Driving Anxiety - Anxiety Experienced While Driving (Episode 018)

[MUSIC PLAYING] Driving anxiety became the most pronounced presentation of my panic disorder and then my agoraphobia. I used to just get panic everywhere. I didn't like being away from my safe zone or being somewhere where I felt that if I lost control, the stakes would be really high. And in one of those places is the car. It's just one of the places where I would experience anxiety. Well, no, because we use cars a lot. And therefore, don't be surprised if you experience anxiety in a car. And then I avoided motorways and highways altogether. Then I started to avoid dual carriageways and main roads and a roads. If the road was too congested, I couldn't get on it. If the road was too isolated and empty, I couldn't get on it. Text book like avoidance cycle that builds agoraphobia in relation to driving, is I think exactly the same thing. Welcome to Disordered. Today's episode is on driving anxiety. My name is Joshua Fletcher, also known as anxiety Josh. I'm a psychotherapist, an author, specializing in anxiety disorders. And I'm based in the UK. And I am Drew Linsolada. I am a graduate student in clinical mental health counseling, a therapist in training and author and anxiety disorders. And I am based in New York in the US. A much requested topic today is on the topic of driving anxiety. Drew, we often get these questions. Something that we could personally relate to, isn't it? Did you ever struggle with driving anxiety? Oh, driving anxiety was my jam. It was probably the thing that restricted my life the most all started with driving anxiety. Really? Oh yeah, it probably, because it's really hard. I mean, I live in New York, but I'm not in the city. I'm on Long Island in the suburbs. And so you have to have a car. It is no mass transit. I can't walk to places here. So it's all about driving. Wow, so essentially it was neat, quite lucky in the UK where you can, I would say, driving isn't essential because we're quite a condensed country in this public transport links, unless you're right in the middle of nowhere in the countryside. Transport links are pretty good. But that said, you know, people like driving to get to work, they need to go out, hold it, they need to see friends and family and stuff. Driving anxiety is something I did struggle with many years ago. As part of the whole agrophobia, panic disorder thing and I'm gonna guess it was part, that was the kind of the same umbrella it went on to for you too. Oh yeah, 100%. I think what, for me, that's where the panic attack started to become most prevalent was in the car. And so driving anxiety became the most pronounced presentation of my panic disorder and then my agrophobia. So it wasn't, it's probably important for me to say, in retrospect, I could say, that wasn't special anxiety. So I know everybody likes to call it driving anxiety, but in retrospect, I probably wouldn't call it that. I would just, was anxious while I was driving, it was a trigger for me and that was it. Yeah, same, and I, I was looking at my story for that. So someone who's devoid, driving and we'll talk about the presentation, what driving anxiety looks like in detail shortly. But in general, yeah, it was, I used to get panic everywhere. You know, it's the car. What if I lose control or I've got my family in the car, my friends, you know, what if I hit someone else? What if I panic and veer into the central and bang, et cetera? The reason why it kind of gets this special mention, 'cause it does, doesn't it, Drew? There's always the, but what about driving anxiety, yeah? It's, well, no, because we use cars a lot and therefore don't be surprised if you experience anxiety in a car where you're needed to concentrate but ultimately sit still. It can be quite stressful in itself. But saying I have driving anxiety is most of the time equivalent of saying I have house anxiety. I'm afraid to be in the house or I'm afraid to be, it doesn't really matter where it is. The exception and there's a disclaimer, as if you've been in an accident, do you have kind of PTSD around that accident? Flashbacks, acute anxiety and kind of trauma responses. Again, it's the vast majority of people listening to this will not experience that, but I have what with people that have PTSD from having accidents. That's a bit different. But the general rule is that driving anxiety, it's just anxiety, it just happens to happen in the car. - Yeah, and one of the things I find interesting is, you hit on a bunch of the really common themes. I'm afraid I'm going to crash and people are afraid they're gonna hurt themselves with the car or other people. It's not just me, that's another common thing that I hear that anxiety will throw that argument at me in these conversations. But it's not just me, you don't understand it, it's not just me, I can hurt someone else with my car. Oddly, and either this makes me a psychopath or something else, I don't know. I never had that fear. I never had the I'm gonna crash and hurt myself or someone else. I was just, I'm afraid to panic and if I'm in the car, how am I gonna get help and how am I gonna get saved? So, mine never took the next step to like, you'll crash the car. I never thought I was gonna crash the car. - But actually, there are several variations of thinking about it now of how your anxiety presents and your threat response will use ammunition to get your attention. So if you've got panic disorder, pure panic disorder, you'll be like, well, I'm afraid of how this will make me feel. And I'm afraid that I'll lose control and et cetera. If you've got anxiety around loved ones, maybe you're having intrusive thoughts about grief or whatever, you'll be like, oh, but what if I hurt my kids and my partner, the stakes are too high here? What if me losing control hasn't impact on them, or maybe someone else in another car? And then you got those with OCD, I'll never forget those people with OCD, struggle with intrusive thoughts, quite a common one. These people are afraid of driving because they're afraid that they've actually hit someone. Or they've, they hit someone and missed it. Or they've run over someone and they've missed it. Or they've hit something on the way and remarkably forgot about it. So they have to go back and compulsively check. We remember you guys too, don't worry about it. But yeah, in general, it's a doubt behind the wheel. Yeah, and that doubt can manifest in a bunch of different ways. For me, it was the doubt that I would be able to be okay. You know, it's like, well, I can't fight panic. And especially if I have not what you would call it, the motorway, we call it the highway here. Actually in the oil and it's going on expressway, but driving on congested highways or motorways where you were trapped between exits or I guess you guys call them interchanges. How can I, what happens if I panic? Well, I'm stopped dead in rush hour traffic. I'm a long on expressway between exits 47 and 48. I'm screwed like how no one can get to me. I can't get help, I can't get off, I can't. So that's, for me, it really came down to that. But I do understand for other people who comes down to, well, then, then I lose control of the car. But I will say that I was a better driver. Don't, then people were like, are you kidding me? I would maneuver that car. I was Mario and Freddie. And my skillset would go way up. Because I had to get off the expressway in a hurry. I was really good at maneuvering that car. Which most people I think would say, when I confront them with that, they'll always say, oh, yeah, you're probably right. Like how many times have you frantically driven back home very quickly to get home as quick as you can? You're really good at controlling the car, weren't you? Oh, yeah, it was. So we can go through all of that stuff. It's really interesting. Same here, I used to get a mind-started as part of the agrophobia, so it was the driving first. So it was, I drive. Oh, by the way, it's not called exits. They're called junctions, in other cases. Oh, it's called junctions. Junctions on our carriageways. (laughing) I'll have you now. You need carriageway. I live right now. You know, yeah. Actually, since you've pointed that out, it does sound quite posh, doesn't it? It does. And they're not, they're quite abhorrent. Yeah, so my started agrophobia, started with the driving. So bearing my mind agrophobia, it got to the point where I didn't couldn't leave my room for six months. But it did start driving on the motorway, the highway, in the fast lane. And suddenly, I felt a bit hot. I was stressed at the time. I stressed I could filled up. I was unaware of this. And yeah, I just felt this hot sensation like, like I was dizzy, like I heard it. And I was like, oh, well, you know, I hope I don't, you know, pass out. That would be horrible. And flooded with these intrusive thoughts of my car, you know, fast and furious, fifteen smashing over and cutting. So just in case, I pulled over into the, to the slow lane and actually came off the motorway. And then I did calm down a bit. And then went back on the highway, the motorway. But this time, just in case I stayed in the middle lane and slow lane, then the next time I went on the highway, I went on and I was getting this feeling again. I was like, well, I'm sure it's nothing, but just in case I'll stick in the slow lane and the middle lane. Then I started to panic. My hand started to sweat. I started to feel de-realization. My peripheral vision changed a bit. The cars suddenly felt very fast. Even though I was only doing 60 miles an hour or whatever, they suddenly felt like they were doing a hundred around me, the noises were amplified. Sure. I feel the road noise amplified. I was perhaps put the air con on my face, things like that. And then I realized, oh, maybe I should come off here because what if something bad happens? Yeah. And then one day when I was driving, I stopped at the traffic lights and I felt so bad and my palms were sweating and I felt, "Oh, I couldn't catch my breath and I woke down my window." And then I avoided that traffic light and I used to be sensed with anticipatory anxiety. I hope the lights green so I don't stop. And I just started to equate looking back the stupid rules that felt so real at the time. So kind of, I don't know a lot of people get that junctions, roundabouts, intersections. Yeah, certain roads. Yeah, absolutely. Driving at night, driving in the day, driving at rush hour, driving too far away from your home. Any more of my missing, sure, I'll go from around you. Driving through, I mean, you know, you don't live in a rural area. I don't live in a rural area. But I actually have a friend of mine who, you know, was a garful, but she also lives a long island. And she remembered telling me, "I live a little further east than she does." And she would say things like, "I can never come and see because, you know, when you get out there, now out there for probably 70% of our listeners would still be very congested." I mean, this is not a rural area at all. But to her, it was last dense. So she would feel like I might go a half a mile without having a shopping center or some source of rescue. Yeah. And I'm thinking, yeah, I think there's a little, there's some trees. Like, thank God, there's a half a mile break there. But to her, it would be no, no, no. So it was also driving on isolated roads. Now, for me, if I went all the way out into the North Fork of the South Fork or Lyon, I might encounter that. But if the road was too congested, I couldn't get on it. And you describe the textbook like avoidance cycle that builds agoraphobia in relation to driving, because I have exactly the same thing. Your highway, motorway stories, I have the exact same story. It's insidious, isn't it? It starts a little bit at a time. It doesn't, you don't just wake up with it. And the next thing, you know, I'm in, I'm in my room and I can't leave because of these safety behaviors and compulsions and stuff. To be fact, I didn't really know what was. No, well, you don't know you're really doing it until suddenly you realize like, wait a minute, something's wrong here. I know in terms of the driving anxiety thing, I would go to great lengths to try to still go places, you know, when I could and I would try to push through it, but I wouldn't take the highways. I wouldn't take the big roads. So I would turn a 12 minute drive into a 40 minute drive, because I was snaking my way through residential neighborhoods and taking back roads and roads that, I don't know, seemed safer for some reason. My anxiety told me we're safer. You're avoiding that traffic like that. Oh, another one here from a client. I didn't have this one personally, but that hill driving up that particular hill I find frightening. Yeah. You know, why? You know, well, you're going to slide down the hill. No, it's just, it's just, it doesn't matter. The association I have with that hill, and even though I never had the hill thing specifically, I get it. I completely get the feeling it's not rational. It's just what the brain, the amygdala go and press it. Amygdala, that's ready. Yes, you're sorry. I should have had some more faith in you. It's, yeah, it associates that. It's suddenly just doing its job and it's trying to protect you and suddenly traffic lights and hills and routes and highways and all these things. Car parks are all kind of sources of danger. Underground car parks are another one as well for those who struggle with claustrophobia. I really liked it when you said, sources of rescue. What do you mean by that? Sources of rescue. Yeah, that was a big one for me. And I think it is for, you know, a large portion of our community sources of rescue. Now this was really my friend who was saying that, but I can relate to it because I felt the same way. If you are in a rural area like I would, I could induce panic in those days by just thinking about the drives I used to take when I used to go from New York City to Buffalo, New York, where I was going to university. And I was driving through rural New York. Now for those of you who are not familiar with New York Geography, yeah, it's New York City and we're packed here and there's millions of people. When you get north and west of New York City, it's nothing. It's a dairy state. There's mountains. There's farms. There's nothing till you get to certain cities up there, small cities. And I would think about the drives through on Route 17 in New York, those of you who know it, like there's nothing on it. These tiny little towns would pop up. You couldn't even see a town. It was just a sign on the roadway. Who would rescue me? Like, if I had a panic attack on Route 17 between Roscoe and Fishes Eddie, New York, who was going to, what was going to happen? There's no hospital. There's no, nobody would save me. And so it's so interesting. Yes, and I could trigger panic in those days, just remembering my drive through rural upstate New York. It's a lovely drive. It's beautiful scenery. But folks, helplessness is not I and there's nothing I could do about it. I am 60 miles away or 100 miles away from the nearest medical center or whatever I thought I needed in those days. And there's nothing I can do about it. So I will just be at the height of panic, the height of danger, the height of I'm going to die. And there's nothing I can do because I'm now too far away. I've gone too far away from help. And then for my friend, it went down to like literally like a half a mile stretch where maybe there's a, you know, some pine barons instead of a shopping center. Anybody knows, I don't be nothing but shopping centers here. And any break in that sort of suburban sprawl would trigger her. There's nobody. I can't pull over into a supermarket somewhere run and ask for help. That's real. I mean, I can relate to that. I'm sure a lot of people can. I, first of all, the most pressing issue is there's a Buffalo University. Is the dean of Buffalo? All the lectures of Buffalo and you go and they'll talk about Buffalo. It is the second biggest city in New York state. Most people don't know that. It's all the way in Western New York close to the Canadian border on Lake Erie. And it's the second biggest city in New York state. Run by sentient buffaloes without any degree. Most people don't know that part. That's a very heavily guarded street. And yeah, he's been four years there. So I did my undergrad one. Oh, wow. Didn't know that. Yeah, didn't know Jerry could read. Nevermind. Yeah, so I think random. That's why I have a degree in architecture. We didn't have to. Anyway, back to the pressing issue. I knew people who I know people live with this. That literature have rigid rules in their head where they will drive 30, 40, 50 miles from home. But then they almost memorize the radius from their house or bang on the 50 mile mark at a specific site. And if they go past there in their car, they will not cope. Yep. All bets are off. I heard that. All bets are off. Even though like you sit in there with these people and it's like, you're 50 miles from your home. You know, what is it? And they're like, I just, you know, deep down. It's like, I just don't think I can cope past this point. I believe that the anxiety will get to a point where I can't cope. And much much. But in general, it's like, yeah, I just, I just have this like almost protractor put on my, on a map. And if I go past that radius, you know, and again, we're going into agrophobia territory here, but driving anxiety and agrophobia have a lot in common. Yeah. Very, very well connected. For me, it was my brain would create, in retrospect, they were arbitrary. Like, well, this is an acceptable distance. I would still not like it and avoid it at all costs. But I like this, I can do this. If I know I can get home in 11 minutes, I'll roll those dice. But if it's going to take me 14 minutes, nope, not doing it, can't do it. Yeah. Yeah. So it got to that point. Check, checking the traffic. Oh, traffic updates. Oh, if I'm in rush hour, it's going to stop me from being rescued. I would do things like driving to a friend's house, which I would, you know, we're, again, we're getting into agrophobia with just such a big overlap. You know, come and watch American football with me on a Sunday afternoon. Okay, cool. I'll come because I know I really need to do something like this, even though I'm terrified to do it. Only 10 minutes from me, 12 minutes at the most. And I would early days of Google Maps and the early iPhones in those days, I would have, on it, it's a straight line. There's no turns to make. It's one road. I know how to go there, but I would have the traffic up on my screen, like the GPS to know. Is that, is that like going to be read? Do I see a yellow part on the map where I might have to wait for 45 seconds for light? I would obsess over that in that little 12-minute drive. Most of it as well. And again, most again, the exception of people with this particular subtype of Harmo CD where, you know, they're convinced and the brain convinces them that they've done something horrible in the car. But no, I'm going to spend a minute talking about that. Yeah. Because we are called disordered at no CD. Yeah, there are people out there who are driving and they go over a bump and they're not really bothered, but then with the nature of the threat response and OCD and overflowing jugs and whatnot. They'll be sat there at home and suddenly they may have the thought, what if that bump was a person? What if that bump was a child or even an animal? An animal, yes, more. And they're suddenly, they're thwacked by not only anxiety but guilt too because this is where OCD usually doubles up. It doubles up with anxiety and guilt. And therefore, the stakes are so high and great. the critic is screaming really loud. There he is, he's always there. And it's what you've got to realize is that, oh, I can't rest because this threat response is going. And so these people may go back with a torch at three o'clock at night, trying to find stuff, trying to look in the bushes to see if the person crawled away and died, trying to do all these things. And it feels real. And I hear you, you know, someone who struggled with those things for a lot of my life. I hear it feels real. But again, this is kind of where we always go on about the willful tolerance of uncertainty of surrendering to uncertainty. You know, you've got this. You're all right. Also where people with OCD and panic disorder relate and they overlap is that the core of it is a fear of losing control and not being able to cope. And I think, I mean, it's very rare. You know, that also use facts. How are most car accidents caused, Drew? You're not paying attention. Not distraction. And believe it or not, being terrified that you're going to crash your car is not a distraction. It's a focus, like it lays your focus as you are driving the car. Yeah. You're, you turn to a mere cat. Yeah. And again, it's what I get people to work with people with OCD or whatever. It's like you're a mere cat most. You're like hyper vigilant. You're not off daydream in about, I don't know, the new Barbie movie. You just actually, you're so hyper vigilant and now looking for imminent threat that you don't miss a trick, whereas most accidents are caused by reckless care, careless driving. Right. Reckless, not concentrating at all, falling asleep at the wheel, etc. Yeah. The other thing that I'll mention just sort of at this sister sort of subtype to what you're talking about are the people who are afraid not that they have accidentally hit someone or harm someone, but that they will decide to do that. I'm going to lose control. What would stop me from just turning my wheel a little bit and driving into that storefront or sidewalk? I've heard that one too. I'm afraid that I might panic so much or I might lose control that that thought will come true and I'll run those people over. Even though I don't want to, I might, what if I do that? But that is a thought that everyone knows. 100%. The comedian, if you're listening to, yeah, if you're listening to this now, sorry, Karen. No, it's okay. If you ever heard, if you ever listen to Bill Burry's a really popular comic, he did a bit like that a while ago. It's a, you're driving in your hand at 12 o'clock on the reel and everything's fine and that thought pops in your head. All I got to do, like, five degrees, one o'clock and I'm on the news. We don't know why he did it. He plowed through the pedestrians like, and he was a happy person. I told him no reason to do it. He was caring. And it's a joke, you know, because he's making a joke of the thought we all have. But for somebody with a lot of CD subtype, that's not a joke. That's like a connection. Yeah. Or even if you're just feeling really anxious that day and your cognitive brain is trying to pin a reason as to why you're feeling threat, yeah, that could even be it too. Maybe you are just about to lose control. All right. Just drive off this bridge. What would start me from just, I might panic and just drive off the bridge as I go. Very, very common one. Oh, what if I get rapid onset depression and have a breakdown, which causes me to lose control and drive my car into oncoming traffic or a school bus. Right. I hear that quite a lot again. Come on, rapid onset depression as you, as you drive him back from KFC. What are you? No. No. Maybe if they've run out of chicken legs, maybe a barbecue sauce. Yeah. Maybe I could see my rapid onset depression kicking in, then, you know, the world hates me. No, like driving to a church or something. But no, no, that's not what I'm going to do because that doesn't happen. Right. It's an illustration of how creative that's why anxious thoughts we should never engage with them because they can just make up anything they want. We live in the real world where there's reality. Anxious thoughts live in whatever world they feel like making. So like, drag them into your world, into reality and deal with them there. If you deal with them in their world, you'll just make shit up and then you will lose the argument every single time because that they can make that up. Yeah, it just makes up nonsense. Well, actually, it's being clever, but it's exhausting itself of possibilities. And this is really important to my clients and stuff is that your cognitive brain and your threat response are working together to try and find out and identify where the threat is. I call it the three stages of fight or flight. And the first place it scans for danger is in your environment. Now, say if you have someone with disorder anxiety, your threat response you're making, it's firing off because you're stressed or it feels like there's no real reason it's triggering. It will then scan your environment for dangers. You'll go, yeah, there's no safety of tigers, lions, whatever, out to kill me or nor roaming tribes of cannibals or whatever. But, but I am on a bridge. So maybe the bridge is dangerous. No, the bridge is fine. Phase two of the fight or flight response, it goes internally and these are people that struggle with health anxiety. So actually, no, I felt a niggle in my chest or I felt that or a pain in my stomach or my bowels aren't great. And then sometimes it decides to fixate on that. Oh, go maybe that's where the danger is. So there's the people that get there with health things with health anxiety. Yeah. If it skips the first stage and the second stage ends up at the third stage, the third stage of the fight or flight response. And this is, well, if it's not in my environment and if it's not in me, maybe it's something that's just going to happen out of the bizarre. Right. Because this is this is all I've got left now. So maybe I don't know. You watched a true crime product program the other day and the guy just, you know, woke up and he went mental and killed everyone. Maybe that's it. Maybe that was it. Yep. That's maybe that's what's about to happen. This is why people who suddenly develop kind of obsessions, health anxiety, anxiety disorders will pin it on things that have happened around them. Because this is what the fight or flight response wants to do. Yeah. So people I've had clients, nurses working on oncology words. For 10 years, not bothered and suddenly the development anxiety disorder. What if I've got cancer? I mean, after 10 years, you know, my sister has developed a neurological condition. What if I get it? Yeah. Suddenly we come convinced. The reason why this links to driving anxiety is that it wants to attach and blame something for why the threat response is disordered. And driving anxiety is not special. It's just it's just pinning it to that. So what's the most thing? What's the most plausible thing I can persuade you that this dump of adrenaline could be? Maybe I'm about to lose control, lose my mind and veer into that oncoming vehicle. And because the stakes are so high, it feels real. Yeah. I was ranting on a bit of that. No, it's okay. It was really good stuff. I mean, what you're describing, what you guys listen to Josh describing there is like really applicable to any kind air quotes of anxiety, not just driving anxiety. But then let's apply it to why we're talking about in driving anxiety episode because you are in two tons, two and a half stunts of steel and plastic and metal and hot stuff and flammable liquids unless you have an electric car, like some people we know. But, you know, I can't judge in this Tesla. I shouldn't think of those. I want one of those. But in the end, like it feels like it's much more of a real danger because if I panic in the supermarket, okay, it might just be that I need help in the supermarket. But there's no, I can't find a threat in the frozen food section. But if I panic in the car, I am going at a high rate of speed. I'm in a very heavy, complicated piece of machinery. So the people around me were all vulnerable. So it makes the anxiety feel special because of what you're doing at the moment. But if let's segue a little bit into people, because I know we're 28 minutes in and people are going to say, well, you didn't tell me what to do about this. I know. I know. We will come, though. So let's talk about for a second, not so much the anxiety in the car and what it might make you do with the car. Let's talk about how you actually choose sometimes to engage. And that's not blame. There's power in this. For me, I had to realize that I was much safer just letting myself be anxious and driving the car than trying to stop myself from being anxious because all of the ways that I was trying to stop myself from being anxious, looking at the map, turning up the radio, singing with the song, putting my head at the window to try and blast cold air on my face. Those are distractions from the driving. So I hear that all the time. One person recently said, I reject your premise that driving is safe because I've been yelled at by policemen. I've gotten tickets because I hug the road. I hug the side. I go to the shoulder of the road and I slow down to a crawl and I've side-swiped things. Yeah, because that's what you did to try to feel safer and it literally made you less safe. So let's maybe we can start to get into that. Like, well, what do you do then? You have driving anxiety. What would you do? What did you do? Well, what I did, it goes back to our episode about getting the credit, is that, well, first of all, you look at avoidances both from macro level and a micro level. I couldn't even leave my house and the man get in the car. So my first step was to get in the car. I avoid, kind of tackle the macro avoidance, complete avoidance. So getting in the car for me was scary. I'd sit behind the wheel, wouldn't you can go anywhere. I'd have, you know, I'd have a Craig the Craig going, look at this, used to be able to drive somewhere now you can't, you know, and all that. And I just sit there and just allow the brain to wire itself to be used to be behind the wheel. then I started up and down the street, but I did it whilst being anxious. Here's the thing, I wasn't doing it with, again, the windows down, my rescue remedy suites, my, my zan access, my fan blasting me in the face, my, you know, deep breathing to make the anxiety go away. No, I was like, I'm just gonna see what I can do whilst being anxious and actually I could drive up and down the street. Yeah. And then my, I think my mum asked me one day, can you give me a left to work? I was like, I'll try, I'll go slowly, but we'll go and I did that. And yeah, there was a few micro avoidances in there like I'd avoid a certain road or whatever, but still that was a big jump for me. And I just kept going and getting the credit until the point where I was actually my biggest fear wasn't even the highway, it was the slip road to the highway, it was the oh my god, what if I panic when I'm on the slip road merging on? Yeah. And so I just practiced that over and over again. I started night, so it's using graded exposure here, so I know no one's on the highway, so I just practice going on the, on the slip road and then I start in the day. And I used to think that all there's loads of cars, it's gonna make merging really hard. Actually, it's easier when there's loads of cars and this traffic because everyone's not really going very fast, so you can just be like, and people just will let you in. And that's fine, but that's how I got it until one day, I was driving and oh yeah, I started on the highway, I wouldn't go in the fast lane, but practicing the middle lane and wasn't always linear, I'd be like, oh, I need to go to the slow lane again in the fast lane and so on. And I'd be in kind of compassion to myself, you know, it's a little bit of a journey, you know, I wasn't going, oh that's a micro avoidance, oh you're doing this wrong. Now I'll keep going, keep going. And then I practiced in the fast lane. And then one day I was driving along, wasn't even thinking about my anxiety until I did start thinking about the drive. And then it was like, and then I got hot and I was like, and I was like, no, I'm definitely not pulling over here, not a chance. And I'll admit, I probably put the temperature down a bit in my in my car, just got my hands from sweating. But in general, no, I didn't leave the fast lane. And five minutes later, I'm about to listen to a podcast again, I didn't really care. Yeah. And that's that, you know, talking about this thing, like the measure of recovery, it's not that Josh never panicked or never got anxious in the car. He didn't learn to drive without being anxious. He learned to drive while anxious, which is you mirror my story completely. I spent months driving up and down my block around my neighborhood a little further, a little further, then it's like, okay, today's I'm going to do the loyal expressory today. One exit, you know, one exchange, one, whatever you guys call them. Like, okay, then that was okay, but I practiced it again and again and again and again and again. And then it was like, let me do a little more and a little more. And that's what happened. And I clicked while I was practicing, but that was the practice. That's the homework. Oh, I drove to the ball and didn't panic. I'm not interested. Oh, where did you drive, where you panic? Right. You know, just be careful of where the credit goes. Again, if you not listen to the episode about the credit, it's like, it's okay to use things and crutches to get you on the journey to keep going. But like, if you can only drive with a certain person in the car, or you can only do certain thing at this, you know, this then learn to kind of practice without that because the brain and the threat response needs to learn and wire itself to associate you on your own and your ability to tolerate and cope with anxiety as enough to be able to do it. Yeah. And yeah, and you'll get this. Just kind of quite free. You start off a little bit of time, honestly. I'm just sitting on the wheel. That's it. That's a good start in my driveway. I actually started at my front door. I learned that I had the panic getting ready to drive so that I could get in the car. And so my first drive, I thought, oh, I'm going to start doing driving exposures. What it really turned into is practicing getting ready to get in the car. And I would panic while I was putting my shoes on on my coat. I was in the winter. And I'm like, I've had a panic getting ready before I could learn how to panic in the car. Yeah, because you're dealing with the anticipating. Exactly. Go to a fever pitch. And I would panic as soon as I knew I was going to come to drive. First thing in the morning, we do my driving exposures. But I think those microvoidances are normal. In fact, you don't recognize them until you tear down the macrovoidances. I would, I would say, you're doing them until you start doing more things. And you realize, oh, look at me like with my water in the car. I'm afraid that I will forget my water. And then you start to let go of this thing little by little. It's totally okay to do it little by little. It's fine. Everybody does it that way. Yeah. And that's a good point. Just listing a few there. It's a little magic object. And we do, what episode was that? We talked about magic object. That's the same applies. Same one who gets the credit. I mean, it gets the credit. Really good episode to check it out. I would say that I was the one who recorded it. But in general, yeah, if you're there and you're like, well, I'm still nervous about driving. And you've got your, you're the person with the magic water and all these things and the emergency Xanax around just in case and all these things. It's a bit like try removing those. See what happens. I did. It's time. The other thing that I did, we finally now get to the practical stuff. But I think it's important to recognize why we did not go right to this is how you fix driving anxiety. All of that stuff we talked about for 30 minutes is really important when it comes to conceptualizing driving anxiety. But one of the things that I did also was I remember I recorded myself on a few drives. It might have been one of the very first YouTube episodes I ever recorded on my YouTube channel was me. And I saw body language that I had no idea I was engaged with. And always that's not even a question. But in terms of anxiety recovery, they were not active. So I saw myself doing things behind the wheel that I did not recognize I was doing. And then I just worked on them little by little. Did we get your arrested in 30 states? People would wonder this guy is clearly driving under the influence. I was hugging in my ears. I was scratching my nose obsessively. I was touching my face in my neck. And I'm like, oh my goodness, I didn't know I was doing all these things. And then I didn't work touching and just constant non touching. Everywhere but the wheel. And I realized like, oh, okay. And I worked on just one of those things at a time. No, no ear pulling. No ear pulling. It sounds crazy, right? But because you're undoing behaviors and you're getting more and more. You know, didn't even know each time. Yeah. Yeah. I'd like, yeah, if any experiences drop us a message on that, we usually answer a question there, but we're aware of time. But we are going to always make some time for some data anyways at the end of this show. That's the one more thing. And I know we're running long, but I just want to address this if you've made it this far into the episode. I know what people are going to think if you've made it this. You've gone this far in the episode. I know where the objection is still going to be. So let me just address it preemptively here. Many people listen, you're going to say that was all great information, great sight to education, I love the practical tips. But how, but I don't understand you're telling me to practice driving, but I can't. That's, that's dangerous. You are going to have to at least consider as you listen to this episode that your assertion that if dangerous is wrong, at least consider that. So there's one of two things could be going on here. These two dudes on, on the, where the microphones could be intentionally giving you a bump steer and making you do dangerous things. Or we know that they're not dangerous. And that's why we're telling you it's okay to do them, which one seems like. I've been met with that resistance a lot, not nobody. My case is different. My legs and arms literally turn to jelly. Well, they figuratively turned to jelly. I can't see. Well, you can. We've, we've actually tested that here and in the car park and stuff. Right. And suddenly, and don't get me wrong, it comes from a considerate place. You know, like it's too risky to drive when I'm doing that. But actually, I challenge those notions, you know, unless you've got like, again, a chronic condition or some kind of kind of existing condition that actually stops you from driving. In general, no. And that's the anxiety succeeding in getting you to avoid. But I can't even press the pedals. I can't even get that right. Really? Really? I want to see that. All of you go downstairs into the car park, into your car. I want to see you. Yeah. This uncontrollable mess, you're convinced, trying to convince me that you are. And every time with a client, we drive across the car park, yeah, they're anxious to shake, you know, whatever. They're fully in control of the car. Yeah. And so Josh will get in the car with this client that is absolutely controlled, which tells you, you know, we understand that the fear is feels very real. But there's a distortion and a rationality there. And I always would tell people, well, how do you know that it's unsafe because you can't control the car? Well, it happened to me on the motorway and I barely made it home. No, no, no, don't tell me you barely made it home. How did you get home? I drove home. You just told me that you're incapable, but you did, but you actually made you drove home. Oh, yeah, I did. So I understand that you're going, you might want to say thanks for the practical tips about practicing driving, but, but, but usually any word but is largely irrelevant, which sounds unkind, but it's true. Yeah, but we're happy to hear your feedback on that. Please drop us on the sort of FM. Again, these episodes, here's we always celebrate with some data. Anyways, I love this one. This was sent in on on the website, disorder.fm. Hello, I'm having a rough time of it lately. In addition to my other anxiety disorders has become apparent that I also have complex PTSD and I've started to trauma treatment. I'm motivated and know that it will get worse or gets better, but it is so hard. I'm having anxiety and emotional flashbacks regularly, but just now I had the beginnings of a panic attack whilst doing a week's worth of grocery shopping. But you know what? I just let my body do what it does and focused on picking out bread. My My threat response was screaming that I needed to get home, especially as I felt the need for the toilet, which always happens when I get panic attacks. I hear you. I get that too. A adrenaline flooded my system. I started hyperventilating, but I hastagged it anyway, eventually it passed, and I finished my shopping. I absolutely love that. I can relate to that as well. It's probably a while of it because I'm like, wow, I know that's so tricky and well done. You weren't using the PTSD and everything, as you weren't listening to anxiety, try to use PTSD, sorry, as an excuse that's why your anxiety is different. You just, I mean, that's incredibly brave. Well done. I don't know if we've got any studio audience in today. We do. They've been very quiet and patient. Thank you. They all have driving anxiety. They're just worried about the drive home. That was me. I'm going to come. Very good. Excellent. It's a huge step to take, especially the first time you ever do that, so huge props to that person. I love that. Thanks for sharing that. Should we do our question to the week? If you'd like, yeah. Yeah, let's do it. So this is an audio question. We will play the question, and then we will do our best to answer it in a couple of minutes so we can wrap this one up. Here we go. Hi, Josh and Drew. My question is really about something that I like to call an anxiety hangover. After I have an adrenaline rush, I find that I drop into like a kind of hangover state where I feel really tired and I've got it. And this is when my self-doubt thoughts stop creeping in. If you've got any kind of tips on how to deal with it, please tonight, loving the podcast, it's really, really helpful. Thanks. Bye. That was a great question. Great question. Did you also hear the, is that just me or the robot techno question thing? Yeah. Keep it in. I don't know. Yeah, the robot techno was a techno question. You got this Drew. You nailed the answer to this before, and we got questions in our school. I did. Josh and I both had independent podcasts. My podcast is called The Anxious Truth If You Don't Know It. I did an episode on this called the panic attack hangover. And the best answer to this question is the one no one wants to hear. The panic attack will make you feel fragile, especially if you haven't had one in a while. It will make you feel vulnerable. It will make you feel weak. And the standard response, understandably, this is not a crime, you're not doing anything wrong. I better take it easy. I feel fragile. If I push it a little too much, it might happen again. I'm on the edge. I'm not very resilient right now. I don't feel strong anymore. But the best thing to do is go right back out. The worst thing to do is to say, I'm going to listen to the hangover and try to retreat and rest and I must have a protracted recovery from this panic attack before I can get out into the world again. That is the worst way to approach this. It's okay to be really exhausted by it. You might need to rest the rest of the day. That's okay if you're exhausted. It's going to do that to you sometimes. But do not turn it into a week's worth of sitting on the sofa because you feel a little bit too vulnerable now. And what if it happens again, behaving damaged? Yes, behaving like you've been damaged. That somehow this is exposed, some sort of cracking your armor or weakness or that you're incapable. So you better hang back and take it easy. I know that the hangover feels like you should do that. You need to just do exactly the opposite. Whatever I was doing yesterday, when I this happened, I need to go back and do that again. Which is scary. It's really hard. It requires courage to be nice to yourself while you do it. Be careful over the critical voice that's going to pop up to tell you you're not capable. It's the only way to do it is act the opposite to what that hangover, I love the term hangover, will make you think you should do. Anything you want to add to that? No, I think you nailed that spot. Here you go. Thank you very much for tuning in. We'll catch you next time, guys. And thank you very much, Drew, as always. Yeah, yeah, see you in the next one. Hey, it's Drew. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Disordered. Josh and I both hope that you're finding it helpful in some way. For more information about Josh or me or the Disordered podcast, find us on the web at disordered.fm. That's disordered.fm. Pop on over and find links to our social media platforms. Join our mailing list so we can let you know when new podcast episodes are available. And we'll send you easy ways to ask us questions and share your wins, so we can answer questions on the air and share your successes with the community. And if you're listening to the podcast, unapple podcasts or Spotify or any platform that lets you rate a review, do us a favor and leave us a five star rating and maybe write a review of your digging disorder. It really helps us out and we appreciate that. Thanks again for coming by and we'll see you in the next episode. [MUSIC]