Hi Everyone,

I thought I would share with you the session I had with my T yesterday. I like to go into each session with some idea of what it is I want to talk about, and yesterday I knew what it was. It came to me when I was at the grocery store on Monday. I was pushing my cart down one of the isles when I came across a woman who had her back to me and had left her cart in the middle of the isle, effectively blocking my ability to get past her. I waited and after about 20 seconds she saw me, apologized, and moved her cart off to the side. I said thank you and moved on.

Shortly afterward I came to the realization that I rarely, if ever, say "excuse me", to get someones attention that I wish to get past them. It seems so crazy to me on the surface. I mean people say it every day to each other. It's such a common occurrence. And 99% of the time the person in your way will simply move aside. In working through this with my T I came to the understanding that my behavior here was a result of an emotional flashback (damn I hate them ...lol). Growing up with an alcoholic father meant I always had to be on guard, know where he was, decide how to avoid him, and keep quiet. This survival skill was necessary for me as a child to avoid conflict with him. And now, decades later, my amygdala is falsely warning me that my grocery store encounter was not safe and I was triggered.

It's interesting to see that rationally I can see that the correct behavior would have simply be for me to say excuse me, and move on my way. But my amygdala had other thoughts. I ended our session telling my T that I was going to spend the afternoon racing up and down the isles of a grocery store working with this newly discovered information! To which she chuckled.

Have a great day everyone.

LongRoad