i want to give you some background on this master class series first about me i've worked with the fbi and the cia u.s supreme court the white house i've been a presidential appointee at the department of justice and all the while i was seeing that the methods used for keeping public officials safe those methods could be used by regular people and usually women because a public figure in america was killed about once every six years but a woman in america was killed by a husband or boyfriend about once every six hours so i took two years off work and i wrote a book called the gift of fear expecting that it might help some people i did not expect it to become the number one best seller in america and canada i didn't expect it to be published in 25 languages i didn't expect oprah winfrey to do a bunch of shows about the concepts in the book this book could save your life the gift of fear remained the best-selling book in the world on violence and it still is today a quick word about pronouns men at all times in history at all ages and in all parts of the world are more violent than women and for this reason the language i use is often gender specific to men politically correct would be statistically incorrect so please understand my frequent stories in which men were the aggressors now when oprah decided to do a show commemorating the 10th anniversary of the gift of fear that gave me an idea to go back and revisit the people and the concepts in the book and for years now we've been filming the master class series we did something i had never considered before i invited people to come to our secret headquarters we never had outsiders here we came to learn that even with people randomly selected every single participant had had a profound experience of violence and i expect this would be true of any gathering of 18 women in america a 19th woman who was scheduled to attend april jace cancelled at the last moment and a few weeks later we learned that she was shot and killed by her husband in front of their two sons it was a reminder about spousal violence that none of us needed spending day after day with these 18 people remarkable things happened in the room one woman realized right then and there that her father had killed her mother for another woman the memories of a rape that had occurred when she was a teenager came flooding back she had never discussed it with anyone before and she told us the story one woman was still in a relationship with a man who'd been violent with her and five other attendees who had all gotten away from violence offered her support we filmed discussions that i had with amy poehler what is this place and lena dunham and sarah silverman why because women in comedy often say the most prohibited things and they have something to teach the rest of us about personal power plus amy and lena and sarah also each had experiences of victimization a few of the segments were directed by mike myers yes that mike myers why because mike has two daughters and he believes in the gift of fear and two in these classes you'll meet a woman whose daughter was killed in the new town school shooting a man who accidentally shot and killed his young brother when he was 12 years old a woman whose daughter was murdered by her boyfriend you'll meet experts from the lapd and the fbi and you'll meet marcia clark who's prosecuted o.j simpson and lots of other people who victimized women no matter how sophisticated a predator might be you'll see that they fail often and your mission is to be on the better side of these dangerous transactions the first step is to be the best informed participant at the end of these classes you're going to know a great deal about how to stay safe from violence and you'll have learned directly from people who prevailed myself included i was standing in a hallway off to the side watching two people in the living room of a house and it was a woman holding a gun aiming at her husband and she was saying over and over again this time i'm really going to kill you as i had many times already in my life i had the responsibility to determine if this was about to be a homicide the man had his hands up like this as if he could stop bullets and i thought i hope he doesn't try to rush her because that might cause her to shoot him and i watched these two people exchange signals there was one huge one which was that she pulled the hammer back on the gun but in fact that wasn't the signal that mattered to me the most what happened next is that she took a few steps back from him and that was the warning sign for me that there was going to be a shooting because a handgun is not an intimate weapon and people like to distance themselves i quickly turned and i went down a hallway passed a dinner that was cooking and burning on the kitchen stove don't care passed another bedroom that had people in it don't care there was a two-year-old child in the last bedroom my intention was to take her out of the house out the back door but just as i got to the bedroom door i heard the first shot that i just predicted and then i heard a whole bunch more shots the little girl who'd been asleep sat up in bed she was shocked by the sound but at two years old she didn't know anything about what was happening she couldn't weigh the gravity of what was going on but i was 10 years old and i knew all about these things already it wasn't the first time that gun had gone off in the house this was my mother shooting my stepfather these childhood experiences formed the foundation of what would become my life's work viewed in cinematic terms the film would cut quickly from scene to scene trying unsuccessfully to stop one of my mother's husbands from hitting her would cut to me training hundreds of new york city police detectives in ways to evaluate domestic violence situations running at 11 years old alongside a limousine clamoring with other fans to get a glimpse of the famous movie stars elizabeth taylor and richard burton would cut to me eight years later working for the famous couple watching president kennedy's inauguration on television would cut to me standing with a president and with other presidents after that watching in shock the reports of senator robert kennedy's murder would cut to me developing the mosaic assessment system now used to help screen threats to u.s senators my childhood wasn't a movie of course the plot didn't make much sense to me as a boy but it does now my ghosts had become my teachers it turns out i was attending an academy of sorts above all living with fear as a child would lead to me helping others manage fear [Music] today we're going to focus on intuition i want to start with the story from the book and that's the story of kelly she was coming back from shopping as she climbed a few steps to the apartment building door she saw that it had been left unlatched again her neighbors just don't get it she thought because so many times she'd told her neighbors about remembering to lock this door and keep it locked and she pushed it closed behind her and she's absolutely certain that she closed and locked it because she heard it latch she went up the stairs cat food began to roll down the stairs and she saw it go and turn the corner and roll down another set of stairs she heard somebody call out from down below got it i'll bring it up right away she just hearing the voice she didn't feel that it was all all right something felt wrong to her but this friendly looking man came around the corner and he was gathering up cans of cat food and seemed to want nothing more than to be helpful hey let me give you a hand oh no thank you i've got it really because it doesn't look like you got it what floor are you going to uh the fourth but uh i'm fine really i'm going to the fourth floor too and i'm late not my fault though broken watch well hey let's not just stand here here give me this oh no no no please thank you i've i've got it there is such a thing as being too proud you know [Applause] well let's hurry we've got a hungry cat up there hey did you know that a cat can live for three weeks without eating and then finally they are at the door to her apartment all right i'll take it from here oh no i didn't come this far to let you have another cat food come on look we can leave the door open like ladies and old movies i'll just put this stuff down and then i'll go i promise she did let him in to put the stuff down but he did not keep his promise she told me about the three-hour rape ordeal that she went through after the rape was over he said to her hey don't look so scared i'm gonna go to the kitchen and get something to drink i'm not gonna hurt you i promise but you stay right where you are you know i won't move [Music] [Music] she immediately took the sheet off the bed and as he walked out into the hallway to go down toward the kitchen she walked right down the hallway with him she said i was like a ghost moving down that hallway if i had breathed he would have felt my breath on the back of his neck but i didn't breathe and as he went into the kitchen she went through the living room and out through the front door and she went into her neighbor's apartment across the hall which she was absolutely certain would be unlocked and later on she said to me you know how did i know that he absolutely was going to come back from the kitchen and kill me and so she thought about it and i remember her looking off into the distance and seeing that experience and i said tell me again she said he stood up from the bed and then he was getting dressed and he closed the window and she stopped and she said ah that's how i know he closed the window he closed the window because he was concerned about making noise when he harmed me in that decision that she made that extraordinary decision to follow him down the hall to basically move toward the person who might be dangerous to her to follow her intuition in that decision she saved her life [Music] there are many messengers that our intuition uses to get our attention nagging feelings uh persistent thoughts and at the end of all of those the big messenger is fear the one that intuition sends when it does not want to negotiate when it doesn't want you to delay when it wants action right now it wants your immediate attention and nothing gets people's attention like true fear true fear is quite a bit different from anxiety and worry which those are things that happen over time but true fear is a very rapid signal you get that kind of feeling and that is the one that the organism is never meant to reject or suppress one of the things i love about gavin's work is that he helps women distinguish the difference between worry which is this persistent niggling constant hesitation and fear as opposed to real fear which is completely a gift gavin in the sense of like worry or fear like the startle or the dry mouth or the heartbeat and that sort of thing is that true fear remember true fear is a signal that is meant to be brief in the presence of danger when you get true fear there are a whole lot of uh chemicals that are released into your body that are enormously helpful one of them is the one we all know about which is adrenaline and so you get more energy another that's not so famous is called cortisol and cortisol helps the blood clot more quickly in the event that you're cut the body is actually getting ready for the possibility of being cut and the muscles fill up with lactic acid and actually get bigger actually become a kind of armor and blood is pumped to the muscles in your arms and legs for running or for fighting true fear is empowering there's no question the strategy it applies might be not moving in other words freezing but actual paralysis is fairly rare in true fear a little bit like in the kelly situation she felt true fear at that moment and fear said to her shut up and do exactly what i tell you to do and i'll get you out of here she said it was as if an animal inside her had uncoiled and used the muscles in her legs to carry her down that hallway basically it took over now some people get elevated heart rate from anxiety and can have anxiety attacks and what have you and we know that's a different thing than true fear but if people feel fear when there is no reason to that chemical cortisol is toxic it's not a good way to live you can't stay in that state all the time unwarranted fear like anxiety worry and all of those they are sustained feelings they're destructive they're counterproductive they're bad for you the test always is is there something in my environment that i'm sensing right now for me i had a lot of fears and phobias and those kinds of things and so to be able to distinguish between the two um is really important for me [Music] [Music] my premise is that you can absolutely predict human behavior we get the signals all the time we tend to deny them that's the challenge we cross-examine our own intuition you can say oh i don't want to be that kind of person i don't think so i don't want that to be true it doesn't seem like it is that's the cross-examination of intuition we we can rationalize our way into and out of anything and so the intellectual dynamic that says oh people don't really act like that there's nobody that's going to hurt me we deny our way into harm and death you have to listen to your intuition i have a rule with myself that if i hear myself say i'm sure it was nothing that's my point to get to safety don't ask questions that's a red flag you know when there's a bee in your hair you don't say oh that might be a bee in my hair you've already done this before you even have the conscious thought we see a snake snake we don't pause to process it we jump out of the way and then we process that's a survival response it is there to say pay attention ready take action it's sort of like a crying baby the sound is so aversive and unpleasant that we always go and respond to the crying baby i may be speaking just as a man in that circumstance but i don't think anybody likes that sound a lot fear has this built-in energy behind it that says change this situation right away imagine a gazelle in africa and it hears a sound that causes it fear you cannot imagine that animal saying oh it's probably nothing likewise you cannot imagine that animal looking at its predator a lion and saying but this is a nice lion so in nature it's all very easily set up in that the predators look like this they wear the lion suit but with human beings predators spend a lot of their time and energy wearing a different suit trying to present themselves as something that they are not a person who intends you no harm a person who'd be good to date a person who you can accept help from in public a person who you can enter into a conversation with even though you don't want to the interesting thing with human beings is that we are not the favored prey of anything on earth there's not a single animal going around saying i just can't wait to get me some human and why because we're bony because we're dangerous and because we're smart so there's not one animal for whom we are the favored prey having beaten down every other animal in nature through evolution now humans prey on each other and they also send signals before attacking [Music] kelly explained to me after the rape ordeal when we were discussing all the details of how she was persuaded to admit him to the apartment even though she felt so strongly that she shouldn't do it she said that the details came so quickly that she wasn't really able to stay focused on the feeling she was having and later when we talked about all the details it was clear that the very fact that someone was there was the pre-incident indicator to her that there was a problem because she had latched the door fully that meant he was already inside because otherwise she would have heard the door open and she would have heard the loud buzzer and she would have heard him coming up the stairs she didn't hear any of that what she heard was a person in an environment where he really couldn't be if all had been normal somebody who had been hiding in that environment and then we went over the things that he had said and done got it i'll bring it up hey hi let me give you a hand the key to this one is to think of charm as being a choice someone makes he is charming me never a noun always a verb so when i hear someone say hey what did you think of that guy and they say oh he was really charming i like to say you mean he was really charming you let me give you a hand charm and niceness is a persuasion feature it's a choice that someone uses in order to get a particular result there's nothing wrong with being a charming person there's nothing wrong with being a nice person there's only an important question which is why right a typical reason for a man being charming or nice with a woman is that he wants to date her but in the context of i'm alone in a corridor with someone i'm already uncomfortable with then charm and niceness is an important signal that we can register and ask the question why is this person seeking to charm me why is this person using niceness as a strategy hey what floor are you going to the fourth well i'm going to the fourth two and i'm late so let's not just stand here come on give me that the next signal is called loan sharking which is basically putting someone in your debt doing something for someone that they didn't ask for so that now the person feels that you owe them something and the fact that you owe a person something makes it hard to ask him to leave you alone the defense for loan sharking is to remember two things that are very easy to forget and that is he approached me and i didn't ask for any help well let's not just stand here come on give me that no no really thank you but no i i've got it there's such a thing as being too proud you know and that's called typecasting it's a little mild insult that then the targeted person wants to prove isn't true typecasting is a way of getting you to engage the defense for typecasting is acting as if you never heard the words at all so if someone says you're probably too snobbish to give a guy a ride in your car it's literally to not hear it at all as opposed to taking it on board and saying well am i a snob now i have to prove to this person that i'm not there is such a thing as being too proud you know kelly resisted the label by accepting the help come on we better hurry we got a hungry cat up there well that's a thing called forced teaming forced teaming is making someone feel like you and she are in the same circumstance it's like reaching a taxi on a rainy day and you say oh gee we're both caught on this rainy day but they really had nothing in common and he tried to force something in common we're both late we both like cats in fact she could have said we're not both late you might be late and i might have a challenge with these cat food cans but we are not sharing an experience here did you know he used catchy details to be perceived as somebody who she knew somebody she could be comfortable with too many details the con man will throw down a whole bunch of tacks on the highway to flatten your tires look over here while something's happening over here just like a magician because the problem when people are being dishonest is even though what they are saying might sound credible to the person they're tricking it doesn't sound credible to them so they keep adding details they keep talking and when they do that it's this wonderful indicator of why would you assume that i'm not trusting you right now and the defense for too many details is always remembering context i'm in a corridor in my building with a person i don't know and he's trying to help me even though i'm saying no i asked kelly to go back and think about the moment when she was standing at the door with him in the open doorway i'll just put this down and then i'll go i promise that's called an unsolicited promise when you feel skepticism about somebody they will see that you feel skepticism and that's why a person adds i promise people who have credibility never have to make an unsolicited promise it's different if you ask somebody to promise you something but when somebody makes an unsolicited promise like i'll be on time at the airport i promise i'll have the car back by 10 o'clock dad i promise it's a great gift to us it's like a mirror that's held up to us and we can look in that mirror and see ourselves doubting someone and to me the correct response is to say at least in your own head thank you for pointing that out to me i do doubt you and i must have some reason for it no thank you no no no thank you no honestly really no i've got it in the kelly situation he refused to hear the word no and she let go of the bag [Music] in that moment he became aware that she would not hold her ground and with strangers even the ones with the best intentions never ever relent on the issue of no it's not just annoying it's a real important indicator anybody who doesn't hear the word no is trying to control you and if you let someone talk you out of the word no you might as well wear a sign that says you're in charge a good saying for all of us to remember is that no is a complete sentence it doesn't need any additional information attached to it gavin makes this observation in our culture in many cultures when a man says no it is the end of a discussion and when a woman in the culture says no it's the beginning of a negotiation it's a different world for men and women in that regard and for all of us now an important lesson is that when we say no and someone ignores it what we're actually wise to do is amp up the level of our no no back up now a lot of people are hesitant about that because of the concern about appearing rude i don't want to hurt his feelings well a lot of the times when we say that to ourselves we're never even going to see that person again if you're wrong and the person doesn't have some sinister intent then okay yeah it doesn't make any difference no and the worst thing that you've done is offend somebody and i think so many women are trained that the worst thing they can do is offend somebody i think women walk through the world feeling fear of offending fear of not fitting into our social environment looking like a [ __ ] which is something you and i have talked about and what is the acronym you have for [ __ ] [ __ ] is boys i'm taking control here it makes me so happy i think about it all the time you know what you know if a stranger comes up to me and says something and i yell at them i'm not worried about what they think about me because if they don't mean me any harm they're going to understand i have never in my entire career encountered a criminal attack that occurred because a woman was rude however i've encountered hundreds of criminal attacks and studied them closely that occurred because a woman allowed somebody she was uncomfortable about to stay in her environment meaning she got engaged in a conversation [Music] the overwhelming number of encounters we all have are not dangerous right the overwhelming number of people we meet in our lives do nothing sinister and have no negative intent for us most of the time right now for example none of us feel any danger but when we feel it that's when it's so critically important to listen to it because that signal that we get that gift from intuition sometimes the gift of fear is there for a reason it's there to tell us all right stop and ask a question why do i feel that way what's going on in nature we hear a lot about animals have the fight or flight response people say that human beings have the same thing fight or flight it's my premise that human beings have many many more options we have fight we have flight which is run away we have negotiate we have pretend to give in and then fight we have fight and then give in later on we have trickery we have the ability to bring all kinds of resources to the table that animals don't have because remember no claws no good teeth although you can use them in the right kind of emergency i wouldn't discount them but the main thing we have is our intuitive ability this real nuclear defense system that allows us to get out of victimization if we don't debate with it if we don't argue with it i remember a story about a woman who took her daughter out to a movie every friday night with a group of other mothers and their daughters her daughter was seven and this particular one they were going to see jurassic park and as they were standing in line to buy the tickets there was a man in line behind her who had a a t-shirt on and it said afraid of the dark on it and she felt that he was looking at her and then at one point their eyes met and he said ladies night out because you could see all the women with all their kids and she sort of said uh-huh and didn't really engage with him then they saw the movie about predators in ancient times came out of the movie and it was dark and she'd parked some blocks away so one of her friends said hey you want to get a ride with us and at that moment her daughter wanted to go to the bathroom and she said no you guys go ahead but the moment she said you guys go ahead she had a strong wish that she hadn't said that and she was concerned about that man he was gone the movie theater was almost empty when they left and so they walked down the street to head back toward her car and she had a strong feeling that they were being followed she turned around and indeed the man was following her so she took her daughter kate by the hand and she said let's walk a little faster and they walked faster and she decided she didn't want to run because if she ran she felt she couldn't run faster than this man could run particularly not with kate so she was planning what she would do when she got to her car and she decided she would unlock the door on the passenger side first put her daughter in and lock that door and then go around to the other side and that's just what she did and as she got to the other side he was on the car already and he was trying to unlock the door that her daughter was on that side but it was locked and she heard it once twice and they looked at each other across the top of the car and his look was you are my victim and hers was no i am not and she started to get in the car and she realized she wouldn't be able to get in before he'd made it all the way around and he had hold of her legs and she was kicking her legs in the car she had the car key to put into the ignition and she suddenly got the impulse key and she thought well i don't want to be the kind of person who sticks a key in somebody's eye she started the car and the next thing she heard was the door slamming she had accelerated away from there she had already stuck him in the eye while she was thinking about it and at that moment she thought to herself well at least i didn't stick him in both eyes and then she realized she had done that so he was sitting on the sidewalk doing what men do if you stick a car key in their eye and the next thing she heard was her daughter's saying uh mama you didn't put on your seatbelt and so her daughter was completely unaffected by the circumstance and when i interviewed her later i said did you feel sorry for him did you feel bad and she said no that's the consequence you get if you bother a mother who's with her child she said it's just natural and all of what she experienced really had been natural the wild brain as opposed to the logical brain doesn't care what you think doesn't care what you say to yourself it just cares about what you do and she had done the entire thing before she even realized she'd done it and she'd prevailed and she was perfectly fine very few women have had any kind of contact sport so they don't have a direct experience of the humanity of men that men are flesh and blood oh they're just like i am those eyeballs are just as vulnerable as a woman's eyeballs i get it often with victims after the fact they are criticized it's a very common thing you'll hear that someone will say i know this was a giant mistake this next thing i did you'll probably tell me i was stupid to do it and i never do that because the fact is they prevailed if they're here to tell me about it they obviously weren't killed they were not destroyed and they prevailed with exactly the strategy that was right for them in that circumstance [Music] what do you have to say to the proverbial saying there's nothing in life to fear but fear itself i say there's nothing to fear until and unless you feel fear what i'm certain of is that ignoring the reality of the situation is not a viable precaution that won't make anybody safer and so it's worthwhile to know what predators behaviors are know what the pre-incident indicators are of violence and then be able to set it aside and certainly not live in fear for me just being able to trust that intuition so that you don't live in fear and that you are aware and ready to deal with the situation when it comes up that's the most important thing we can listen to that intuition that tells us we're not safe at that moment or we may be in danger and go with it and not care if anyone thinks you're rude or run down the street no who cares if anybody thinks you're crazy if you're safe at the end of the day it doesn't really matter [Music] [Music] you