Freaky friday

I managed to make my peace with fridays. I accepted the temporary increase in numbers, and Matt changed his ways of running the friday group. I hesitated a moment when he asked me with whom I wanted a turn, luckily I decided to do (have done?) table work with him.

Enjoying the new freedom in my hips, and more connectedness of limbs and torso, I sat down with a tea to browse a bit through anatomy trains. When Ana came in, I commented 'breakfast time', but she didn't seem to want to talk to me. When I saw her cutting a loaf of bread, I started watching her hands, trying to compare her movements with the memory of the day when she cut her hand.

Then chaos broke loose. 'Stop watching me like this!' I looked at her in surprise, maybe said something like 'What?' 'You always watch people, trying to get eye contact, it's annoying me! And I'm not the only one annoyed...' I noticed her emotional upheaval, as well as my confusion. I mentioned that observing is part of our job as AT teacher, tried to make her aware of the use of the universal quantifier 'always' in her statements, to little effect.

Recalling the situation makes me aware of how well inhibition worked for me in that situation. Her tone, body language, the message itself, the group conformity call especially, all of those used to trigger easily my 'verbal fighting mode'. Yet I stayed relatively calm, I just laughed every now and then, which probably didn't help. However, I had no interest to take the bait to dramatize the situation, which wasn't too easy.

'You always look at people, it annoys me, I feel like invaded, and others too.' Whoa, here we go. Universal quantifier, external locus of control (i'm responsible for her being annoyed) and group conformity enforcer. I asked her whether she expected me not to look at anyone, and she finished our mini drama by promising a better solution.

Unfortunately, Sharon, who witnessed the situation, did not want to comment on it. I'm sure my frustration about her reply shone through, but I had no intent to inhibit my reaction. I found it hard to refocus on the anatomy trains afterwards, but I didn't want to cling to this incident while in school.

I probably learned more than I asked for, and some of my observations were confirmed. Another random group of people thinks talking about an individual instead of talking to them could change their perceptions and improve their interactions. Duncan's idea of using all the time in school to do the work suddenly seems very radical, pretty much unheard of.

Resilience. Mindfulness. I can't tell whether my non-doing contributed much to this complex web of misunderstandings. On the positive side, I might have a chance to inspect my self defence habits, I can imagine triggers coming up.