Actually, many LEO and military folks go several steps beyond just "envisioning" and step right into out right planning. My old boss has spent 8 years as an Army Ranger and drove for the commanding general of USSOC toward the end of his career. (The general required that his driver be E-5 to E-6 and Ranger qualified.) One of the quirky old Ranger habits my boss passed on to me was actively planning (diagrams and all) our response to everything from belligerent visitors to single/multiple active shooters.tfrazier wrote:Most LEOs may not tell you if you ask, but this is a very important psychological exercise that they are encouraged by good instructors to practise.dac1842 wrote:...To help ensure you react you must practice how you will react, you must envision how you will react. ....
Envisioning a scenario, and envisioning how you will respond, trains the mind so that you have a better chance to react properly when your brain reverts to that primitive mode and your typical thought processes and decision making skills are buried in a blitz of firing neurons that only scream DANGER DANGER DANGER as the unthinkable becomes reality.
Why do LEOs not like to admit that they use their imagination to dream up these scenarios and imagine how they will act to stop a threat? Because the general public, and sometimes even their closest family and friends, in their prejudice, will assume they are dreaming and desiring the event that makes said scenario reality.
Nothing could be further from the truth. So LEOs do their mental exercises in secrecy, and reply, "Nothing" when that significant other asks what they are thinking, because to answer honestly would invite repulsion.
It's not all darkness and morbidity, but it's a pretty good share of it.
Anyone who takes on the responsibility of carrying a loaded gun should sharpen the mind for combat as well as the sword.
We even went so far as thinking through how we would assault the office and other facilities like banks, the downtown tunnels, restaurants, etc. And once we'd figured out how to get in and get out as bad guys, we'd then think through our side of the equation...How would we go about stopping each other's evil twins? For one thing, playing off each other revealed weaknesses in our thought processes and variables we'd failed to consider. It helped that at the time, our Tuesday night group at Top Gun was also doing some force on force stuff with Gregg Garrett's help. So we actually got to stage bank robberies, car jackings and other scenarios.
All of this adds up to creating mental subroutines that are added to those you subconsciously use to interact with people everyday. By the time you were an adult, chances are you'd met enough good looking girls and women that you no longer stammered through introducing yourself and learned to actually look them in the eye while talking to them. At the very least, you had to talk yourself through the process of asking that first girl out for a date before you actually walked over to talk to her. Fact is, successfully navigating those interactions are a result of learned behavior that does not come naturally to men. We have to be taught these things and we learn through trial and error.(I can see all the ladies on the board laughing at the fact a man admitted these facts on this forum) Making it through these scenarios with the highest probability of success is no different.