When the woman whose personal training appointment was before mine showed up at my time slot, I panicked.

If you do know what appeasing and pleasing and “please don’t escalate further I don’t like to feel scared” feelings feel like, then you’ll know just how proud of myself I was that I did not thrust my TRX bands in her face and assure her it was “no big deal” and that I “didn’t need the appointment” that I had scheduled because I obviously have “way more available time” than her to reschedule.

Even though all those reasons would be fake and I would know it to my core, I once upon a time would go about the pleasing and bowing and retreating and denying anyway, because that’s what I learned to do to deescalate big people when I was a small person and it takes a lot of undoing to undo it.

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