Anxiety Support Group

Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...

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How many people have anxiety over driving?

codymama
codymama
What part of driving gives you anxiety? I get anxious even before I drive. I have O.C.D. and I am afraid that I hit someone and did not know it and drove away. Does anyone else have this problem? I can drive by someone and know that I did not hit that person and then a few seconds later I start to doubt myself.
Becky
deleted_user
deleted_user
This is a very common OCD fear - I have a friend who gave up driving but then had to get off the bus beause he was sure the but ran over someone - took him3 hours to get to work some days
deleted_user
deleted_user
I am not sure what it is about driving. To me its kinda scary, it takes me away from home to long. My son had a bad accident and now im really scared. Being closed in for a long time, not being able to get up and move around.
deleted_user
deleted_user
Driving actually keeps me same for the most part despite it all.

This fear would be very hard to deal with as I'm an EMT and Firefighter. If I couldn't drive, I don't know what I would do!!!
deleted_user
deleted_user
I have OCD issues in a big way, but I have never had this particular one before. But as mystic said, it is very, very common. My OCD issues center more around checking things, but really when you think about it, its all the same thing. Your urge to worry about hitting somebody with a car is not any different than my urge to worry about my stove catching on fire. They are both just bad mental habits that we created for ourselves.
Remember that OCD is called "The Doubting Disease", (it's not really a disease though) because it makes you doubt events that happened 2 seconds ago. You have to stand up to the urge to doubt and learn to be uncomfortable with uncertainty. Do your best to "drive without thinking". Tell yourself that your car is an "Analyze Free Zone". Tell yourself you can analyze all you want when you get out of the car, but while you are driving, you will just "be". Little things like that will help break this habit for you. It used to take me 4 hours to close my house up at night because I doubted myself so much. Now I can do it in 30 minutes. Still not perfect, but so much better, just by breaking the habits a little bit at a time.