CODE BREAKING (TAILGATING part 2)
As I sat in my office, overlooking the very country road where for the first time in my life I pulled over for a tailgater and let them go past, I thought about what had happened over those two days.
I thought again about Osgoode Village, the truck tailgater, my response, the next day sedan tailgater, and how I had pulled over to wish someone well who, only moments before, was a threat.
I thought of where in the body I feel it when such things occur. The racing pulse, shorter breathing, the tight gut and full threat alertness and physiological arousal as the wolf is summoned, just in case. I remembered the ways I might protest and curse at the interloper crowding my back end, the furtive back-and-forth glances at the road and rearview mirror, options running through my mind.
When else had I felt like that? Of course, every time I’d been tailgated, came the answer. And what about earlier than that, I pondered. What’s the earliest I can remember ever feeling this way?
I let that sit for a day or two, moving in and out of my office, hearing the cars whiz by the end of my driveway. I was unhurried, curious, exploring, imagining, seeking only to access an intuitive understanding of why this happens.
About three days later, it came to me: the earliest time I can remember this kind of arousal was when I was a little boy, say, between age 8 or so and 11, sitting in the living room at my parent’s home watching black & white TV with my eight siblings, and dad would walk in and take his seat.
My dad had his own chair, centrally located in the room, directly opposite the TV. He’d arrive and someone would scramble out of his way, maybe two of us even, so he could take his place and watch with us. It was usually Bonanza, Star Trek, Walt Disney, or cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Donald Duck, and the odd time Superman, Spiderman, and their ilk.
Thinking back to those times I realized that dad’s arrival made me uncomfortable. So much so that in short order, sometimes in five minutes and at other times in ten, I’d make an excuse about having something to do and leave the room. I’d leave Dad and the TV to my brothers and sisters.
Why did I do that? I never even realized I was doing it at the time. The house was run by mom and backed up by dad. With nine kids to look after, ma was tireless and efficient and had little time for anyone stepping out of line. Morality at home was assumed more than it was taught.
And on those occasions where she felt the full weight of her martyrdom, your perceived transgressions fueling the “being taken for granted” caregiver’s dilemma, she summoned her husband as punisher. Mom gave a lot, and sometimes she took a little back.
Over the years of my early life dad had tried various lesser pieces of wood spanking his children and finally settled on a twenty-inch piece of maple hockey stick handle he called “the ruler.” He kept this on top of the kitchen door frame for all to see.
Typically, the progression of his ire was first a look that could kill, then a raised voice that froze you in place, often followed with a slap or a throw across the room, and finally, if he was sufficiently agitated, a spanking with the ruler. I held the family record for number of strikes.
One time a classmate and I were caught tossing a note back and forth in class. It was grade three and our teacher was a nun with the most beautiful face. My friend Jr. sent the first volley with “caca” written on it. I replied with “pipi” and sent it back.
An exchange or two later and, the aerodynamics of folded paper being what they are, my return landed on the desk of another student, the teacher’s pet. To my horror Miss Good-Goody-Two-Shoes promptly read the note and turned it in while pointed me out to the teacher. Since we lived just up the street, I was sent home with a note at lunchtime.
I tried to explain myself to ma, but she spied the envelope I was holding behind my back and demanded to see it. After reading it, all she said was “Wait ‘til your father gets home.”
I knew I was fucked.
That evening, I got the family record: seventy-two full adult swings on my backside while I held on to my bedpost with pants pulled down. After 30 strikes I’d fall to the ground and beg for mercy. “Daddy, no!” I’d say, “I won’t do it again.” But he’d just reply with “Get up!” and keep hitting me.
My two older brothers listened from the other room and counted the total. It was said I screamed so loudly the neighbours all around us could hear. It wasn’t the first time the old man had yelled at me or hit me, and it wasn’t the last time either.
I’m not writing this to re-live difficult episodes of my early years. Rather, I share these experiences in the hopes others will understand the process I used to address a longstanding shortcoming. Keep in mind this is about tailgating, yes, but much more than that.
It’s enough to say that my nervous system was changed forevermore that day. I was a good kid, no real problems. In fact, I was attending French school as an Anglophone speaker.
Though I understood not a word in grade one, sometime in grade two I had gone to school in the morning ignorant and confused… and come home understanding a new language.
By grade six I was class president.
As I said, the day I got the family record wouldn’t be the last time I was spanked, but it seems that day he beat the emotion out of me. It took many years before I could feel again, at least the way I surmise others might feel in every-day situations.
And so it was that I learned to avoid my father at every turn. My instincts for self preservation honed to a sharp edge, if he showed up, I was out of there as soon as I could. Apparently, he noticed.
Probably when I was eleven or so, my folks tried family therapy at a local mental institution. I remember a session facilitated by two therapists where my father turned his attention to me in and accused me of avoiding him. I was so overwhelmed that I responded angrily and stormed out in tears. They found me later walking down Carling Avenue alone and pulled the car over and let me in.
Not a word was said that I recall. I don’t remember ever going back to therapy either.
Operating System
As I sat in my office remembering all of this, I saw how my physiological arousal while being tailgated dovetailed with the way I felt in the living room of my parent’s home watching TV when dad would come in: people all around, eyes on the TV, on my father, on the TV, on my father, on the TV…
That was it. A perfect match of fact and feelings.
The first time visiting with “Little Chris” years ago required a fair degree of compassion and understanding. Partly that was to make sure I didn’t just scare him off, sending that part of me into hiding again. I talk about this in Sipping Fear Pissing Confidence, my book about addictions.
In my experience, no one survives childhood emotionally unscathed under perfectly imperfect parenting. All of us have a Younger Self wandering the darkened hallways of the psyche, looking, searching, maybe holding a stuffed Teddy Bear and dragging a favourite blanket, looking for belonging. And that part of us always has a story to tell.
So, I asked myself given the circumstances and how I felt, what would I have to believe to make these facts and feelings true. I thought hard about that, re-imagining myself as a boy, barely double digits in age, in that setting with the matching beige pleather couches, every seat taken by someone, the movement of characters on TV, seeing through my eyes as if I were there again…
And it again, the messaging came to me: “I’m in danger. Something bad will happen.”
Looking at the TV, looping, “I’m in danger” and glancing towards dad “Something bad will happen” and at the TV, “I’m in danger” and over my shoulder at dad “Something bad will happen.”
Now, I imagined driving down the road being tailgated and saw that I was unconsciously ruled by these same two declarations. “I’m in danger” looking at the road, and “something bad will happen” while glancing at the rearview, back to the road and “I’m in danger” and to the rearview “Something bad will happen.” These were the irrational beliefs summoning the wolf.
This was a part of my operating system: nervous system coping from decades ago that had been superimposed on tailgaters all that time and had never been updated
It was like using Commodore 64 in a Windows 11 world.
I’d learned to manage that kind of physiological arousal as a child by leaving the room and avoiding my father’s wrath. I couldn’t do that while driving. I was stuck there not feeling safe and expecting something bad would happen. These were the same feelings I had at 8-9-10-11 years old. They were with me still.
Like learning to walk at an early age and doing it automatically ever since, I’d learned the danger of keeping my eyes ahead on a screen while a menace lurked around me outside my control.
It was my nervous system, trained by the body-mind long ago, and on occasions like this, still on autopilot all these years later. It was time to take over the controls and create new concepts my brain could use predictively next time someone decides to follow my vehicle too closely.
Conditioning
I’d experimented that first time with the sedan on my street and it had worked better than expected. What was needed was more opportunities like this to put in place new thoughts, new feelings and new behaviours because the predictive brain is trained by experience. If it learned one way, it could learn another.
I had done this enough times over the years so that I didn’t have to reach out and comfort, reparent, or father my younger self. In my Taming Shame course I teach a few ways of doing this. I did, however, keep him in mind, compassionately, just in case, as I went about watching for the chance to practice giving my brain new concepts to use in the future.
It wasn’t long before a chance came about. On the way to the local supermarket with my daughter one of those little Japanese cars with loud exhaust and a stylish racing wing on the back showed up and was impatiently hurrying me along.
I knew a left turn lane ahead had a right lane go-around for a hundred metres or so.
As soon as I reached that point in the road, I quickly signaled and moved into the slower right lane and let the little sports car pass. While doing so I thought to myself, “Here, allow me,” in highly polite-Canadian fashion.
Off they went, zooming on by and I could see them get stuck behind cars a ways up the road and finally stop at some lights. Meanwhile, daughter and I continued our pleasant conversation before we turned into the grocery store completely unbothered by the tailgater. Such freedom.
The idea is to have new thoughts, new feelings, while engaging in a new behaviour. In my case, in addition to “Here, allow me,” I’d think, “Sure, if you need the road that badly, here it is,” or “You must be in a terrible hurry,” or, “Here you go brother/sister, let me help,” as I pull over and let them pass.
I did a version of this seven or eight times at this initial writing. The emotional activation of when I first notice the tailgater through to the subsequent methods to deal with them has diminished in intensity each time. The rule is if your emotional response doesn’t fit circumstances, an update is in order.
By not rewarding the nervous system with my usual response to tailgaters, the old way of dealing with things will die out completely through behavioural “extinction” simply because it’s no longer being reinforced by the usual O/S behaviours, thoughts and feelings which sustained it.
And the more times I can use my new response to the tailgating situation and not use the old method that plagued me for decades, the more the predictive brain will put in place the new concepts to use in the future.
I am almost looking forward to tailgaters now. Nuts eh?
Sure enough, the day before Christmas Eve (men’s shopping days for sure), I had to travel into town during a snowstorm. On the way back, the roads were full of snow. No way you could see lines demarking lanes and cautious driving was the way to go.
Going through Findlay Creek some dude is six feet from my bumper and honking his horn because I’m driving down the middle of two lanes IN A SNOWSTORM instead of one. So I pull over enough to let him zip by me. I was a little envious of his traction, admittedly, nothing like my Elantra.
At the next lights I rolled up beside him and lowered my window, smiling, gesturing at the road while telling him if he needs to get somewhere I cede the road to him with pleasure. He yelled back thanking me and mentioning that there are two lanes there. I smiled and asked if he noticed THE SNOWSTORM laughing. The light changed. We moved on, him ahead, pulling in a half mile up the road at a used car place. I gave him a short honk politely as I went by. I assume we are friendly now.
That’s how you update your operating system.
Powerful, true and free…
cw
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