In this helpful post, Shelley Hill breaks down how the mirror neuron systems of our brains work, especially in regard to self-defense and preservation. We always come away from her instruction feeling a bit more educated, and confident to move forward with self-defense plans. ~The Editors
Once a year, The Complete Combatant hosts a VIP weekend event called “The Mingle: Openness to Experience.” I am proud to say that our 10th year was in May 2026. We bring professional women in the firearms industry together for training, networking and mingling. It is truly amazing to see 66 shooters working for a common goal – to better themselves.
When I was giving the closing statements each day, I would look out in the sea of faces and see smiles, eyes on me, positive interactions with people sitting close together, and I could feel overall “joy” from the guests.
Through all this wonderful synergy, my eyes kept moving toward one person that seemed sad, distracted and not like the others. I wanted to know WHY I was drawn to her so I did some research.
You see, your brain can quickly decipher sadness and happiness in other people through a mix of several cues.
Your awesome brain uses two main parts to process facial expressions, body language, tone of voice and even emotional state. These two areas are called the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex.
ABC News did a piece on how it has been found that your brain detects emotional signals of happiness quicker than sadness. I will not bore you with the details, but in a nutshell, the right hemisphere processes emotions faster than the left and perceives positive expressions (like delight, amazement and surprise) more precisely.
Emotional contagion has a cool system called the mirror neuron system (MNS). This provides the ability to mirror the happy or sad emotions of others, and truly “feel what they feel”. You don’t control it; it just jumps up to interpret cues and signals. The MNS allows you to connect with others on a deeper level. I felt joy from the group, but I now know I also felt melancholy from the one person because my MNS kicked in.
This got me thinking about the speed at which we recognize negative body language, and a criminal actor associated with it. Unfortunately, this is not a simple answer, because there are many factors that influence your reaction time like training history, different types and intensity of stimulus, the complexity of the response, are you really focused, are you tired and last but not least, what does your surrounding look like?
Oliver Carson’s article states that the average person’s SIMPLE reaction time to a single stimulus is .25 seconds (250 milliseconds) and their COMPLEX (also known as choice) reaction time, when reacting to multiple decision steps, could take seconds.
Here are two complex reaction scenarios to consider.
Complex reaction scenario #1 with you ill-prepared looks like this: You are hiking in the woods, your peripheral vision picks up movement, you turn and see a bear about 25 feet from you.
On a quick and efficient decision day, it takes approximately .25 seconds “SEE” the bear, .25 seconds to understand that the bear’s body language is not friendly, about .25 seconds to move your brain into decision time, .25 seconds to pick a decision, .25 seconds to decide to act on that decision and then about .25 seconds to move into action. On your best decision day ever, we are looking at 1.50 seconds and you have not even accomplished the task that you decided on: run, move to cover, get out pepper spray, draw your gun, etc. If took you a handful of seconds to process and react, you may end up bear scat.
Complex reaction scenario #2, with decisions made in advance, might result in these actions: Let’s run this same scenario, but with bear spray pre deployed. You already know that bear spray can cover 20-to-40 feet, depending on the brand, size and weather. You are hiking in the woods with bear spray in your hand and paying attention to changes in your environment, your peripheral vision picks up movement, you turn and see a bear about 25 feet from you.
It takes approximately .25 seconds to understand that the bear’s body language is not friendly, .25 seconds to move into action and then SPRAY! When you make decisions in advance, like carrying pepper (or bear) spray in your hand, you cut time off the process and can move into ACTION much quicker.
I now know why I was drawn to that one guest; I could “feel” her. I now know how fast I recognized her body language; .25 seconds.
I think this is valuable information for self-preservation. If we work on critical thinking and pre-need decisions, we can potentially cut our “in-the-moment” decisions in half. What a wonderful gift is knowledge.
You may be wondering about the lady that seemed unhappy and scattered at the end of the day 2, it turns out that she forgot her three door prize raffle tickets (for a chance to win a HK, GLOCK or SIG) in her hotel room and was mentally “kicking herself.” I picked up on the negative body language but in the end, all was well. Mistakes happen.
If you’d like to train with The Complete Combatant, check out Brian and Shelley Hill’s website for a list of upcoming classes and events.
Shelley Hill wears a "bunch of hats." Her husband, Brian, named her the “Indispensable Organization Wizard” about 25 years ago and that has become her official title. Shelley is the CEO and instructor at The Complete Combatant. She is an HK Brand Ambassador, publishes regular articles in Women’s Outdoor News and Shooting Illustrated, teaches online classes, is an Active Self Protection Certified Instructor, an Instructor Graduate of Modern Samurai Project's Red Dot Instructor program, NRA Certified Instructor, Certified NRA Chief Range Safety Officer, Refuse to be a Victim Instructor and is a Certified OC (Pepper Spray) Instructor through Chuck Haggard's Agile Training & Consulting. She is the designer and mastermind behind Image Based Decisional Drills, Smart Choices , LockedIn Grip, The Complete Combatant's annual The Mingle for professional ladies in the "firearms/self defense" industry and The Quest for red dot shooters. She is also the President of a non-profit organization called Blue Line Ponies. This 501c3 focuses on providing a retirement range for our career service horses. Shelley is also a presenter at several national conferences is a public speaker and she actually loves people. View all posts by Shelley Hill
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