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Singles - Your Built-In Danger-Alert System
By Sandra Brown
We each have a system of red flags and red alerts that can act as a personalized internal monitor for dangerous men. In fact, when interviewing women about red flags, never once did I have to define what a red flag was. There was a universal knowledge of the existence of red flags, even when I interviewed women from as far away as Indonesia.
This red-alert system is sort of a cross between womanly intuition, a biological sensory response system, and a spiritually whispered warning. Each woman has to become aware of how she most often receives her red flags and warnings. Some women have very real physical sensations, others notice mental or emotional symptoms, and others sense it spiritually when their red-alert system fires off warnings. Some women experience a combination of these. How you sense these warnings is not as important as what you do with what you sense. Let’s take a look at the different ways red flags present themselves to us.
PHYSICAL RED FLAGS
A sensory response system is something that all humans are born with; it is called the autonomic nervous system or fight-or-flight response. You can think of it like a home burglary alarm. At birth, normal, healthy babies have a sensory-based warning system. They know automatically when they are hungry, scared, or otherwise in need. They don’t need to be told when to cry or how to respond if they feel threatened. Their alarm system responds automatically by causing them to be startled, to raise their hands into the air, and to start crying. Over time, they learn what danger is through conditioning. But before they could “learn” it, they just “knew” it because of the biological adaptations they were born with.
Conditioned learning in babies eventually picks up where biology leaves off. Babies begin to learn through trial and error what is safe and what is harmful. Unless they have been abused, they,don’t ignore or reframe these trial-and-error messages. The reframing of warning messages seems to be an adult, maladaptive, learned process rather than a natural childlike state steered by biology. Children pay attention to the truth their bodies tell them. Adults learn to allow their defense mechanisms to alter the truth. As adults we are alerted to danger by bodily sensations that we need to pay attention to. These could include a flash of fear, sweating, a tight stomach, a pounding heart, the hair standing up on the neck, or a general feeling of discomfort that we may be unable to name. But sometimes we adults ignore these sensations. We do not respond the way we automatically did as children. We don’t stop to recognize what our bodily reactions are telling us.
The bodily reactions we experience when we’re with a dangerous man hold a lot of the information we need to know about him. Women who want to avoid dangerous men focus on the physical messages their biological system is sending them. One of my workshop attendees put it this way: “I had a constant stomachache when I was with this guy. I also started having symptoms of TMJ [temporomandibular joint] syndrome. That’s when I realized I was having stress reactions to him. In a real sense I couldn’t ‘stomach’ him or his lines! I also was jamming my mouth shut so as not to respond to the things he was saying that were pushing my buttons. Luckily, when my jaw really started to hurt, I got the big picture.”
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Not All Men Are Dangerous
By Sandra Brown
Readers are probably now wondering, “Are there any healthy men on the planet?” Yes, there are—if you are! And you will be able to engage with them if you are willing to identify and eliminate from your life all the men who are not healthy in order to have the time, energy, and emotional health to focus on the healthy ones. The whole purpose of How to Spot a Dangerous Man Before You Get Involved is to help you free up your emotional resources so that you know what is dangerous and can begin focusing on healthier selections. That is the good news. This book can give you the ability to choose a healthier man.
I count it a great blessing that my first boyfriend, Michael, was a healthy young man. It did a lot for me later to be able to compare and contrast my less healthy choices with Michael. I had a template for what healthy behavior in a relationship looked like. Once I realized I had drifted in my selecting, the memory and experiences from that early relationship helped me to focus on what had worked and why it worked. In Chapter 11, we look at some examples of healthy versus unhealthy patterns in relationships. This material should offer a good testing ground for your new relationships to see which patterns line up with healthy interactions. Inevitably, all relationships will have issues, but it is important for you to realize which issues point to an unhealthy relationship and which are struggles typical of otherwise healthyrelationships.
A healthy dating relationship can be a restorative experience. It can help you see that not all men are dangerous. There are some loving and wonderful men out there who are just waiting to meet you. But first, you’ve got to clear out the dysfunctional ones so you can make a beeline to the healthy ones. The best way to do this is to stop wasting time and energy with unfixable, dangerous men. |
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Dating as a Single Parent
Check List of Qualities to look for
1. Playful, light and fun with kids. (Kids have an innate instinct about people. Watch) Read more at Single Parent Central... |
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