Letting It Go

Recently I found myself losing my composure during a telephone conversation with the driver of a car that had rear-ended my stopped car earlier in the day. I had made the mistake of not calling the police at the time because the damage was minor.

She had promised to call with the missing insurance information later in the day. She did not call. Instead, she avoided my calls and when she finally did respond she accused me of harassing her. When I asked for her insurance information so I could report the damage she raised her voice and implied that I was trying to get her into trouble.

The answer to the first question seems obvious. I was nearly in tears and desperately wanted to verbally attack her, but I knew that doing so would only make the situation worse.

Fortunately, my husband was there and I asked him to take over the call. He had no reaction at all to her belligerence and calmed her down enough to get the information we needed. The answer to the second question also seems obvious. The unpleasant telephone call triggered my distress.

Using “this telephone call” as the trigger I said the sentences aloud and got a very clear image of an incident that happened when I was 16 years old. The image was me, staring fixedly at a black crack between two white tiles on the floor, feeling guilty and frozen, while my father yelled at me for making a mistake.

The really important trigger was the snapshot of “this image of the crack on the floor” because it represented so much frozen energy from the past. Once I said the sentences with that new trigger I relaxed completely.

Yes, I did file a police report and her insurance did pay to have the damage repaired. And I had no particular emotional response to writing this account of the incident.