Flight or Flight Response

We moved a lot when I was growing up because my father was in the Mil…Library. My dad was a Research Librarian and for some reason that meant his upward professional mobility was tied to moving from university to university. Moving a lot had opposite effects on me and my brother. He has lived in Boston since he graduated college, and I can’t keep still. I even transferred during college. And there is no psychotherapy couch or PhD needed to diagnose this behavior as a flight response to stress or fear. After college I moved because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Then I moved because where I moved was not what I wanted to do. Then I moved to get a job. Then I moved to go back to school, which led to moving after I was done with school to a city I had no reason to move to. So I moved again. Then, last year, my flight response was triggered when I found out I was pregnant. But after going out to look at a bunch of town homes in Durham, my gag response to pregnancy kicked in and I went back to bed for six months. Anyway, now that I am a mother I realize that moving in response to stress is not the healthiest game plan in the world. In fact, I have used my new level of maturity and greater sense of perspective on life to develop an alternative behavior modification that I think is completely reasonable in response to stress. I buy lottery tickets.