How can I help with my anxiety surrounding driving?

Hello!!! Thank you so much for taking the time to ask this quesiton. I know that often when we have anxiety in one are of our lives, there is anxiety that is impacting many areas of our lives. 

One of the first things that I would ask you about is what you are noticing in many areas of your life. So, how is anxiety at home, how is anxiety at work? How do you do wth functioning at a workplace with co workers and bosses? 

I believe that it is important to look at all aspects of someone's life, and not just the initial place that they are recognizing the anxiety. 

However, I want to make sure that you are able to get your questions ansered to the best of my ability - without knowing more information. Often I would be asking more inquiring questions about what you are asking. 

When you have anxiety about a speific trigger, the first thing I wonder, is if there was a specific trauma that brought that on. Often times people can have resposness to triggers that are impacting their daily functioning, and those triggers can vary.

You identified a significant issue with driving, and that impacting your daily life. I immediately am curious about asking more about your life. Is driving something that is necessary for you life? Do you need to drive within your community? Or are you living in an environment where you are able to ride public transit without issue. if this is the case, then there is some pause to the "immediacy" to dealing with driving issue. You do not have to worry about accomplishing this goal immediately. if driving is keeping you from being able achieve your workplace goals, family goals, or many comitments, then it is imptant that we are working on these skills urgently. 

One of the techniques that we can explore is exposure therapy. This technique explores the small moments that will build on itself to help you feel more comfortable with driving. When we pause and look at how it feels to sit behind the wheel of the car, and just sit there. Within the safety of the driveway, how does that feel? Working through a grounding skill in that moment to be able to bring yourself to a place of calm, and then work up to being able to be on a small side street for 5 minutes, and on and on. This is something that does take time. 

WIth the right supports in your daily life in addition to the supports that you get within this platform, I feel that this is something that you will be able to overcome. I wish you all the luck on this journey. Remember, that we are all on a process of moving forward, and we can do that by taking one step at a time, and your reaching out for help is a big step.