Zero Confidence to Super Confidence – The Amazing Story of Elise Stormyhr – Unleash Self Defence

My name is Tahir Ahmad, Founder of Unleash Self Defence. And this is inspirational story of one of our students, Elise Stormyr.

It all starts with a phone call one afternoon that I received from Elise, who was enquiring about our Self Defence classes. As the conversation went, she literally broke down, telling me what she has been through, how she had zero confidence, was afraid of leaving her front door and should anyone wish to take advantage of her, that she found herself totally helpless to resist.

Her pain and desperation could be felt through the phone. I consoled her as much as I can, gave her the re-assurance needed and convinced her to come for a free trial session to one of our classes.

Elise came for her trial session and absolutely loved it. She joined the classes, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing. For the first few lessons, she would not speak to anyone else out of fear, but this soon changed as she began to quickly feel more comfortable and safer in this new environment.

However, as the training got more real, Elise would often breakdown during class and go and sit on the bench, her traumatic experiences always coming to the forefront. I would then console her and help her to re-join the class again. This lasted for the first few months but we both never gave up.

But then, after about 3 months, I began to notice a significant change in Elise during class. The crying had stopped and there was more laughter. She was getting more involved with the other students and throwing herself into the training, as well as now demonstrating the right aggression needed for the techniques being taught. Her confidence was finally beginning to come through.

6 months into her training, I get a text from Elise saying that she had an incident the night before. I immediately call her, and she tells me that she works in Croydon and finished her shift around 1:30am.

As she was walking to her car, she noticed that a man was walking on the other side of the street but then quickly crossed the road and began coming towards her from behind. As he approached Elise, he asked if she wanted to share a taxi to which Elise politely declined. But then this man asked if she had any money she could spare to which Elise replied no. Instead of leaving Elise alone, this man became more insistent.

Once again, understand that Elise, being only 5’2, was by herself on the street with this man, in the middle of the night, and with no one else around.

Realising the situation that she was in, Elise faced this man, dropped her bag to the floor, looked at him from head to toe, and only in her mind said to herself, “Yeah I’ll take him!”.

The man instantly saw the confidence in Elise and backed off, saying “You have a good day”, and then quickly walked off the other way.

To this day, I share this amazing story with so many, as it demonstrates how our training was able to transform someone who felt so helpless and scared, to then being able to scare off a larger man all by herself in the middle of the night. And this transformation only took a few months!

This is the meaning of ‘Unleash the Warrior Within’!

This is what Unleash Self Defence is about!