Hera C Weaver is a writer who uses storytelling to discuss healing from trauma and living beyond how we have been conditioned to think and live. She uses ‘journey journaling’ to re-evaluate past experiences and focus on self-actualization.
Recently, I was in a group coaching session when the host spoke on attachment theory. My understanding of Attachment theory is that it details how your emotional bond with your caregivers in your developmental years expresses itself in the emotional bonds of your adult relationships, commonly referred to as an Attachment style.
During that coaching session, I was shocked by how much of it resonated with me and realized that I could express a combination of almost all insecure attachment styles. The coaching session showed me that I wanted to be fully aware of the blind spots I held to feel secure within myself. I researched to find ways to become more aware, but what I found only assisted me in addressing the emotional triggers or wounds I already knew.
Stumped, I headed to the supermarket to grab a few things, quickly made my rounds through the aisles, and found myself in the express lane with my seven items. As the cashier started ringing my items up, one of them wouldn’t scan, and she asked me if I remembered the price, but when I relayed what I recalled the price to be, she immediately responded that she didn’t think that was the correct price.
Just like that, a blind spot became illuminated as my inner monologue went on a whisper-yell rant about the cashier thinking I could be lying about the cost of the item. That single thought took me on a rollercoaster of emotion, none of which I outwardly expressed as I silently processed the interaction. As it turns out, the cashier recalled that the item was on sale, but the price displayed on the shelves still needed to be updated. Completely unaware of the mental-emotional war I was battling, the cashier finished bagging everything and smiled as I thanked her and headed to the parking lot. Once inside my car, I decided to open my notes app and journal my thoughts and emotions on the situation before I lost connection with them.
I sat in my car in that grocery store parking lot, reading over what I had just typed, trying to figure out why my emotions had heightened with the cashier. The answer jumped out at me. I wrote that I had assumed that she thought I was not being truthful in relaying the item’s price to her, and that thought took me back in time to a desperately distressing 4 a.m. confrontation with my mother and her husband; my past showing up in my present and distorting my perception of people, places and things and dominating my reactions to the present.
That supermarket interaction opened my eyes to a few of my blind spots that helped me to notice how I try to fill in the blanks of a current situation based on an investment of emotions from past circumstances that I attempt to group as similar. I realized that in doing so, I still had my defenses up after all those years. My awareness of my wounds has increased, and I utilize the inner friction and areas of discomfort that I experience as a heat map for blind spotting wounds. I’m still refining my process, and this practice hasn’t yet wholly removed the charge from emotional triggers, but it has heightened my awareness of myself which puts me more in the know, and knowing is half the battle, right?
Until next time, my Friends!