Driving Anxiety

Are you anxious or terrified while driving? Have you stopped driving because it feels unsafe?

Driving anxiety may include symptoms of sweating, trembling, shortness of breath, a rapid heartbeat, and a feeling of impending doom or loss of control. These can be eased by the grounding and orienting practices we know are effective with other forms of fear and anxiety.

This form of anxiety can limit our life's activities

Unless we are in a major urban center with public transit, most of us are limited when we can’t drive. We need to get to work, buy groceries, go to social activities, and take our children or grandchildren to their activities. The car-pool parent is familiar because it is so common.

Driving is convenient. Not being able to drive ourselves can lead to more social isolation, distress and feeling trapped.

16 and getting our drivers license! It is common to shame ourselves for feeling anxiety and fear, especially with driving, as it is symbolic of freedom and adulthood. What does it say about us if we can’t drive? If we have a license but are scared? Are we weak? A child needing to be taken care of?

Obviously we don’t need to drive a car to be an adult or to be worthy of freedom and responsibility. We can examine all of these beliefs and conditioning.

Fears and beliefs arise from our direct or indirect experience

If you have been in a car accident (direct experience), your nervous system remembers that and knows you are not guaranteed safety.

If you have been hurt in other ways by someone (indirect), your nervous system uses that as evidence that you could also be hurt by someone with their vehicle.

I experienced this when I was recovering from PTSD after being physically assaulted while riding my bicycle to work. For the next several months when I got in my car, I immediately locked the doors so no one could get in and hurt me. When I was on the road, I was on edge and hypervigilant about other cars and drivers. I had the direct experience that I could be hurt without warning, and my brain was trying to protect me by alerting me to other forms of possible harm. The intensity of this lessened over the next several months as I healed.

Grounding and orienting practices help build resilience and strength, and they help us regulate in the moment. On an overall basis, they help with anxiety around driving and other types of fear.

What are some of your thoughts when you think about driving?

I don’t trust people to pay attention and drive carefully. At times this is true. People drive tired, drunk, distracted all the time. One time I was following behind someone who had a heart attack and drove into the ditch. Most people are alert and driving safely, and we have no way of knowing for sure what is going on with other drivers.

I don’t trust myself to drive safely. At times this is true. When we feel panicky, we are distracted and not safe to be behind the wheel. There could be a number of other reasons why we shouldn’t drive at that moment. It is not true all of the time.

I might have a flashback or panic attack. Some people have deep trauma that could surface when they drive. Even if it’s never happened while driving, if it happened somewhere else, our brain might broaden the possibility and consider it could happen while driving.

I get anxious when I’m in control of something potentially dangerous. It could be a belief that we will hurt someone if we’re “in control” of something as dangerous as a car. That is a belief with roots in past trauma, and we can work with that directly. What is the evidence that you will turn the wheel into the other lane and harm people if you get the chance? There isn’t any. This is a speculative thought caused by fear. It is not true.

Every time I drive over a bridge, I have images of the car going over the guard rail and into the river. Similar to having flashes of a plane crash as you’re flying, these are images that indicate a level of alarm in our brain. With your eyes open, put the disturbing image into a frame like it is on the wall on the other side of the room. Trace the space on the outside of the frame a few times in each direction. The bilateral brain stimulation helps us break the belief that the image is true. We can then work with sensations and energy in our body and come back into regulation.

There are many ways to support ourselves in healing driving anxiety

Practice regulating and safely driving through visualization. Our brain doesn’t know the difference between what we vividly imagine and what is actually happening. This is why alarming thoughts have so much power to stop us in our tracks. We’ll do a somatic visualization inquiry in our Sunday free community class on March 19th.

Gradual exposure - drive with someone supportive in person or on speaker phone, take short trips to places that don’t alarm you (maybe not over a bridge), go to places you enjoy on your own, and gradually build frequency and difficulty.

Use grounding practices before you get in the car, then relax your shoulders and do some breathing practices like longer exhalations while you’re driving.

Use time stopped at lights or in traffic to check in and regulate with cyclic sighing, box breathing or holding your own hands.

Use your eyes to assess visually. Practice being calm and alert.

Commit to driving only when you are rested and well regulated, especially at first. There is no shame in trying something then pulling over, self-regulating, and trying another time. Small steps lead to nervous system regulation and deep healing.

We can explore the exact thoughts and feelings causing the anxiety, and calm ourselves enough to safely drive again

Join us Sunday!

Community free class for somatic inquiry, and sharing in small and large group.

Insight Timer 11:30 Eastern for a half hour somatic inquiry