Yes, yup, and absolutely. I hate me some back to school shopping. For me, that kind of hunt is a huge trigger… with the bright lights, the picked through bins, and the crying baby… And like you said, all a backdrop to some ridiculous detail like the color of the tab or if there’s a sleeve inside.
I can crash in any store. I think part of it, at least for me, is the distraction of the activity. If I’m walking down the street and start feeling low, I pop a glucose tablet in my mouth. If I’m in the middle of an aisle with a partial list of dinner ingredients that I’m afraid of forgetting, and there’s one item of that list on either end of the aisle in which I stand, I’ve got competing demands. All it takes is that distraction, and, undetected, I just slip further down the drain.
It can’t be the lights though… that’s an element, but I can eliminate it as a possible cause. I can do the exact same thing shopping online. 