Krav Maga Worries

So,

All this time I have been planning to start training in Krav Maga when I move. I looked up the fighting styles, I watched examples of classes. It seems like a very effective and practical style of self defense, not a lot of dancing or rhetoric.

At first my father seemed adamant that I couldn't do it. He warned me that all martial arts were simply ways of learning how to handle being punched. This left visions in my head of me standing unmoving at attention while an instructor punched me in the stomach.

This wasn't what the training videos showed, so I decided that whatever he was trying to scare me out of was incorrect. Besides, I've taken blows from car airbags and from heads run into my face at full force, I've pushed off overly aggressive men, and I've solidly brained myself man times. I can take a hit, and I've already established that pain...has less of an effect on me than it does other women (probably due to the self-injury in my past, or perhaps it's the other way around, I'll never know).

This was all fine and good.

My father has switched tactics. He now seems rather excited that I'll do Krav Maga. He now seems to suggest I'll become like him, and that I'll become "bad ass." I don't want to become like him and I don't want to become bad ass. I don't want Krav Maga or self defense to become my life. I don't want to be paranoid. I don't want to scan every room, shout at anyone who stands behind my line of sight, and always have to stand or sit facing a door. I just want to be aware, confident that if trouble brings itself to me that I can handle it, that I don't need a protector who won't be there anyway. There are very few protectors in this world, far too few to go around, I have to be my own protector. That's all I want from this. Just to be able to protect myself if I need it. I don't want to become my own bloody secret service body guard. I don't want to find myself suddenly talking about how the country is falling apart and civilians are all naive pussies and it's totally okay to say you want to stab someone in the eye with a pencil as a way to express irritation. I've spent my whole life trying NOT to be that kind of person.

But mostly I ignore it, because if I haven't become that person yet, why would I think that I could?

And then there's my present worry, and frankly, the most frightening. I read a blog by a woman who had been taking Krav Maga for a year. She cites becoming paranoid, trusting people less (is it possible for me to become less trusting? Is that a likelihood? I know that I already have HUGE trust issues, big enough they hinder relationships) and being choked to the point of being unable to breath during stress drills. It's that last part that's the biggest problem. I know my father regrets it, and I don't have problems with my throat being touched anymore, but just reading about being choked and I feel myself reverting to a frightened eight year old. I know that if I'm thrown into that situation without considerable psychological fortitude on my part I will regress, not only will I regress but I will relive the events that caused the issue in the first place and unless whoever is choking me is able to recognize someone in the midst of an abuse flashback I could well end up coming to severe harm because I won't fight back. That's what I'm afraid of, that I won't fight back, because I couldn't back then and that I'll suddenly be in need of weekly counseling to work through (yet AGAIN) the fear and pain and paranoia and sense of being completely unsafe and without defense that I've spent my whole life trying to shuck off, and that it will have a detrimental effect on my grades.

If taking Krav Maga makes me safe but stops me from becoming a therapist, it's not worth it.