One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to understand violence is looking at the moment the violence happened and treating it as though that moment tells the whole story. It doesn't. What you see in those final few seconds is often the result of everything that came before them. The conversation, the behaviour, the environment, the emotions, the decisions, the misunderstandings, the threats and the opportunities. They can all play a part in how an incident develop

THE FENDO UK COMPENDIUM OF SELF PROTECTION THIS ISN’T JUST ANOTHER SELF PROTECTION BOOK. It represents more than 30 years of experience, knowledge, training and research, brought together into one comprehensive volume. Two years in the making. 30+ years of experience behind it. Written, researched and developed from my own knowledge and experience. Built around real world self protection, awareness, behaviour, conflict and survival. This is the Fendo UK Compendium of Self Pro

One of the hardest things for many people to do in conflict is walk away. That’s not because they physically can’t, but because psychologically they feel like they can’t. That’s an important difference. Confrontations that most people end up in are not traps where escape is impossible. Instead, the real trap is often happening internally inside the mind long before violence ever begins. You’ll hear people say things like, “I couldn’t just walk away,” but when you really break

Most people think escalation happens suddenly. They imagine violence as an instant explosion that appears out of nowhere, but real escalation usually builds in layers long before the first shove, punch, or threat ever happens. If you truly want to understand conflict, you have to stop focusing only on the final physical moment and start paying attention to the emotional, psychological, and behavioural progression that leads up to it.

Presence is one of the most misunderstood aspects of self protection because most people think it’s about intimidation, size, aggression, or acting dominant. It isn’t. Real presence has very little to do with pretending to be dangerous and everything to do with the psychological energy a person projects before a single word is spoken.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when assessing danger is believing that the loudest person in the room is automatically the most dangerous. Hollywood has conditioned people to think violence always looks explosive, emotional, aggressive, and obvious, but in reality, some of the most dangerous people you’ll ever encounter are completely calm. In fact, calm attackers are often far more dangerous than emotional ones because emotional aggression can at least give you warn

Humiliation is one of the most dangerous emotional triggers in human behaviour because it attacks something deeper than anger. It attacks identity. Most people think violence only comes from rage, aggression, or hatred, but in reality, a huge amount of violence comes from people trying to escape feelings of shame, embarrassment, weakness, rejection, or social exposure. Violence is often less about wanting to hurt somebody and more about wanting to erase the emotional feeling

Most people think violence ends the moment the punches stop, the blade disappears, or the threat walks away, but that’s rarely where it truly ends. In many cases, that’s where it actually begins. The emotional aftermath of violence is something people almost never talk honestly about because it doesn’t fit the fantasy most people have in their heads about conflict. Society loves the idea of victory. It loves the idea of domination, revenge, and standing tall after confrontati

Some people think violence begins with a punch, a shove, or a sudden explosion of aggression, but in reality it usually begins long before that. It starts in posture, in movement, in the eyes, and in subtle behavioural shifts that most people never consciously notice, but yet instinctively feel. As human beings, we're constantly reading body language, even when we're unaware that we're doing it.

Emotional control in conflict isn’t about being calm. That’s the first lie people buy into. They picture control as a quiet, composed, almost robotic version of themselves, untouched by what’s happening, steady no matter the situation, but that isn’t reality. Reality is noise, pressure, adrenaline, ego, uncertainty, and a body that starts reacting before your mind has even caught up. Emotional control isn’t about removing that; it’s about not being owned by it.

Some people don't just end up in conflict occasionally, they begin to live inside it. It becomes part of their personality, their routine, their emotional identity. You’ll see people who argue everywhere they go. Problems follow them from relationships, to workplaces, to friendships, to social media, to pubs, and to family gatherings. There’s always drama, always tension, and always another story about betrayal, disrespect, confrontation, or revenge. At some point you stop as

Some people think winning a fight means domination. They picture one person standing over the other, breathing heavily while adrenaline floods their body and everybody around them sees them as the victor. Unfortunately, that's the image society sells. Films sell it, ego sells it, and social media definitely sells it, but the reality of violence is completely different, because in reality, even the winner often loses something.

Most people think communication is what gets said. Words, tone, and phrases, but in tense situations, real tension, the kind that sits just under the surface, what matters most is what isn’t said at all.

Most people imagine violence as something explosive, dramatic, and immediate. They picture shouting, fists flying, chaos erupting out of nowhere, but real violence rarely begins at the moment of physical contact. It often starts long before that, in ways most people completely overlook, including Instructors. It starts with small social violations. Tiny moments that appear insignificant on the surface, yet underneath them sits the early formation of dominance, disrespect, tes

When people think about violence, they think it starts with aggression, but that’s the mistake most people make. They picture the moment it explodes; the shove, the strike, the raised voice, but by the time it gets there, the process is already well underway. The groundwork has been laid. The decisions on both sides have already started forming, because manipulators don’t begin with force. They begin with tests. Small ones. Almost invisible. The kind of things most people bru

Arguments don’t usually explode because of what was said. They explode because of what was felt, and insults sit right at the centre of that shift, from conversation to confrontation.

There’s a moment, right before things go wrong, where a person has a choice. It doesn’t feel like a choice at the time. It feels like pressure. Like heat. Like something pushing in from all sides, but underneath all of that, there’s a quiet option sitting there, almost invisible… 'walk away', and yet, most people don’t. Not because they can’t, or because they’re physically trapped, but because something far more powerful has taken hold in that moment, and that's ego.

There’s a fine line between awareness and paranoia. From the outside, they can look almost identical. Both involve watching, noticing, and paying attention. Both also involve scanning environments, reading people, and feeling for shifts in behaviour, but underneath, they’re completely different states, and if you don’t understand the difference, you can drift from one into the other without even realising it. • Awareness is grounded / Paranoia is consuming. • Awareness is cal

What most people picture when they think about violence is the moment it becomes undeniable. The shove, the raised voice, the swing. Something visible, something obvious, something they can point to and say, “that’s when it started," but the reality is, by the time it looks like violence, most of it has already happened. The decision has already been made. The outcome is already leaning in a direction, and what people consistently miss, what they fail to see or choose not to

Arguments rarely explode out of nowhere. They build quietly at first. Subtle shifts in tone, posture, words. A look held too long, or a comment that lands slightly wrong. Most people think escalation is about anger, but that’s only part of it. What’s really happening underneath is far more complex. It’s identity, ego, fear, insecurity, and the deep human need to be seen, heard, and respected. People don’t just argue over what’s being said. They argue over what they think it m