Today's Wednesday • 12 mins read
Violence sends out signals before it happens.
- Many women who were attacked in their own homes said they felt uneasy going in “that” day. But they brushed it off as stress.
- One woman said she suddenly felt a choking sensation when a stranger’s perfume passed by her on the subway. She later found that a woman was abducted from that very subway the same night.
Maybe you acted in a certain way, but you still can’t explain why.
- Something stopped you from going on a second date with this person.
- You felt uncomfortable when this nice person made a promise you didn’t ask for.
These signs are sent out by the survival instinct we call fear. Recognizing these signs early on can help you avoid getting hurt.
7 Pre-Incident Indicators (PINs) of Violence
Violent and abusive people often have patterns.
One of these is creating a false sense of safety in their victim. When the victim believes that the abuse has stopped or won’t get worse, they instinctively lower their guard.
They calm down, becoming less likely to fight back or try to flee. But this manufactured calm is actually a dire warning that the abuser is coming with a bigger attack.
Gavin de Becker, an expert on human security and protection of public figures, says our primitive brain can sense life-saving signals before we can fully process the oncoming danger.
He calls them “pre-incident indicators” (PINS) in his book The Gift of Fear. PINS are specific behaviors that reveal the person’s malicious intentions. These indicators come before physical aggression and violence.
“You have the gift of a brilliant internal guardian that stands ready to warn you of hazards and guide you through risky situations.” – Gavin de Becker
These are the 7 pre-incident indicators (PINS), or 7 things predators do to turn people into prey:
1. Charm and Niceness
Abusers use charm and niceness to exploit your social conditioning that you should be warm, polite, and open to a nice person.
But charm almost always has a purpose behind it. At its core, charm has plans to grab your attention and subtly control you through allure and charisma.
Same with niceness. Niceness is a deliberate decision. Violators choose to act nice to groom and manipulate their targets, turning social warmth into a weapon.
You might have heard a woman victim sigh, “He used to be so nice,” about a man who turned into a predator some time after that initial kindness.
Charm as a verb is a calculated way to lower your guard and disarm your stranger-mistrust.
So, watch out for niceness and charm that feels too eager or too out of place. Ask yourself, “Is this person trying to charm me?” If yes, turn away every time.
N.B.: Another form of this could be feigned helplessness. Ted Bundy used to pretend he needed help. At times, he would put his arm in a sling and ask a young woman for help. As soon as they came close, he’d kidnap them.
2. Forced Teaming
This hinges on creating a false sense of connection between the abuser and the victim.
They present an urgent, shared problem or need, invoking “we” language to suggest an alliance that does not actually exist.
Like, “We’re both trying to figure this out,” or “No need to talk outside, let’s go in.”
This does two things: one, it gains the trust of the victim, and two, it imposes a false loyalty, making the victim owe allegiance to someone they supposedly share a common ground with.
Forced teaming pushes the agenda that collaboration must begin right away, trapping you in a partnership they never agreed to.
Rebuff this, even if it feels rude.
3. Loan Sharking
The predator offers a series of help, favors, or gifts to the victim, most of it unsolicited.
Undersurface, their generosity is a rising debt. They are setting up the victim to feel indebted and obliged to return the favor in some way.
That’s like what loan sharks do – lend money on very easy terms but at very high interest, and then use threats or violence to collect debts.
Watch out for the ominous sign of an “unasked for” favor. If this person is buying you things or inviting you to do fun things without asking you first, it may be more than expressing interest in you.
They are likely to wield control over you in the future. Worse, they can get abusive to make you repay the debt that you didn’t ask for in the first place.
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.
To stay safe, reject every unsolicited offer of help.
4. Typecasting
The predator throws a mildly critical comment or insult at the victim, hoping to start a conversation. Often, the victim feels challenged to prove the remark is not accurate.
For example,
- “Oh, I bet you’re too stuck-up to talk to a guy like me.”
- “There’s such a thing as being too proud, you know.”
- “You’re probably too busy to help.”
- “Too proud to accept help?”
The thing is that even the typecaster himself doesn’t believe what he says to be true. He has studied you to know that it will trigger your response.
The best response is no response. Do not even acknowledge the typecasting remark.
5. Discounting the Word “No”
Someone refusing to accept your denial, rejection, or boundaries is a red flag. It signals they are either seeking control or refusing to give it up.
When someone ignores your “no,” the worst thing you can do is to give them weaker and weaker refusals.
Accepting one refusal to “no” often opens a floodgate. More refusals start pouring in, from minor ones like asking you to dance, to buying you a drink, to joining you uninvited at your table, and serious things like touching you wrongly.
Negotiation is also a poor response to “You can’t say no.”
“‘No’ is a word that must never be negotiated, because the person who chooses not to hear it is trying to control you.” – Gavin De Becker
Don’t negotiate, don’t relent, don’t explain. Simply say, “I don’t need your help.”
6. Too Many Details
When people lie, they will often use “too many details” in their conversations. The idea is to distract from the truth and create a false sense of credibility.
It’s like this:
They plan to deceive you later. But now they must get you to trust them on what they know doesn’t sound entirely credible.
So they use lots of extra details to support their lie. They keep talking to fill the silence, which distracts you and numbs your sense of defense against a stranger.
Say they invite you to a party at their home. Then add this to their offer: “My mother has overseen all the cooking and made sure each item is healthy. And she is eager to meet you more than all my friends.”
That extra information tries to show you the “genuineness” of their intentions so you don’t turn down their invitation right away.
Be wary of the moment you hear extra information following an offer for you to consider. Decline it until you consult others.
7. The Unsolicited Promise
The basic reason behind every promise is to convince us of an intention. They are made when the listener seems unconvinced.
An “unsolicited promise” is a promise to do (or not do) something when no such promise is asked for.
When someone says, “I swear I’ll leave you alone after this” or “You have my word, I’m not going to 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
When you receive an unsolicited promise, ask yourself, “Why does this person need to convince me?”
Start looking for an escape when a predator is volunteering a commitment without you asking them for any.
Your Fear-Intuition Is Telling You Something
Our fear instinct is an internal alarm that warns us of imminent danger. Unfortunately, social conditioning often makes us ignore this very survival mechanism.
Timely interpreted, it can save our lives. That’s why Gavin De Becker calls it The Gift of Fear. And advises us (especially women) not to ignore these visceral signals that something is not right, as ignoring them can be fatal.
He writes, “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.”
Evolution gave us the gift of fear 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.
“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.” – De Becker
Danger of Politeness: Nice vs. Good
A crucial part of personal safety is knowing the difference between being good and being nice.
We usually think that nice people don’t have bad intentions. Criminals, like psychopaths, also know this. So they use polite manners and nice behavior to disable your fear instinct.
Society teaches children, especially girls, to be polite to the nice behavior of others, even if it makes them uncomfortable. This very teaching can become dangerous.
“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.”
- When we ask children to act politely despite feeling uncomfortable, we’re teaching them to ignore that nice behavior from others can mask danger.
- Social pressure to be polite and accommodating, particularly for women, can mute the life-saving warning signals that could save us.
Takeaway: Nice behavior is a red flag. People trying to be nice might not really be nice. So, teach kids not to trust anyone who acts nice.
The Different Fears of Men and Women
Then there’s a stark divide between how different men vs. women experience fear:
“Most men fear getting laughed at or humiliated by a romantic prospect, while most women fear rape and death.”
This shows why the same behaviors might be interpreted very differently by each gender. What men may perceive as merely annoying or disappointing behavior can register as potentially life-threatening to a woman.
That’s not paranoia, but a practical risk assessment based on the lived and shared reality of women.
Breaking the Cycle of Unwanted Pursuit
De Becker offers a valuable insight 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
De Becker cautions us:
“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 potentially dangerous situations.
We cannot assume others share the same values and perceptions as us, or they would respond as we would. This is something to keep in mind when making a safety plan for going into a dangerous zone.
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 is not to live in constant suspicion. But to recognize when your fear is helping you avoid a danger, and when it’s holding you back.
As a general rule, fear is unhelpful when it persists beyond being a brief signal. When we remain in a state of fear long after an immediate threat has passed, it may become a mental prison and phobia.
Final Words
De Becker’s main prescription is to never go against your gut feelings of instinctive fear. Our fear instinct is a useful tool, 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 keep you alive.
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Also see: 10 Reasons Why Being Around Narcissists Will Wear You Out Mentally.
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