Mad Mother And The Dalai Lama: Being a Direct Object of Displaced Emotions: 

The Dalai Lama was giving a talk, “Upholding Universal Ethics and Compassion in Challenging Times” at three universities during a two-day time period and the events were being live-streamed over the Internet. I wanted to record the events for myself and a friend who had provided antiques from her shop to set the stage at one of the universities. Each lecture was roughly 90 minutes and after the final lecture I was feeling very composed. I got in my car and headed out to Radio Shack for supplies to make copies.

Turning onto the main street, within a block I was at a stoplight. It was a four-lane street (two lanes going in one direction and two going in the other) with just one car (an SUV) in front of me. The light turned from red to green, but the SUV showed no sign of moving. I waited a few moments, but as cars whizzed by on my right and left, and others stacked up behind me, I gave the person in front a toot of my horn, assuming that whomever it was had gotten distracted by a phone call or something and would step on the gas once they realized the light had changed.

Well, the person did proceed through the intersection—but once clear—slammed on the breaks and did not budge. Fortunately, I was moving slowly and carefully enough so that I did not rear-end the SUV. Equally fortunate, the person behind me was moving slowly and carefully enough so that they did not rear-end me. Now, I was stuck in the intersection as the time left on that green light was rapidly diminishing along with the calm I had experienced listening to the Dalai Lama. I could not back up because the person behind me had proceeded into the intersection too. I could not move to the right lane to circumvent the SUV because the traffic was moving swiftly in that lane. It was not quiet as bad as being stuck in the middle of a railroad track with an oncoming train, but it wasn’t good either. 

Meanwhile, there was no one in front of the SUV that had stopped abruptly. With few options available, I honked my horn. The driver in the SUV stepped on the gas long enough for me to step on the gas—and then slammed on the break again! Fortunately, once again, I did not rear-end the SUV and the person behind me did not rear-end me. I believe we both suspected we must be especially careful around this person. I could see out my rear view mirror that quite a line was building up behind me. I still was not out of the intersection, and the clock was ticking. I honked again. The driver of the SUV eased onto the gas, and now began to drive about five miles an hour—obviously to irritate me. 

Finally, there was a break in the right lane. The driver behind me hopped into it and then courteously waited for me to jump safely in front—apparently feeling sympathy for me in our shared plight. I would have stayed in that lane and tried to move ahead as far away as possible from what now appeared to be a seriously disturbed SUV driver. That is what the driver who had been behind me and others appeared to do, and is what I have done when suspecting a drunk driver. However, this driver did not appear drunk, and if I wanted to go to Radio Shack I needed to get back into the left lane, since I had to make an upcoming left turn. I moved back into the left lane, ahead of the SUV driver, who now stepped on the gas landing right on my tail. It was as if the driver felt that by my moving back into the lane in front I was somehow winning an imagined competition perceived to have taken place back at the light, when in truth I was just trying to get to where I had originally planned to go. By following me, the driver was in a sense surrendering whatever agenda they had begun their day with to mine—unless of course their agenda had been to go out and make someone miserable. In which case they were accomplishing it. I moved into the left turn lane, and the SUV driver made an abrupt move into the left turn lane behind me. I did not want to jump to a negative conclusion, but I now felt pretty certain that this SUV driver was following me with intent to intimidate. What to do? 

The peace of the Dalai Lama’s university lectures was slipping from my consciousness. Going to Radio Shack was my chief reason for hitting the road that afternoon. I did not want to have to ditch my plans and besides—what else was I to do? I didn’t exactly want this person following me home and I also had other errands, including some in that mall. Since the shops in the strip mall all had plate glass fronts and glass doors, I figured that I was probably safer there than just about anywhere. I made the quick right turn that was required to enter the driveway of the strip mall. The SUV driver made the quick right, right behind me.

I bypassed the first store that I was going to visit, where there were a lot of people and cars parked in spaces several yards from the storefronts. Instead, I proceeded down to the end of the strip mall to Radio Shack, which had head-in parking directly in front of the windows and a glass door that usually had a salesperson nearby. No one else was parked in that section of the lot. I felt that if I parked directly in front of the door I would probably be okay, as I recalled that particular Radio Shack had been robbed at gunpoint a couple of months prior, and the guys who work there seemed to handle it well, the police being on the scene by the time I arrived and everyone appearing cool, calm and collected. I figured if a dangerous altercation occurred in the parking lot when I got out of my car, the employees at Radio Shack would call the police. I headed for that choice parking space. The SUV driver pulled in right next to me. Clearly, this was no coincidence. 

I took an envelope from the mail I had picked up en route and a pen from my purse. The SUV driver (whom I now could see was a tall muscular woman probably in her mid to late twenties) got out of the SUV and headed toward me, blocking my egress to the store as I exited my car. She yelled at me at the top of her lungs for having honked at her. I silently moved around to the rear of her car to put distance between her and myself while I took down her license plate number. When she saw what I was doing, she began to rail “I have a newborn in the car! I have a newborn in the car!” When I heard this, I could no longer contain myself. I responded. “There could have been an accident.” She looked shocked and repeated my words as a question, “There could have been an accident?” “Yes,” I replied. “You put your child at risk. You could have caused an accident.” “I have a newborn. The light was red,” she screamed. “The light had turned green,” I calmly replied. “Well you better not ever honk at me again, or I’ll beat you up!” she yelled. “You will?” I responded. “Yeah!” she said. “Oh,” I nodded. “The police would like to know that,” I said, jotting down her words. She got back in her car and drove away. All this had happened in the time it takes to drive two blocks and park a car!  

As I turned to go into the store, feeling quite rattled, I saw that a woman with a baby had moved into the vacant space on the other side of my car during the altercation and had emerged carrying the baby in a car-seat/carrier. I was glad that the situation had not turned violent in the presence of her child and her. A salesperson came to greet me as I entered Radio Shack, which is routine for them with customers. My heart was pounding and my mind was distracted, as he asked if he could help me with anything. His tone was steady and compassionate and I wondered if his inquiry was strictly a sales question, or perhaps a response to the woman threatening me. I made my purchase with no mention of the incident. 

My heart continued to pound as I got back in my car. The incident consumed my thoughts. What struck me most were the woman’s words, “Well you better not ever honk at me again, or I’ll beat you up!” Did she actually think she and I were likely to ever see each other again? “You better not_______ ever again, or I’ll _______,” statements are the sort of things people say to someone who is actually in their life on some sort of ongoing basis, like a parent, sibling, spouse, child, friend, coworker. They’re not the sort of things one says to a complete stranger during a chance encounter in a public space. 

For some reason, as I contemplated this, my heart started to calm; my mind started to clear. This woman was not reacting to me at all. This woman’s rage, her repeated slamming on the breaks and maliciously trapping me in an intersection, her moving like a snail when I was stuck behind her, her following me and yelling and threatening to injure me, were all really directed at someone else. I just happened to be there. I felt sympathy for her family and dread for the newborn—if there really was a newborn. What must those people endure! Cognitive behaviorists emphasize that how we perceive something effects how we respond to it. I was witnessing how my perceptions of this incident effected my physiological response to it, and therefore probably also my behavior.

It was disconcerting to think this woman with hair-trigger rage was out there on the road in something that could conceivably become a weapon. I felt responsible for my knowledge of her existence, the way one might feel responsible for knowledge of toxins in a reservoir. I wondered if I should report her to police for reckless driving and for threatening me with bodily injury. Who knows what she’ll do next or to whom? Then again, I considered the reality that if I report her to police, it would likely just turn into a “she said, she said,” with no positive outcome. In the meantime, I would likely have to provide my name and address as part of the report, and this woman would then have a legal right to my name and address because (as I have learned in the past) the accused has a legal right to know their accuser. I did not want to make myself any more vulnerable to this unpredictable out of control person through our legal system than I had already been made vulnerable by chance. A former neighbor of mine had once gotten so angry with her husband that she shot his car full of holes, much to the mortification of her teenage children. I did not want this gal showing up in my driveway.

As I contemplated what to do next, I also contemplated what I might have done better. Considering the woman’s unpredictably dangerous behavior from the start, instead of getting out of my car to get her license plate, I could have called the police from inside my car, and waited for them to arrive at the Radio Shack. Given her rage, however, she might have started beating on my car. That could have been expensive. I believe it was only my getting her license plate number for the police that made her back off. That and possibly the presence of the other woman who drove up and could have served as a witness on my behalf, though that woman’s arrival could not have been anticipated. I also could have driven to the police station—though I’m not really sure where the police station is. The station might have served as a deterrent, causing her to drive off—or had she followed me in, possibly that lot would have cameras to record her plates and behavior—I really don’t know. 

She did not appear to be a rational decision maker, but I believe danger to bystanders would probably only have been present if she had been armed—and if she had looked like she was packing a pistol, I would have fled in my car and called 911. In our current culture, however, we don’t really know what someone is carrying. I think of how the day before the incident I share here, Verna McClain, a 30-year-old nurse whom accounts say had a miscarriage, reportedly admitted to shooting a stranger, Kala Marie Golden, to death in front of witnesses in the parking lot of the victim’s pediatrician’s office and then steeling the victim’s three-day old son. It’s chilling to think with whom one might be dealing at any place, any time.

As it was I had two blocks to make a decision in a strange, rapidly unfolding, stress inducing, situation. Becoming distracted at a stoplight is something that probably happens every minute of every day somewhere in the USA. Responding to a ‘wake-up’ toot by driving through the intersection and then maliciously jamming on the breaks to trap the tooter in the middle of the intersection as cross traffic is about to begin is so deranged I had never seen such a thing before in all my life. Looking back on this incident, I wish I had been more flexible in my response. My natural inclination is to give people the benefit of the doubt and to steer clear of trouble. I am not alone in this. Bizarre behavior is often hard to register and respond to immediately and intelligently. The success of shows like “Candid Camera,” “Punk’d,” and “Off Their Rockers,” count on most people responding with disbelief and an attempt to graciously proceed as usual even in a most ungracious most unusual situation. That’s what makes such scenes so funny. But there was nothing funny about the scene in which I found myself. In the future, I hope, I will immediately recognize that such behavior is so abnormal I require no further evidence to flee from the person ASAP—even if that means making a change in plans. Had I to do again, I would put my planned agenda aside, drive to the police station, and then call the officers from the car and wait for them to come out. That way, not only could I have gotten their help, but if she needed help (and this woman clearly needed help) maybe police intervention would be a first step on the way to her receiving it.

How did this woman become this way, I wondered. What made her tic—like a time bomb? Years ago, I had a very sweet, very gentle, friend who told me she suffered such severe post-partum depression she felt like throwing her newborn out the window. But as I contemplated this woman’s repeated reckless behaviors—not just behind the wheel, but also her leaping out of the SUV to confront me—and the absolute silence from inside her vehicle despite her ranting, I doubted she actually had a ‘baby on board,’ and therefore doubted a postpartum mood swing. This woman was in no way focused on protecting a child. I suspected she merely saw the other woman’s infant and opportunistically invented the story of an infant as an excuse for her own behavior, which possibly appeared embarrassingly bad even to her at that point. 

My initial experience of this woman was that her behavior reflected a personality disorder wherein everything was experienced as a competition and any correction as a narcissistic assault—but her threat of bodily harm went beyond that. Was her behavior something she learned from her family? Was she a victim of abuse? Was she hard wired for rage? Was she in the manic phase of a bi-polar disorder? Or could her behavior be the effect of drugs? She did not have the wasted away look I have seen on patients addicted to crystal meth. In fact, she looked to be in better physical shape than just about any woman I have ever encountered. She could have beaten me up in a minute, and clearly knew it. Might she be taking steroids? They have been known to cause rage. 

There was something contained about this woman however—despite the fact that she was ricocheting like a bullet trapped in a hard-edged world. She did not strike me as an innately menacing human being. Her behavior seemed reactive—over reactive—but capable of being reversed within a reasonable period of time. After all, she did deescalate and back off during the course of our brief encounter. It occurred to me that she might be caught in a syndrome, possibly subsequent to trauma.

I began to wonder if she could be returning military suffering from posttraumatic stress. Many returning members of the military have reported experiencing flashbacks while driving due to having lived under the constant threat of IED’s and ambushes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given the woman’s age and buff physique, and the county where this encounter took place, I suspected she might well have military background. Had she experienced roadside explosions and loss of comrades? Had she been lost in another world when I tooted? Did my horn trigger a fight response for which she had been trained? If so, I owed her my gratitude for her service, patience in her suffering, and a prayer that she get help before she hurts herself or somebody else. The more I considered the possibility that her behavior might be a result of military service, the more sympathetic I became. After all, if her behavior was a consequence of her service to our country, then, as a citizen, I was partially responsible for her suffering. I could see why she might be angry with me, and the rest us.

I noticed how when I thought of her as having served in the military, I kind of liked her. I told myself, she could well be an exemplary human being. In truth, she could be the kind of person you would have trusted with your life; before whatever experiences may have set off the syndrome that now put those she encountered at risk—that is if in fact she was suffering from posttraumatic stress. I kind of wanted to think she was. It made me feel better about her, and it also gave some reason, even logic, to her otherwise illogical behavior, which was comforting on some level. The world was not randomly bizarre. 

As I considered the possibility that she had served in the military, I began to recall her commanding presence; evident from the moment she stepped from her vehicle and marched over to me. I noted how initially comfortable she had been taking charge of the situation, while at the same time being respectful of the authority that the police represented, retreating upon their mention. I could imagine her being capable of both giving and taking orders—leading and following. That’s an essential trait for success in the military, as well as other institutions with clearly defined structures. 

However, I did not respond to her in the way she expected. She didn’t seem to know what to do with me—command or obey? I was out of uniform, so to speak. Consequently, she just threatened to beat me up at some future time if I did not behave according to her pleasure when our paths crossed again. Perhaps she had grown accustomed to her path crossing from time to time with the same set of people with whom she would develop varying degrees of relationship, and therefore needed to establish roles and protocols of behavior. Hence, the absurdity that this random encounter would ever repeat itself was maybe not so absurd to her. That also may reflect a person who has lived within a military milieu, a person who is accustomed to everyone—even strangers—being part of a tight ongoing community. Whereas from my experience, she was just one of billions of people anonymous to me whom I might encounter, and her behavior made her seem as if she had been dropped from another world. It was as if I, and the world in which she now found herself, were in conflict with a picture of reality she had fixed in her head. There was a mismatch. We didn’t fit her schema, and she didn’t know where or how she could fit into ours—and in those moments she did not fit. Layers of complexity emerged as I began to question my initial impressions of this woman.

Whether she was afflicted with a bi-polar disorder, or was a person who served in the military and was now suffering from post traumatic stress, or a victim of abuse, or a sociopath, or someone with some other disorder—enduring or temporary—all this simply did not cross my mind in real time as this situation rapidly unfolded. Or if it did cross my mind, it crossed so rapidly I could not unpack, analyze and respond to it in the manner that I now wish I had. I did what it occurred to me to do at the time. I’m not the Dalai Lama. If I were the Dalai Lama, maybe I would have calmed the woman and steered her to counseling. If I were Jesus maybe I would have healed her of whatever misery had caused her to behave that way. As is, I was just relieved to escape the situation with no one being injured. 

In English grammar, a direct object receives the action of a verb. A person kicks the ball, hits the wall, shoots the car. The ball, the wall, the car are direct objects that receive the action of the verb that precedes them. To the woman in the SUV, I was no more than an object, devoid of humanity, something at which to hurl her hostile bio-chemical impulses, or a chimera of all those who had caused her previous insult or injury, or maybe a flashback to an enemy in the field, something to be made the object of her anger. She did not see me at all. In her rage, she was blind. As a sentient being I can recognize that and choose not to receive her rage, but rather calmly take whatever steps I need to take to keep myself, and others, safe, and possibly even offer help. I see that now. In a sense my encounter with this woman was the living lesson of the Dalai Lama’s lecture; more than mere words could hope to teach.

** Nothing connected with this blog or this website should be considered counseling or treatment. **

HomeEmail MeBlogTable of Contents

Designed by Dr. Devorah Ann Fox      2010 for The Center for the Monotheist Psychology of Transcendence: Warrior Healer
SM
SM