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Driving phobia
Nov. 28th, 2007 06:16 pmI have always been terrified of driving. At age 9 I recall telling my mom that I never wanted to learn how to drive - I would ride horses to work when I grew up, or something. This while my younger sister, age 5-6, was already trying to learn how to steer.
I finally got my license at age 27, specifically so I could get a job as a librarian. It took me two tries to pass the test, and I had to hire a professional driving instructor. I was still basically terrified when I drove alone, and had to pretest routes on slow times during the first month, etc. Three months after I got my license (i.e., one month ago) I was in a serious car crash where another driver hit the front driver side of my car and totalled it after running a stop. I took that fairly well and had to continue driving to work the next morning so I did.
The funny thing is, it never occurred to me until last night that perhaps part of my lifelong fear of driving stems from the truly horrible car crash I was in when I was 4, when my great grandmother had to be taken from the scene on a stretcher and my mom was all knocked around and bleeding from her head and knees and there was broken glass everywhere. I have a very long vivid memory of the event, including the fact that I was totally unhurt (not even bruises - I wasn't in a car seat, but I was lying down in the well between the back and front seats, which at that age I just fit into, when the crash occurred - I didn't even know a crash was why we'd stopped, at first). The EMT personnel on the scene did not believe that I was unhurt till after we got to the hospital - they kept telling me I must be hurt, asking me where I was hurt, telling me that I must be hurt and not know it because I was in shock. I might well have been in shock to some degree, but I don't think so - I recall being honestly anxious and emotional about mom/great-grandmother's conditions, being very aware of my body and intellectually present.
It was a very scary experience - my mother was pretty much in shock, and we all had to go to the hospital in an ambulance, and I felt lost and abandoned because my mom was not able to liaise for me with the grownups around me, who weren't listening to me.
Anyway, it was a bad enough car wreck that my great-grandmother wasn't really well enough to try and drive again for a long time (months? a year?) and my aunt decided to move back to VT after hearing about it because she was scared of how close great-grandmother came to dying. So why it never occurred to me that my phobia about driving might be connected to this accident, I don't know. It only occurred to me at all because I was reading an article online about PTSD and how it could be in fact brought on by things like car accidents, and I thought "well, the car accident I was in last month didn't do anything like that to me" (though when I go through 4 way stops my heart beat jumps like CRAZY), but then I thought "but that car crash when I was little killed any interest I had in driving" and I went, well, wow. I still wouldn't want to say it exactly gave me PTSD or anything, but the connection between - a) my mom and grandmother almost dying in a car crash I was present in at age 4 and vividly remember to this day, and b) my having panic attacks and sweating through my shirts and having my vision gray on the edges when I tried to drive as an adolescent was never clear to me before. Hunh. (and just btw, having sweating panic attacks where your vision grays out on the edges DOES NOT make you a good driver, so it fed into itself quite a lot.)
I finally got my license at age 27, specifically so I could get a job as a librarian. It took me two tries to pass the test, and I had to hire a professional driving instructor. I was still basically terrified when I drove alone, and had to pretest routes on slow times during the first month, etc. Three months after I got my license (i.e., one month ago) I was in a serious car crash where another driver hit the front driver side of my car and totalled it after running a stop. I took that fairly well and had to continue driving to work the next morning so I did.
The funny thing is, it never occurred to me until last night that perhaps part of my lifelong fear of driving stems from the truly horrible car crash I was in when I was 4, when my great grandmother had to be taken from the scene on a stretcher and my mom was all knocked around and bleeding from her head and knees and there was broken glass everywhere. I have a very long vivid memory of the event, including the fact that I was totally unhurt (not even bruises - I wasn't in a car seat, but I was lying down in the well between the back and front seats, which at that age I just fit into, when the crash occurred - I didn't even know a crash was why we'd stopped, at first). The EMT personnel on the scene did not believe that I was unhurt till after we got to the hospital - they kept telling me I must be hurt, asking me where I was hurt, telling me that I must be hurt and not know it because I was in shock. I might well have been in shock to some degree, but I don't think so - I recall being honestly anxious and emotional about mom/great-grandmother's conditions, being very aware of my body and intellectually present.
It was a very scary experience - my mother was pretty much in shock, and we all had to go to the hospital in an ambulance, and I felt lost and abandoned because my mom was not able to liaise for me with the grownups around me, who weren't listening to me.
Anyway, it was a bad enough car wreck that my great-grandmother wasn't really well enough to try and drive again for a long time (months? a year?) and my aunt decided to move back to VT after hearing about it because she was scared of how close great-grandmother came to dying. So why it never occurred to me that my phobia about driving might be connected to this accident, I don't know. It only occurred to me at all because I was reading an article online about PTSD and how it could be in fact brought on by things like car accidents, and I thought "well, the car accident I was in last month didn't do anything like that to me" (though when I go through 4 way stops my heart beat jumps like CRAZY), but then I thought "but that car crash when I was little killed any interest I had in driving" and I went, well, wow. I still wouldn't want to say it exactly gave me PTSD or anything, but the connection between - a) my mom and grandmother almost dying in a car crash I was present in at age 4 and vividly remember to this day, and b) my having panic attacks and sweating through my shirts and having my vision gray on the edges when I tried to drive as an adolescent was never clear to me before. Hunh. (and just btw, having sweating panic attacks where your vision grays out on the edges DOES NOT make you a good driver, so it fed into itself quite a lot.)
