Principle 2: Know what type of attack you are facing
As in the case of a physical attack, you should ask yourself: How strong and capable is the person attacking me? Why is he/she attacking me? What is the attacker trying to achieve? In this way you can ascertain whether the attacker is aware of his/her attack. Principle 3: Avoid provocation
Attracting your attention makes attackers feel powerful. By replying with a counterattack, pleading, or arguing, you doing exactly what they want.
Exercise in self-defense This simple example of verbal self-defense recreates a situation you may have experienced more than once. It is difficult to identify subtle verbal aggression that seeks to discredit us and make us feel small, since these are not outright insults to which we can react consciously. Carefully observe the dialogue below and imagine that you are a part of the interaction. Try to recreate how you would normally react to this sort of attack and see how it differs from this example. John: (A colleague who is always making jokes about women), comes up to you, peeks into your bag and mockingly says, “Why is it that all women always carry around so much rubbish and useless stuff in their bags? Do you think that carrying around all these papers makes you more intelligent?” You: “Well, to start with, I am going to tell you a couple of things. First, you have no right to look into my bag. Secondly, for me my documents are not rubbish, they are part of my work. Because I work, unlike someone like you who spends his time rummaging through women’s bags.” At this point you think that you have given him the lesson of his life and that he will never do this again. However, you feel angry, excited, and frustrated because at the end of the discussion you know that all you achieved was to amuse your aggressor. So how should you handle this situation? Here is one example of verbal self-defense: John: “Why is it that all women always carry around so much rubbish and useless stuff in their bags? You: “Well, I think that I started loading my bag with things right from when I was a little kid, because in my school we had a different notebook for each subject. In the third year of primary school the covers were red, and the red covers that the school prescribed were not available anywhere. No, come to think of it, they were blue and not red, because red was for fifth grade…”
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