lives. True fear, that visceral, immediate signal that something isn’t right, may not come with defined lines, but ignoring it can be fatal.
De Becker articulates this distinction clearly:
“Real fear is a signal intended to be very brief, a mere servant of intuition. But though few would argue that extended, unanswered fear is destructive, millions choose to stay there. They may have forgotten or never learned that fear is not an emotion like sadness or happiness, either of which might last a long while. It is not a state, like anxiety. True fear is a signal that sounds only in the presence of danger, yet unwarranted fear has assumed a power over us that it holds over no other creature on earth.”
This genuine fear serves as our internal alarm system. Evolution gave us this gift to detect threats that our conscious mind might miss or dismiss. Our ancestors who ran when leaves rustled, without waiting to see if it was a saber-tooth or the wind, lived.
De Becker reminds us: “Intuition is always right in at least two important ways; It is always in response to something. It always has your best interest at heart.”
Unfortunately, we have been taught to ignore this very survival mechanism.
The Danger of Politeness
Gavin de Becker says, a big part of personal safety is knowing the difference between being good and being nice.
Mostly, charming people don’t have sinister intentions. But criminal minds can use charm and nice behavior as a powerful tool to disable your intuition. That’s what psychopaths do.
When De Becker talks about how social conditioning can hurt our survival instincts, he is very direct:
“We must learn and then teach our children that niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision, a strategy of social interaction; it is not a character trait. People seeking to control others almost always present the image of a nice person in the beginning. Like rapport-building, charm and the deceptive smile, unsolicited niceness often has a discoverable motive.”
We teach children to be polite, accommodating, and to avoid making others uncomfortable. This very teaching can become dangerous.
- When we’re asking children to be nice, we’re teaching them to ignore that nice behavior of others can hide danger.
- Social pressure to be polite and accommodating, particularly for women, can mute the life-saving warning signals that could save us.
The takeaway: Nice behavior is a red flag. People trying to be nice to you may not be really nice. Teach kids to be good people, not just how to act nicely.
Pre-Incident Indicators (PINs)
“Pre-incident indicators” are specific behavior patterns that invariably indicate bad intention and future aggression. The presence of PINs often precedes physical aggression and violent acts.
7 Pre-Incident Indicators (PINS) from The Gift of Fear:
- Forced Teaming: This is when a person implies they have a common ground with their chosen victim. They use a premature “we” to establish a shared purpose or predicament. They can say, “We’re both in the same boat here,” or “We don’t need to talk outside… Let’s go in.”
- Charm and Niceness: This is being polite and friendly to a chosen victim to manipulate him or her by disarming their mistrust. Criminals use charm as a deliberate strategy to defuse the victim’s warning signals.
- Too Many Details: Providing unnecessary information to establish credibility or fill the silence. This is especially true if a person is lying. They will add excessive details to make themselves sound more credible to their chosen victim.
- Typecasting: A mildly critical remark or insult thrown at the victim to start a conversation and prove the insult to be wrong. For example: “Oh, I bet you’re too stuck-up to talk to a guy like me,” or “You’re probably too busy to help.”
- Loan Sharking: Giving unsolicited help or favor to the chosen victim to make them feel indebted and obliged to return the favor in some way. This is similar to the foot-in-the-door technique, which starts with a small, easy-to-agree-to request that, once complied with, is followed by increasingly larger requests.
- Discounting the Word “No”: Refusing to accept your rejection or boundaries is a critical warning. De Becker says, “‘No’ is a word that must never be negotiated, because the person who chooses not to hear it is trying to control you.”
- The Unsolicited Promise: An “unsolicited promise” is a promise to do (or not do) something when no such promise is asked for. They may volunteer a commitment without your asking for any. When someone says, “I promise I’ll leave you alone after this” or “I promise I won’t hurt you,” they’re talking about your unexpressed worries. This shows they are aware of your unease and are trying to manage it in advance.
“The unsolicited promise is one of the most reliable signals (of hidden agendas) because it is nearly always of questionable motive.” — Gavin de Becker
The Different Fears of Men and Women
De Becker highlights a profound asymmetry in how different genders experience fear:
“Most men fear getting laughed at or humiliated by a romantic prospect while most women fear rape and death.”
This stark contrast illuminates why the same behaviors might be interpreted very differently depending on gender.
What might seem merely annoying or disappointing to a man can register as potentially life-threatening to a woman, not because of paranoia, but because of practical risk assessment based on lived reality.
Breaking the Cycle of Unwanted Pursuit
De Becker offers particularly valuable insights for young women dealing with persistent unwanted attention:
“There’s a lesson in real-life stalking cases that young women can benefit from learning: persistence only proves persistence—it does not prove love. The fact that a romantic pursuer is relentless doesn’t mean you are special—it means he is troubled.”
This reframing challenges the romantic notion that relentless pursuit demonstrates devotion. Instead, it recognizes such behavior as a warning sign of someone who prioritizes their desires over another’s boundaries.
The Myth of Universal Reactions
When considering how to handle potentially dangerous situations, de Becker cautions against a common assumption:
“Believing that others will react as we would is the single most dangerous myth of intervention.”
This insight applies not only to predicting a potential aggressor’s behavior but also to how bystanders might respond in crisis situations.
We cannot assume that others share our values, perceptions, or responses. This forms a critical understanding when developing safety strategies.
Managing Fear vs. Being Ruled by It
A critical distinction in de Becker’s work is between genuine fear (the “gift” that protects us) and anxiety (the chronic worry about what might happen).
The goal isn’t to live in constant suspicion, but to develop a healthier relationship with fear, to recognize when it’s serving us and when it’s limiting us unnecessarily.
Fear becomes problematic when it extends beyond its natural function as a brief signal. When we remain in a state of fear long after any immediate threat has passed, it transforms from protection to prison.
Real Safety vs. The Illusion of Safety
Many of our society’s approaches to safety focus more on feeling safe than being safe. De Becker challenges the effectiveness of many common safety measures and suggests that true security comes from awareness, preparation, and trusting our instincts.
He distinguishes between worry (which depletes energy without improving outcomes) and awareness (which enhances safety without creating anxiety).
The difference lies not in the attention we pay to potential dangers, but in how we process that information, whether as a paralyzing concern or as practical knowledge.
Final Words
De Becker’s main prescription is to never go against your gut feelings of instinctive fear. The fear instinct is a tool we already possess, and our task is not to dismiss its messages.
Respect fear as a messenger rather than an enemy, and it transforms into a gift that can specifically keep us alive.
However, he doesn’t advocate for paranoia. Instead, he vouches for presence. When we become more attuned to our surroundings and our intuitive responses, we can live life more safely.
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√ Also Read: Fear Psychology: A Concise List of 30+ Human Phobias
√ Please share it with someone if you found this helpful.