QUICK: THERE’S a potential attacker coming up behind you, and there’s no one around to help.

What do you do?

For more than a decade, Boston’s IMPACT Model Mugging — the local chapter of a national personal-safety-training organization — has been teaching people, predominantly woman, how to react and, in most cases, fight back. But not with containers of Mace or pocket knives; Model Mugging instructs its students on how to use their bodies as their own best weapons, conducting role-playing scenarios in which class participants are "attacked" by men outfitted in padded suits and helmets. With their hands, legs, and, perhaps most important, their voices, the students slowly learn how best to fend off their attackers.

Lynn Auerbach, who’s owned Boston’s IMPACT Model Mugging chapter since 1993, is in the self-defense business. But if a booming career comes as a result of decreasing personal safety, she’d just as soon her phone didn’t ring.

Q: Talk to me about your personal history with IMPACT Model Mugging.

A: I’m a clinical psychologist, and my specialty, back in the '80s and '90s, was abuse and violence in families. In '88 or '89, a client was always talking about it, and then in '90, '91, I finally took a course and thought so highly of it that I really did a lot to bring a lot of my clients to this course, because they all had all kinds of abuse histories. I spent so much time with clients here that when it went up for sale — the woman was selling it in '93, the Boston chapter ... I was just so impassioned by the course that I bought it. I’m really a typical clinical psychologist: I have no math skills, and then I ended up buying a business! I still love the program.

Q: Did you have abuse in your own history?

A: Yes. I had an abusive mother. I think that the real reason that I took [the course] was not as much that, so clearly; I had a lot of anger, just at the world at large ... so what I got out of it the most — because I’m a New Yorker and I was very streetwise and all of that, but I got very much around being able to really move through all of that anger that was always sort of bubbling up inside me. I could be very curt and very snippy and have dagger looks at people. And it was just so unnecessary. And I’m lucky that it never got me into the trouble that it could have. [Model Mugging] was freeing, it was psychologically freeing for me. And I think it’s so misunderstood in terms of, beat ’em up, knock ’em down. Because that’s not what we do.

Q: It’s interesting that you talk about releasing the anger, because it seems, for some women, the course helps them find anger they didn’t know they had.

A: That’s right. Power. I think that it even helped me find personal power, rather than having to use anger as power. I think women get in touch with that very fierce, "I have this ability" side to them. But I think the beauty of this — and again, also misunderstood — is that I think they walk out humbled. They become humbled [about] what actually could happen, and that’s why I think they start walking differently, talking differently, setting clearer boundaries, because they’re so aware of people breaking their boundaries.

Q: Do you think it also makes people a little more afraid, in perhaps a healthy way?

A: Yes. There’s a book, The Gift of Fear, by Gavin De Becker [Little, Brown, 1997] — everybody should read it. Absolutely, fear is a gift, rather than being paralyzed by it. So we teach exactly to have that sort of sense about you: trust your instinct, trust that this just doesn’t feel right. So what if it’s a fine situation in the end? What if it weren’t? Why ever take that risk?

Q: Do you ever teach people not to resist an attack? And if so, in what circumstances?

A: Again, trusting your instincts. There’s a difference between feeling helpless and having to be raped, and having power, making a decision. If he or she has a weapon — now, the weapon doesn’t mean that you have to give in — but if it feels as though they are going to use it, and kill you, and you have the skills to use Model Mugging, you then have this moment of choice. The choice really is being raped or dying. The woman who was murdered at that rest stop, Alexandra Zapp — it sounds like she did everything we would’ve ever said to do. That you do fight. The beauty of trying to talk him down. As soon as you see a weapon, it’s very much about talking to them, talking to them about how they don’t want to use it, what can you do, how can you help. That sort of befriending, but yet it really is just calming them. We teach women to really have a loud voice, but also remembering that the weapon is their power, and really in the end, if you can, your body is your power.

Q: Have you seen increased interest in Model Mugging since the recent attacks began in Brighton and the North End?

A: Oh, absolutely. The Brighton police are fabulous, and they always refer people here. The Brookline police, the men don’t; there’s a woman officer who does. In the North End, we’ve been talking a lot with them about their children. Here, it’s been a couple of different assailants in the different communities against women, and throughout the United States all of a sudden, with children ...

Q: Speaking of which, there’ve been so many of these cases of abducted children recently; have you considered any classes that are specifically geared toward preventing abduction?

A: We do children’s classes, and there are all kinds of stranger rules. And again, it’s very much like the adult classes: these little ones need to use their voices, and it’s very much about bellowing out, "I don’t know you, I don’t know you!" They’ve got to be loud, loud, loud — as loud as they can be. And they have to name it: "I don’t know this person! This is not my daddy!" Because as soon as people think it’s a familiar — be it little ones, be it older, be it dating — people do not intercede.

Q: Why do you say people shouldn’t yell "Fire"" when being attacked, as has sometimes been the advice?

A: The police say that; we do not agree with that. Because everything we teach is about naming the truth. There’s two pieces: we teach not to rely that someone’s going to help you. Because the chances of that happening are small. As women, we’ve been socialized to believe that we should rely on somebody else. So we want you to absolutely do whatever you need to do to learn how to be totally self-sufficient. Number two, we teach that you have to name the behavior. So yelling "Fire" when it’s not, versus yelling, "This is a rapist, I don’t know this man, I need help to get him away from me," [which] is what’s happening. I don’t know the chances of somebody coming to help, but when you’re standing on the street yelling "Fire!" and there is no fire ... I mean, somebody said to me, "It’s like a car alarm." I think the better analogy is when there’s a fire alarm in the building — nobody leaves anymore. We don’t take these things seriously. And what we need to start taking seriously is hearing a woman yelling, "This is a rapist! This is a rapist!" And we teach children, "I don’t know this person!" That’s what’s true.

Q: What changes have you seen in women’s attitudes toward self-defense over the years?

A: Our numbers continue to grow throughout the United States, so absolutely women are seeing that they can take their safety into their own hands, and that they can be powerful. Clearly they come here scared. But they’re still calling, and they’re still coming. With these assaults in the Boston area, I have seen an increase in women taking control of their lives. When we have had violence prior, our phones haven’t rung. So often I’ve heard women, even on the news, say, "My only option is to not go out." And that is not happening right now. Companies are calling, women are calling ...

Q: To what do you attribute that change?

A: I don’t know. I wonder if it’s because it’s that pervasive: it’s in Brighton, it’s in Brookline, it’s in the North End, it’s in Los Angeles, it’s in Utah. It’s broken through some sort of avoidance. Because I don’t think women are in denial, but they sure avoid taking control. And it’s broken through, and it is so exciting. I mean, we don’t like our phones ringing because this is happening, but it is very, very different [now].

Q: How does the men’s course differ?

A: The actual physical techniques are the same, but what men need to learn first and foremost is how to stay calm and de-escalate. Men’s issues tend to be more territorial, and women’s issues tend to be more [about predators]. He’s preying on her, versus, "You lookin’ at my girlfriend?" or "What’re you doing in my space?" or "You touched my car." Male egos get involved, and so we really do a lot of calming and slowing down of what I call that testosterone pop.

Q: How do you recruit the men to wear the big padded suits and play the attackers?

A: It’s very hard! And I need some — I’m down a couple of guys. We have that expression, Looking for a few good men. Some are graduates, some are men who’ve taken the class, men who’ve seen posters, word of mouth. Every possible way. And then they go through a lot to ever be hired. They have to watch the class, they have to be interviewed, they have to suit up, and then they have a group interview. I do a pretty extensive interview; as you can imagine, we don’t just let anybody [do this]. It’s not easy. We turn people away.

Q: Do the men ever find playing that role traumatic?

A: Traumatic, maybe not. Difficult, definitely. Absolutely. Traumatic every once in a while because maybe it hits home. We do a lot of group support as an organization. The really good thing for the men is they work together, so they get to have each other. We have monthly staff meetings where we’ll do supervision. Whatever kind of difficulties, we’re very, very there for each other, as a complete and total team. It’s a lot — it’s a lot after work to come here from six to 10 and play a rapist. But the end result, every single time, is so rewarding, and the belief that under most circumstances our graduates are going to be able to stop an assault, is very rewarding for us.

IMPACT Model Mugging can be reached at (800) 345-KICK, or on the Web at www.impactboston.com. Tamara Wieder can be reached at twieder[a]phx.com