Learning Triggers

When I was approximately 2 or 3 (1972-73?), my mother was staying with her mother while my dad was a few hours south in another town working and getting settled to bring us all down. Apparently my dad drove up to visit us and found out she had run off with me and my sister. Gma said she didn't know where to, so he rummaged through her old phone bills and found a recurring phone number, drove to that town out in the desert, and just drove up and down the streets looking for us. He actually found us. She had taken up with some really seedy guy. Dad left us with mom anyways. (another example of dad not protecting us.) Dad found out later, after he left us there, that the guy was a convicted felon, was wanted for violating parole and the cops came, surrounded the house and there was a shootout at the house with me and my sister there!

Fast forward 40some years, my husband was a police officer (retired now) and I decided that since the gun was in the house, I needed to be able to use it properly in case of emergency and also wanted one of my own. My husband took me to the range to teach me safe handling of the weapon. I put about three rounds into the target down range, felt like I was going to lose it, so set it down safely, walked away and burst into tears. I had to sit and cry for a while, and I had no idea why it was causing that reaction! It made me mad actually that I had that reaction and the way I saw it was that this inanimate object was not going to beat me. So, I was able to overcome that trigger. But just now, it hit me that it was that incident that caused the reaction.