When the Car Becomes a Weapon: Real Stories of Narcissistic Road Rage

Dr. Kerry McAvoy: [00:00:00] The terrifying reality of what happens when a narcissist turns an ordinary Sunday afternoon drive into a weaponized ambush. Because when you're trapped in a moving car with an abusive person, you aren't just a passenger. You could become their hostage. They're not losing control. They're using a tactic to show that they're in control and that they expect you to become compliant.

They know in these moments that you have nowhere else to go

When we talk about domestic violence or abuse or even toxic families, we usually picture things that happen behind closed doors, things that happen inside the house. But today we're talking about a different kind of abuse, kind of a captivity actually. A captivity that moves 70 miles per hour. On Monday, Lynn and I, my co-host, broke down how vehicles could be used as a metaphor for control But today I want to talk about the terrifying reality of what happens when a [00:01:00] narcissist turns an ordinary Sunday afternoon drive into a weaponized ambush.

Because when you're trapped in a moving car with an abusive person, you aren't just a passenger, you could become their hostage. A YouTube watcher left a comment that I thought was a sobering, scary example of the physical tolls that being in a car with an abusive person could have on us. She writes, "I'm deaf in my left ear because of road rage with him screaming in my ear with my soon-to-be ex.

He never would let anybody else drive except for him. In fact, family members got to experience the abuse firsthand." I want you to notice the layers here. First, there's actually an outcome to the abuse. This person was left with permanent hearing loss due to the vocal violence directly left into her ear.

And secondly, this person also monopolized the driving. He didn't let anyone else drive. So it wasn't like we could have said to her, "Well, you just take over. You take the wheel. Don't let him take the driving. You know, you go [00:02:00] in first and take control." No, abusers have a way to intimidate us or threaten us or weaponize things, and so you have to give in because it's the only safe outcome in the situation.

And the other thing is that there's a total lack of accountability. She also wrote in that he saw nothing wrong with what he did because to a narcissist, their rage is completely justified. It's a response to the outside world. In their mind, you earned it. So in his mind, him deafening the person he so-called claims to love is her fault because she enraged him.

So cars can often become dangerous when we're forced to live in these survival adaptations. Here's what another viewer wrote in. She shared, "Mine would immediately seek to argue, start an argument, and used to become more aggressive than usual while I couldn't leave the car. So I would then wait till a red light, and I would quietly open the door and exit in order to be safe."

This person basically trapped her. She couldn't leave the car, and he [00:03:00] waited until she was inside the car to launch in for his worst attack because that person knows you can't walk away when that's happening. So this person did something even equally dangerous by having to get out of the car at red lights in order to escape from this horrible pressure cooker of a situation.

Something like this happened to me. My ex, when we were dating, drove like grandma on a Sunday afternoon, slow and methodical to the point I was kind of a little bored and shocked by it. But after the marriage, his driving was so radical and so scary that I felt like every time I got into the car with him, I was taking, um, life into my own hands.

I would literally stare at the phone and try to play games on it as a way to distract myself so I wouldn't gasp every time he tailgated the car ahead of him. He would actually even get so angry that he would Stop, brake in a highway just to make a point to the person behind him. I found that if I tried to drive, and that was my next recourse, is just don't let him [00:04:00] drive, just drive yourself, but what, uh, if I tried to drive, he would control me with his backseat driving advice to such extent that I would feel equally distressed and upset and like I was trapped in a different way because I was driving and not letting him drive.

It was like a no-win situation. I couldn't get out of it by letting him be the driver, and I couldn't save myself by becoming the driver. There was another comment that came in on this s- same situation is this person wanted to know, why do so many of us stay in these cars for years before we finally leave the open door and get out?

Because, you know, the truth of the situation is a lot of us, this was kinda normalized in childhood, and we don't think of the vehicle as a weapon to be used for emotional abuse. We just get so used to the pattern. So when you've been in a home where the parent has used their driver's seat as a throne of terror, your nervous system kinda just learns to survive the baseline of high-speed anxiety.

You learn that it's just kinda normal, and you brace for what's [00:05:00] gonna happen. But we also get into these relationships because we get trained to do this. This person justifies it, or they make it so impossible there's no other solution, like with what happened to myself. Somebody else wrote in and shared that hers would use it like a personal conspiracy to shift blame onto them.

She writes in, she says, "He would intentionally drive erratically to scare me and then rage out if there's a detour, like somehow it was my fault." So in these situations, people who are abusive, anything becomes a trigger. Something goes wrong, you're not on time, the, the traffic slows, there's a detour, the driver ahead of you is driving irresponsibly or maybe at least not the way your abusive partner likes, and then suddenly they erupt.

It's as if you can't do it right. This person's gonna find something wrong. They look for a system to be rigged. They expect and search for evidence of things as if it's a personal insult, and then you, who's a passenger in the car, [00:06:00] becomes an emotional punching bag that's expected to absorb the impact of their rage.

Another terrible situation that happened to me was I was having an asthma attack due to exposure to dust or mold, and I was in the car and I said to him, "We need to get to a pharmacy. I don't happen to have my rescue inhaler on me." And at that moment, he pulled over, stopped traffic behind us as we were trying to exit a mall parking garage.

So he stopped the traffic, and the people behind us start honking, wanting to get around us. And then one of them got angry and came over and started screaming at us. And my ex, instead of getting concerned and just start putting the car in motion and leaving and going find a pharmacy, he actually stopped and chased them and threatened them, and ignoring me, who's having an asthma attack in the car.

What am I supposed to do? I'm in trouble. I need help, and he's chasing somebody down while he's becoming an obstacle himself. So if you've ever been in one of these experiences where your car has become a weaponized space, here's some critical truths to [00:07:00] help anchor you in making it more understandable.

Their bad temper was never your fault, nor was it about the bad temper. We don't need to see these people as just losing control. They're not losing control. They're using a tactic to show that they're in control and that they expect you to become compliant. They know in these moments that you have nowhere else to go.

It's not about the bad temper. It's not about them losing control. They're doing this intentionally. And here's the other thing. You remember these moments. The reason you get tense with other drivers afterwards is because your body remembers these bad experiences. So if you find yourself gripping the steering wheel or clenching your jaw or feeling a wave of panic when you're driving, recognize that as a somatic armoring up, your body reacting to the ghost of the past weaponized abusive experience.

And really think about reclaiming your autonomy on the road. Healing [00:08:00] requires us rewriting the relationship we have with things like this. So if you're dating somebody new and they refuse to ever let yourself drive or somebody starts to use the car to punish you into silence, pay attention. This is telling you that this person's not safe.

But also learn to rediscover your joy of being on the road with safe people and as you as the safe driver. So thank you so much for these types of comments. I really appreciate it. Maybe you would like to share how you've survived being in a car, a dangerous car with somebody. Have you ever had to get out at the red light just to be able to breathe and to reclaim your safety?

I'd love to hear your stories. Please consider emailing me at clients@kerrymcavoyphd.com or use that secure link below in the show notes, and let's continue to break down how abuse shows up using innocent moments as a way to terrorize us and take control It's 2:00 AM again, and you're replaying that whole [00:09:00] conversation over, and you're wondering to yourself, "Was it really that bad, or maybe I'm just being dramatic?"

So you start to draft that I'm sorry text again because the guilt that you're feeling or the confusion you're experiencing is just unbearable. And you know this loop because you've been there before, but I want you to know that you're not alone. I'm Dr. Kerry McAvoy. I'm a retired psychologist, and for 25 years I've been helping people untangle exactly what toxic relationships do to your mind, how they create the confusion, the self-doubt, and that trauma bond that keeps pulling you back in.

Here's the truth. Recovery isn't about getting more information. It's about having the right support in the exact moment you need it. That's why I've created Reclaim You. It's a private, always available coaching app built from my work and my content organized into an extensive library that you can actually use when you're triggered.

Inside it, you'll get five-minute lessons when your brain can't handle a deep dive, check-ins that meet you [00:10:00] exactly where you are, whether you're feeling strong, shattered, or numb, boundary scripts that help you say no without overexplaining, grounding tools that work fast when you're activated, and progress tracking so you can see proof you're healing even on days when it feels like you're not.

There's no appointments, no waiting, no judgment, just practical support right when you need it. Reclaim You, real help in real time right in your pocket, and it's a coaching support, not therapy or emergency care. Learn more at studio.com/drkerry. So start your healing today and reclaim you.