One year, on Independence Day night, I believe I ended up within about 50 feet of one of our estranged daughters.
I chose to keep it from sending me into an emotional tailspin.
First, let me explain how this came to occur:
Our local Independence Day fireworks show was held that night. Renee and I have dear friends who live within walking distance of the celebration site, so as we sometimes do, we joined those friends (and a couple others) and started walking.
The thing is, our friends’ house is almost directly across the street from where that daughter was staying while she was back from college that summer. Before we’d commenced to the fireworks site, her car was visible. Furthermore, the blinds at the front of the house were open, and lights were on inside.
Now, I won’t claim that we have ironclad control over our thoughts and emotions. Maybe some people do. I have real-world tools that I teach to patients all the time. Still, I falter sometimes like anyone.
I knew without a word that my wife Renee was aware of the situation, though she was engaged in conversation with the other wives as we walked. Another close friend who’d joined us simply looked at the car, looked at me, smiled, and put his hands up beside his face to mimic wearing blinders. I had to chuckle. It was a meaningful gesture at exactly the right time. He knew the weight of the moment, and without drawing attention to it, chose to offer a little support. It was no cure, it was no solution… but it was support.
I glanced at the house and in an instant had a discussion with the part of me that wanted to ask questions, to wonder at the myriad possibilities of that moment in time:
Would I see her as we walked over? Would she see me? Would she be at the event? Would I see her on the way back?
And in that discussion, I reminded myself that allowing my thoughts to go there would come with a predictable, negative emotional outcome.
Read that part again.
I won’t claim it was easy, but I decided to look away, take a moment to be grateful for my friend’s gesture, and distract myself with the pleasure of our company.
It worked. Now, I’m not bulletproof. My heart hurt slightly but briefly.
I recognized the thoughts, stopped to analyze them, made a plan to change the thoughts to something else, distracted myself, and avoided being badly triggered. It’s fundamental Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. That time, it worked.
By the way, if our daughter was at the event, we did not see her. Renee checked in with me about the very things I’m sharing here. We did not dwell on it. We had a pleasant evening with some of our best friends, period. Yes, on the way back the illuminated nighttime interior of the house would have made seeing our daughter even easier. But I did the same thing I’d done earlier, with the additional benefit of reminding myself that I’d already succeeded in this situation and that I could therefore do so again.
Would that work every time? I know better than to make such a claim. But I also know that if I’d made no attempt to intervene in my own mind and instead indulged those urges, only bad outcomes awaited. I did not want to feel bad.
Time and time again in session, I point out to patients that their choices in a challenging scenario look as if they want to feel bad. This is where I usually joke that they can “throw a shoe at me if you want,” but no one ever has. And no one has ever denied they have a choice in the moment and simply don’t even try to avoid the path leading to negative emotions sometimes.
