My Driving Anxiety: A Huge Milestone (and I Got A New Job!)

I develop abs from how tightly my stomach is clenched the entire time I’m behind the wheel.

This picture makes me happy. It was taken on my honeymoon a little over 3 years ago, when we took a driving trip to Vermont. I drove once or twice while we were there, and I drove half the way home to Massachusetts.

I was never dying to drive. In high school, my friends jumped at the first chance to enroll in driver’s ed and sit for their permits. I didn’t. I didn’t get my license until I was 20, when I got an internship at a place that I couldn’t get to by public transportation. Ten years later, I can tell you that I still hate driving.

The Driving Anxiety

It would be too easy if I could sum up my driving anxiety in one neat paragraph. But to the best of my ability, here it goes. Driving is the one surefire thing in my life that can cause me uncontrollable anxiety and panic. I’ll lie awake all night with my thoughts and heart racing if I know I’m going to have to drive in a situation I don’t want to. It could be rain, snow, unfamiliar routes, getting on the highway, driving in the dark, the list goes on. In milder situations, if I’m going somewhere familiar, I’ll feel tense and nauseous leading up to the drive.

Behind the wheel, I’m tense the entire time from point A to point B. My stomach and teeth are clenched the entire way, and my breaths are short and sharp.

Overcoming My Driving Anxiety

I’ll admit I’m not the best at pushing myself to overcome my driving anxiety. I tend to avoid situations that I know will trigger my anxiety. I’ll take a local route instead of the highway even though it’s longer, I’ll go out of my way to find an alternate route to avoid left turns at intersections that don’t have protected turns… But every once in a while, I do tackle my anxiety, mainly because someone else is pushing me, or because I have to 😂.

My husband’s a big culprit. We’ve gone on a handful of road trips interstate, and he’ll usually try to push me to drive at least half the way home. Sometimes after a tantrum or two, I’ll reluctantly agree. And although the anxiety leading up to it is crushing, I do feel proud of myself once it’s over.

I’ve driven across state lines, but there’s one place I swore I would never drive…

A Huge Milestone & A New Job

…and that’s Boston. Boston is a big, busy city with aggressive drivers and mazes for roads. People have told me, “if you can drive in Boston, you can drive anywhere.” So naturally, I swore I never would…until I got a new job a few weeks ago.

My new job isn’t in Boston, but they have offices in Boston, and I needed to go there for onboarding. And while my job isn’t in Boston, I would need to spend an hour on the highway to get there, and an hour to get back. And you know what? I did it!

Don’t get me wrong. The anxiety didn’t turn off like a switch. But the job was more important than the fear, and that’s where I put my focus. I told myself that I needed to do what I needed to do to make this job happen. My motto was, “don’t think, just do.”

There’s a quote from the movie Princess Diaries that sums this up well:

Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear.

I don’t think I’ll ever not have driving anxiety – it’s just a part of who I am. But I try to celebrate the little wins. Every time I make it home in one piece during a storm, or I successfully get on and off the highway, or I drive somewhere I’ve never been, I give myself a pat on the back.

Society dictates that all adults have to drive, and be ok with driving. I’ve yet to meet another adult who shares the same driving anxiety as me, or at least I’ve yet to meet anyone who talks openly about it. But as with many problems in life, you’re not alone; and I can’t be alone in having driving anxiety. The more we share about our fears and how we overcome them, the more we can help others to overcome theirs. I’m so proud of myself for what I’ve accomplished with my driving anxiety over the past few weeks, and hopefully sharing my experience can lend comfort to someone out there who’s in a similar situation.

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Thanks for reading!