anyone who has/had driving anxiety have any tips of how to cope with this major anxiety? i’m 23 years old and still can’t drive. I mostly rely on family to drive me and honestly getting very tired of it (on top of hearing some complaints haha…) i hopefully want to learn how to drive sometime in the future. but i have terrible anxiety about it.
i don’t recall having any serious traumatic events happening in a car. i mean i’ve had the “almost moments”. most of the time i go with my mom, she’s pretty decent at driving most of the time, but has her own issues and sometimes panics while driving and will start yelling during these panics. which i believe being exposed to them, adds onto my anxiety, especially being frantically asked what to do by her when i have no driving experience, so i panic too, but try to hide it from her. also, my mom has had her own driving incidents throughout my life, so seeing her bruised up or how damaged the cars are….probably adds to it as well.
i do believe i have a control issue, which is rooted from anxiety because i can’t control other the drivers around me. on top of the idea of being responsible for a big piece of machinery which could end mine or someone else’s life. plus in jersey…it’s known that people here are horrible drivers…not only from experience, but people do talk about it quite a lot. so, that kinda brings my anxiety up higher.
i’m not saying i’m definitely jumping behind the wheel, especially not right now because i don’t want to pressure myself more and feel out of control. if anyone has any advice dealing with this, please let me know. it would mean a lot to me 🥺