I was on a road trip for two weeks so I did a lot of driving.
Vehicles coming up behind me and staying on my tail have always bothered me. I can tell myself it doesn’t really bother me, I can pretend it doesn’t bother me which is really denial that it does bother me. This is how I have felt about tailgating for as long as I have been driving. My feelings have never changed; they have never gone away. It doesn’t matter how much I tell myself that it shouldn’t bother me because it does and it always has.
On the road trip I was thinking about this and trying to figure out how I feel about it. What do I feel when someone is tailgating and why do I feel that way?
The first half of my road trip I didn’t do anything different than I had always done – that is feel uncomfortable when someone was on my tail and just tell myself there was no reason to feel uncomfortable as I was doing nothing to impede them. I generally drive somewhat above the speed limit to keep up with the flow of traffic, which is almost always faster than the speed limit, but I don’t drive faster than a reasonable speed faster than the limit.
The second half of the road trip, instead of justifying my way of driving I just tried to feel what I was feeling. When tailgating happens I feel like I am in the way of the driver behind me, that I am impeding them. I feel that I should somehow try to relieve them of what I think they are feeling, that I should speed up so they are not right behind me or that I should pull over.
Of course, these feelings really are not about the driver behind me. I have no idea what they are feeling and it is not my business at all. What I am feeling is the emotions that I have always had since I was a baby and a child. I was the fourth child and the last three were born within three years of each other. My parents would have felt that I was a burden; that I was in the way. They likely would not allow themselves to be aware of those feelings but I know they were there. A baby would pick up these feelings likely before they were born and certainly after. These feelings were always unspoken but a baby is a total sponge of feeling and the feelings coming from their parents are taken in. As a child is completely dependent on their parents (or guardians) for their survival, they have to be constantly aware of what their parents are feeling whether the parents are in denial or not.
So I grew up with these feelings and could only deny them myself and when I was old enough to talk I could not express them or feel them openly because my guardians could not abide me too. I do not want to minimize the extent of these feelings now, it does not help me in any way to deny these feelings, or excuse my parents for feeling this way about me. It does not help me now to blame them either, they had similar parents as well, they lived in denial of their own feelings their whole lives. I just want now to see the truth of what happened to me as a child and to process the feelings and in that way to lessen them.
Of course it is ridiculous for me to think that I know what a driver behind is feeling. Many drivers just seem to unconsciously drive right behind another vehicle. But all my life I have been allowing people who I don’t know, who I will never know to have an effect on my thoughts and mood. This is just one example, and there will be more that I will uncover through my experience of living. This tailgating thing, though, is a good example of how I let others control my thinking and emotions. So much of my education and a dominant theme of my family and societal education is for me to be concerned with what others are thinking and how they are feeling and that I am supposed to change my actions in regard to them. This education is not a good thing and it leads to all sorts of trying to fulfill real or imagined expectations from people and groups of people.
So on the second half of road trip whenever I had a vehicle come up behind me I would just breathe into the emotions that I was feeling. After a few days of this much of the uncomfortable feelings went away. They haven’t disappeared completely but I find now that I can be aware of a vehicle behind me but I do not feel as uncomfortable and sometimes I don’t feel uncomfortable at all; I just register a vehicle behind me without any feeling about it. The uncomfortable feelings are definitely lessoning. I do not doubt that they will disappear completely the more I practice feeling the feelings.
This is a good reminder of the process that I have been going through over the past number of months. The process of trying to see the truth of a situation, to see clearly what happened in my upbringing and education. This is guided by taking action through the things that happen in my life. For example, driving and processing my feelings while driving. The other great benefit through seeing the truth, taking action and feeling my feelings is that when there is a positive result I build some faith that the process is working and is a great benefit to me. When I see the negative feelings I have always carried about myself diminishing, it is a wonderful thing and it leads me to want to continue this process and to actually seek it out.