Snaggle, hope the shopping trip is going or has gone well! You may already know about urge surfing, but if not you might want to google it, or type into the search bar on this site. It's a really helpful technique.
Try thinking of your AV as a 2-year-old having a tantrum. It's super-annoying and really hard to ignore, but if you just ignore it for long enough it will get quieter and eventually give up and you'll have some peace.
Like Panache said, don't worry about how you appear to anyone else, just do whatever you need to do to fight this out - you'll come out stronger in the end. You can do it! x