Driving Anxiety and Driving Exposure | EP 315

Navigating driving anxiety with exposure therapy—but not how you might think. 

In this episode, Drew Linsalata (therapist, author, and former anxiety sufferer) challenges common misconceptions about addressing driving anxiety. 

Learn why the feeling is the exposure, not the driving itself, and discover how interoceptive and imaginal exposures can help without ever starting your car. 

Drew explains why pulling over or listening to music isn't avoidance if you're still experiencing anxiety, clarifies what true avoidance looks like, and emphasizes that recovery is about learning from each experience, not just driving farther. 

Whether you experience anxiety holding your keys, sitting in your driveway, or on the highway, this episode offers a practical, acceptance-based approach to driving anxiety that breaks down exactly what exposure therapy means in this context. 

You'll learn why small steps count, what constitutes real progress, and how to shift your focus from controlling anxiety to building a different relationship with uncomfortable feelings while driving. 

Based on empirically supported approaches to treating anxiety and anxiety disorders, this episode provides realistic strategies for living alongside anxiety rather than attempting to eliminate it.

For full show notes on this episode:

https://theanxioustruth.com/315

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Disclaimer: The Anxious Truth  is not therapy or a replacement for therapy. Listening to The Anxious Truth does not create a therapeutic relationship between you and the host or guests of the podcast. Information here is provided for psychoeducational purposes. As always, when you have questions about your own well-being, please consult your mental health and/or medical care providers. If you are having a mental health crisis, always reach out immediately for in-person help.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:01

What if you panic while you drive? What if you're so anxious about driving, or so anxious while in the car that you've stopped driving because you've developed the fear of doing that? And what if it's sort of restricting or even sort of ruining your life? Well, this is a topic that's near and dear to many hearts among listeners of the Anxious Truth. So this week we're going to talk about driving anxiety and approaching driving anxiety using exposure methods. So let's get to it. Hello everybody, welcome back to the Anxious Truth. This is episode 316. Nope, this is episode 315 of the podcast we are recording in April of 2025, in case you are listening from the future.

Speaker 1 0:43

The Anxious Truth is the podcast and YouTube channel that talks about all things anxiety, anxiety disorders and anxiety recovery. If you have just stumbled upon the podcast or the YouTube channel today, welcome. I hope you find this helpful and, of course, if you are a returning listener or viewer, welcome back. Glad you're here. Thanks for spending some time with me.

Speaker 1 1:01

I am Drew Linsalata. I am the creator and host of the Anxious Truth. I'm also a therapist practicing in the area of anxiety and anxiety disorders in New York in the US of A. I'm a three-time author on this topic a psychoeducator, an advocate and a former sufferer of panic disorder, agoraphobia, ocd and depression for many years of my life, on and off, but doing much better now, and actually for many years. So today we're going to talk about driving anxiety and exposure for driving anxiety. Before we do, just a quick reminder that there are more goodies beyond just this podcast episode or YouTube video on my website at theanxioustruthcom, most of which is free. Anything that does carry a cost is like a book, which is really inexpensive, or maybe a workshop that's very inexpensive. Anyway, go check it out, follow along with all the other podcast episodes, follow along on social media and avail yourself of all the goodies at theanxioustruthcom. So, driving anxiety. Let's talk about driving anxiety because it might be one of the top five topics that people want me to address here on this podcast or on the Disordered podcast that I do with Josh Fletcher, which, by the way, you can find at disorderedfm. Driving anxiety is one of the most often talked about struggles and it's one of the topics people want to hear about the most.

Speaker 1 2:13

I have talked about driving anxiety before. There's several previous podcast episodes about this, and I think we did one on Disordered, but today I want to specifically address driving anxiety as it relates to exposure type therapies or exposure approaches to these kind of fears. Now a couple of things before I get into it. There's no video today. If you're watching on YouTube, you're looking at a still image, and there's a reason for that. Hear me out.

Four Types of Driving Fears

Speaker 1 2:37

People will probably want to bring this episode with them when they drive because they think I'm going to give them instructions or it might calm them down while driving. I would prefer you not do that. I never record podcast episodes to give you real-time instruction while doing exposures of any kind, and I would really like it if people didn't immediately listen to this podcast to calm down. The irony of doing an anxiety disorder podcast that then becomes a safety or coping mechanism is not lost on me. Can't stop you from doing it, but I would prefer that you did not do that and I intentionally did not record video so that if you are gonna drive while listening to this, there's nothing to watch. Keep your eyes on the road. Also, this is not therapy.

Speaker 1 3:24

I cannot tell you how to do a driving exposure in a podcast episode, nor can I tell you what driving exposure to do. I'm going to give you a very broad overview of how an anxiety therapist might help you design an exposure plan that targets your fear of being too anxious or experiencing panic while driving. We're going to talk broad brush here and then you get to apply the principles in your own context. Another thing I have to say because we're talking about driving you are responsible for your own safety. Now I can make every effort to be supportive or encouraging or educational in podcasts and videos, but ultimately you have to make the choice as to what is safe for you or not. I'm going to state right now that if you feel that you are incapable of safely operating a motor vehicle while you are anxious especially if that fear drives you to actually make unsafe choices while driving well then your better choice is absolutely in-person help with someone that will get to know you and better understand your unique challenges and work with you individually on this. Do not take this podcast episode with you in the car and decide Drew said that I should do this. That's not a good idea. So let's talk about the context that we're in here.

Speaker 1 4:36

In this podcast episode, we are talking about being afraid to drive because of being very anxious or maybe experiencing panic while driving. This is not just driving phobia, centered around the idea that driving is dangerous or that roads are too busy or I'm afraid of having an accident, although you may have drawn the conclusion that you are an unsafe or unreliable driver while driving, but this is because of how you feel. So what we're talking about today is not just simple driving phobia. This is a very specific case where I am afraid to drive because of how I feel while I drive. If I didn't have this feeling, I would have no problem driving. Yes, I understand there are risks in driving, but I was a great driver and I love to drive. Just that now I'm panicking or I'm having high anxiety in the car, and so I don't do it. It's important to remember that this is a very specific context.

Speaker 1 5:29

And then, before we get into the actual meat and potatoes of the episode, I have to acknowledge those of you that maybe have been in car accidents. If you've been involved in a serious car accident, or you even witnessed one, or somebody close to you was in one and was highly impacted by that one, or somebody close to you was in one and was highly impacted by that, and now you find yourself afraid to drive, that is a slightly different issue that I'm really not directly addressing today. Well, yes, there might be exposures involved in overcoming that issue, and some anxious people have that issue along with driving anxiety as I talk about it. But we're really not directly addressing the driving fear that resulted from an actual accident either that you were in or you saw or that have impacted somebody close to you. So keep that in mind as well.

Speaker 1 6:14

I can't cover every nuance of every topic in one, in a podcast episode or a video. So, those things being said, let's kind of get into this. I want to talk about what I think is sort of four sort of subcategories of this fear. Now, again, I cannot cover every possible iteration of every possible variation of these fears, but we see kind of four categories that I'm going to talk about. One would be it's too dangerous to drive while anxious. Like you might relate to that. I'll be so anxious and upset that I will lose control of myself and that might make me crash the car and I could hurt myself or my family or others.

The Feeling Is the Exposure

Speaker 1 6:50

So many anxious people that have a driving phobia or a driving anxiety will say this it's just too dangerous to drive while I'm anxious because I can't control myself if I get that out of control, right? The second one is close to that, but it's not really. This one is I think driving is dangerous and I'm afraid to do it because I fear that I will get so anxious that I will psychologically break and then I'm going to turn the car into sort of a weapon, but on purpose, right. I fear that I will get so anxious that I will lose control and then decide consciously, even though I don't want to, to crash the car or smash it into a store full of people or drive off the bridge or drive into the overpass abutment, even though I don't want to do that. I'm terrified of doing that and I have no actual intention of ever doing that. But I believe that if I panic in the car and it gets too much, I will break and then decide to do things that I don't want to do. So that's close to the first sub fear, right. I'll be so anxious that I won't be able to really control things and therefore I will accidentally crash the car and cause a problem.

Speaker 1 7:58

The second one is I will get so anxious or panicky while I'm driving that I will psychologically snap and I will get so anxious or panicky while I'm driving, that I will psychologically snap and I will intentionally crash the car. And that's often driven by those thoughts that every human brain is going to make, like, as you're driving over a bridge, like what would stop me from just driving off this bridge, like every brain makes those thoughts, and for people with this particular sort of subvariant of driving anxiety, those thoughts start to seem very, very dangerous. So that's the number two one. Number three is well, I'm not really worried about losing control of myself or the car, but I just always panic while driving, or while driving in certain places or maybe on certain roads, and I simply do not want that to happen. I cannot allow that. The state of panic itself is the feared outcome, and it always happens when I drive, or when I drive, say, on the highway. So I can't do that anymore.

Speaker 1 8:51

That sort of describes my experience with driving anxiety. Which was my biggest problem back in the day was the driving thing. This was me. I never worried that I was going to lose control or crash the car. I just didn't want to panic. I would panic in the car all the damn time. So you might be one of those people we're like no, I don't see a car crash coming, like I am able to control the car, but I just don't want to panic and driving is going to make me panic so I won't do it.

Speaker 1 9:16

And then the last one is a little bit more nuanced and specific. But this one, the person would say like well, I'm a little more specific in my fear. I get dizzy when I panic so I can't possibly drive. Or I have visual issues when I panic or get too anxious, which means I can't possibly drive. Or I get really scary thoughts when I get very anxious, which means I can't possibly drive because I won't be able to concentrate. Insert whatever panic or anxiety symptom is scariest or most disruptive to you and that you have possibly connected to the act of driving. So I know these all four might be hard to tell apart, but there are people listening right now and you might be one of them that understand this Like no, it's really just about the fact that I get very dizzy.

Speaker 1 10:00

Or some people will say but if I'm driving and I get really anxious, my stomach is going to start to act up and I might not be able to get to a bathroom in time, and so their driving anxiety is based on the fact that the anxiety will make me so anxious that something bad is going to happen gastrointestinally while I'm driving. Sometimes people would also. I would give you maybe a fifth subcategory, which is I don't want to panic in front of the other people in my car. So there are people that will drive themselves happily all over the world as long as they're by themselves. They just don't want to drive with other people in the car or can't be a passenger in someone else's car, because their biggest fear is that I might get very anxious and someone will see that If you are a parent and you're driving your kids around, that becomes especially prevalent either, and then they get combined. I can't possibly drive my kids around because what if I get so anxious that I cause a crash and I hurt my kids accidentally? Or also I can't let them see that. So, as you can see, there's four or five sort of subcategories here that fall under driving anxiety. Again, there's an infinite number of variations of these because everybody's a little bit different and we all are unique. But these are sort of the subcategories. Maybe it helps you to see which one you fall in, but in the end it's not going to really matter that much. Hear me out.

Speaker 1 11:20

I'm going to ask you a couple of questions here. The first I'm going to really ask you one question, and that would be is driving really the only place that you're anxious Like? Is that really your only trigger or avoidant area is driving? There is a really good play. There's a really good chance that you have more things right now that you avoid, and it's not just driving.

Speaker 1 11:43

Now, the reason why I say that is not to accuse you of like making stuff up or not knowing yourself, but since the driving itself is not really the problem in driving anxiety right, it's how you feel. That's what I said in the beginning when I said our context is I'm afraid to drive because of how I feel when I drive, like my internal experience when I drive. So if you're still afraid of your internal experience, which would be anxiety or thoughts or big emotions or physical sensations that happen inside of you, if you're afraid of them while you drive, then there's a really good chance that you're afraid of them in other places too. So driving anxiety the way we're sort of describing it today, doesn't really exist in a vacuum. Now it is possible that you are further down the road to recovery and you feel like driving is the last thing you have left.

Beyond Driving: Related Anxieties

Speaker 1 12:35

But I would start to ask do you have other anxiety or panic triggers that you're just sort of managing right now, right? So driving anxiety is just one of many forms of anxiety and driving is just one of the many triggers or avoidances, and that can be addressed by working on the other triggers and avoidant reactions. So, for instance, I got much better at driving on the Long Island Expressway when I wasn't so afraid to be home alone anymore. And that might sound weird, right, what is this guy talking about? What does one got to do with the other? But the fact of the matter was I didn't want to drive on the Long Island Expressway because I was afraid to experience those panic sensations and those thoughts. You know, if it all comes down to how you feel when you drive because that's what we're talking about here any place that you can confront that and practice that and allow that and work on dropping your management, control, mitigation or avoidance strategies would help you while driving as well.

Speaker 1 13:35

So it's really important to look at that. Is this really my only trigger? It might be the one that most impacts your life because, especially if you live in a suburban or a rural area where there's no mass transit, driving is important. I get that, so it may be the most impactful. But ask yourself, what else am I doing to try to manage how I feel every day? A lot of people can find eating and drinking habits like very rigid sleep habits, very rigid self-care routines. They have certain people they don't want to talk to. I still can't watch the news. I can't watch this kind of movie, I can't read this kind of book, I can't talk about this topic, but can you help me with my driving anxiety? Well, it's really hard to work on the driving anxiety if you're still afraid that you might panic at the kitchen table if you accidentally see a clip of a movie that would trigger you. So we have to work on all of this at one time. Work on all of the anxiety, all of the triggers. They all come along for the ride together, pardon the pun. So I'd ask you to think about that.

Speaker 1 14:35

The other thing that I want to talk about is that it is possible to practice the symptoms of anxiety and panic without driving right. So this is where we use interoceptive exposures. These are a perfectly acceptable and very useful way to begin to address the fear of driving, especially if you are very somatically based. If you are worried about the dizziness or the racing heart. Or I get short of breath when I get so anxious it feels like I can't breathe. What if I pass out while I'm driving because it feels like I can't breathe?

Speaker 1 15:06

We can actually use interoceptive exposure, which does not involve driving at all. You could do them right in your living room to help you work on, on tolerating and moving through and forming a new relationship with each of those sensations. There are ways to make your heart race. There are ways to feel short, out of breath. There's a way, there are ways to feel dizzy. There are ways to tax your muscles so that they start to feel a little wobbly Like. We can use interoceptive exposures to help you work directly on your fear of the symptoms that you think mean you can't drive. So you might think that I only have to, I only can do driving exposures and I would say no, if you're very symptom focused, you can actually use interoceptives to work on your driving anxiety. Again, I can't give you specifics because I can't possibly know all 30,000 of you that are going to listen to this podcast episode. But we can do that. You can start working on your driving anxiety by working on the symptoms outside of driving by interoceptive exposures.

Speaker 1 16:06

Another thing you can do would be to use imaginal exposures. Those also can work with driving, and this is especially true if you're the type of person who harbors the fear of losing control or, either unintentionally or intentionally, because you've had some sort of psychotic break causing a car-related catastrophe. In this case, marginal exposures might involve writing scripts and stories about this nightmare in great detail. The worst thing you can imagine. Then you're going to read or repeat those on a regular basis. The object of the game is to intentionally trigger yourself, then allow that discomfort to come and go without taking evasive actions. That is how we do interoceptive exposures. Again, if you have a therapist or a counselor somebody trained that you're working with, they can help you with this.

Speaker 1 16:50

I can't tell you exactly how to do it in a podcast episode or a video, but imaginal exposures especially if your driving anxiety is related to the feared outcome of losing control of the car or losing control of your mind and then losing control of the car we can use that to your advantage. So if you work on imaginal exposures. You don't ever even have to get in the car to do that. Although it is quite effective to sit in the car and do that, that makes it doubly triggering in many instances. I've done that with a couple of clients already. But you don't have to drive the car to do an imaginal exposure. So, as ridiculous as it sounds, if you need to work on your driving anxiety and you're very like loss of control, it's going to cause a nightmare. You might be able to actually address your driving anxiety in your living room with an imaginal.

Interoceptive and Imaginal Exposures

Speaker 1 17:37

Now the last thing I want to touch on is well, there's a couple of things. The last thing I want to touch on gets to the exposure stuff and and some of this is about not actually knowing how to do a driving exposure this is a really common one. People often want to do driving exposures, but they sometimes miss the mark or they hold sort of misguided or incorrect beliefs about this kind of exposure. Always remember this is super important. I repeat it in almost every podcast episode that has an exposure element it's the feeling, that's the exposure. I'll say it again the feeling is the exposure.

Speaker 1 18:14

The driving is not the exposure. The act of driving is not the exposure. The highway is not the exposure. Being too far from home is not the exposure. Those are only the things that trigger the feeling. Remember, in this context I am afraid to drive because of how I feel, what my internal experiences, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, bodily sensations. I'm only afraid to drive because of what goes on inside me if I drive, or drive in certain places or on certain roads. The exposure is the difficult internal experience. The driving is only the trigger. So really we use the driving to trigger the discomfort. That's all that is. So this is important because if you forget this, you may totally miss the mark on how to start with actual driving exposures.

Speaker 1 19:05

So I'll give you a couple of examples here, and some of them I had to go through. If you panic or you start to get absolutely beside yourself or very anxious the minute you pick up your car keys before you've even walked out the door, that's a driving exposure. You might have to practice panicking holding the car keys at your front door or in your living room. There's no need to actually drive if that's enough to help trigger panic that you could practice moving through. If you panic in the driveway or you get really anxious in the driveway without even turning the car on, that's a driving exposure. If you panic only 100 yards from your house, that's a driving exposure. So sometimes we forget that the exposure is to the feeling, not the actual driving or the place or the roads you drive on. So driving exposure isn't about practicing driving. It's not about practicing getting far from home. It's not about practicing being on the highway. It's about practicing being anxious and afraid.

Speaker 1 20:03

So I would urge you, if you're confused by this or don't know how to start, loosen your interpretation, widen your view a little bit, kind of be nicer to yourself and allow yourself to practice in smaller steps, because they count too. It is 100% a useful driving exposure to sit in your driveway, not even turn the car on, and have to take 10 minutes to work through a really big anxiety spike or a stream of, you know, of really scary thoughts or a full panic attack. That would count a hundred percent. If you were my therapy client, I would applaud you for doing that. I wouldn't tell you that, like, well, you still got a long way to go because he didn't drive 200 miles today. That's not correct. So start where you are, that counts. And if it's in your living room holding your car keys still counts. I wouldn't call that a failure. I would applaud the, you know, applaud the work. If you were doing it, you were my client.

Overcoming Misconceptions About Avoidance

Speaker 1 20:54

So let's talk about avoidance. This is another thing that people often get really confused about or they criticize themselves because they don't understand what avoidance looks like in the context of driving anxiety and driving exposure. Pulling over meaning you're driving and you start to get really uncomfortable and you think that the right thing to do is pull over and stop the car. That is not avoidance, because what's you know what's going to happen? You're going to have to work through those, those scary feelings while you're sitting on the side of the road, and it's the scary feelings that we care about, it's not the act of driving. So it's perfectly okay, especially in the beginning of doing driving exposure, to pull over and let the feeling pass. We don't want to pull over and launch into 16,000 coping techniques and calming techniques. We want to pull over and let it rise and fall naturally, then start driving again. Pulling over is not avoidance and it's not failure. I cannot say that enough. Now, of course, safety tip don't pull over in a place where you can't pull over. So if you're starting your driving exposures and you feel like you do really have to pull over quite a bit, then if I was your therapist, I would be careful about what route we mapped out to make sure that you can pull over safely. Please keep that in mind. Right, listening to the radio, talking to a friend singing along with a song, listening to a podcast not this one to calm down? Sorry, I had to throw that in there, but those are also not avoidance. If you can practice allowing panic on the side of the road, then great. If you can allow being very uncomfortable while driving and singing along with the radio, or while you're maybe having a conversation with your partner or your friend, great.

Speaker 1 22:35

Like avoidance is what we call it when we intentionally try to one, prevent the scary feelings. Or two, manually operate those feelings to turn them down on demand. Or, three, try to intentionally run away from them. Right. So those are, those are the three things, the hallmarks of avoidance. I'm going to don't do anything that might trigger me. That's avoidance. Or when I do get triggered, I'm going to launch into all kinds of like coping strategies and calming strategies that make me believe that somehow I can turn knobs and pull levers in my nervous system to intentionally calm down quickly. Nope, that's avoidance and we don't want to do stuff to run away from it. Meaning the minute I start to get anxious, I quickly drive home to get away from it.

Speaker 1 23:22

Those are the avoidances pulling over, turning on the radio, listening to a podcast, talking to a friend, like, if your drive with anxiety looks like the drive that you might have without anxiety, then you are winning.

Speaker 1 23:35

If you can bring the feelings with you, then, however way you do that, it's okay. You can learn from that. Super important. And then the last thing that I want to say before I start to wrap it up is don't forget the learning part. Do not forget that it's the most important part. So people get stuck on the driving, or the distance, or the end goal or the outcome. I have to be able to drive to my grandma's house and that's 60 miles away. All right, cool, I mean you can work on going to your grandma's house. There's nothing wrong with that. But do not forget that going to your grandma's house is not really the goal, that's not the outcome, that's not what you're trying to focus on when you address driving anxiety just like any other form of anxiety that we talked about in this podcast, you're trying to learn something from your experiences.

Speaker 1 24:22

The exposures are classrooms. So if you have a panic attack, for instance, two miles from home, when for the last three weeks you've been regularly driving 10 miles with no issue, that is still a learning experience, not a failure. Do not forget this part. Everybody forgets this part. Now, if you panic two miles from home after you've been reliably going 50 miles from home, I understand that you might feel frustrated, that might upset you. You're allowed to have emotions and opinions about that. Just be careful about deciding that was failure.

Learning is More Important Than Distance

Speaker 1 24:55

Anytime you can practice moving through that big, triggered, horrible state that you think should never happen, you are winning. So your your goal is to learn from that every time it happens, whenever it happens and however it happens. I often use the silly cliche it's right out of college football coaching that we never lose. Here we either win or learn. Do not forget the learning part Every time you pick up those keys. If you still have some level of driving anxiety, remind yourself quietly that I might be able to learn something today about myself, about my ability to navigate, about my ability to be psychologically flexible, I might learn something about anxiety. I might learn something every time I pick up those keys. What can I learn? That's what we need. That's the goal of the exposure in driving anxiety and anything else. Your goal is not to learn how to drive. Your goal is to learn that it's safe to feel those feelings and have those thoughts. If you're not afraid of the feelings or the thoughts or the sensations anymore, then there's no reason to fear driving anymore. So think about that. Don't forget the learning part. It's super important. So that's kind of the driving anxiety thing.

Speaker 1 26:11

We've covered a lot of stuff. We talked about the context that we're in. We had a couple of disclaimers at the at the start. Sorry, but I had to do that. We had to acknowledge that some people have in fact been in car accidents. That's a little bit of a different animal. We talked about the different four or five different sort of sub fears or sub genres of driving anxiety. You can decide which one you sort of fit in. Maybe you fit in multiple. And then we talked about expanding your view. Is driving really the only place where you're anxious? Is that the only place where you're avoiding triggers and trying to manage things?

Speaker 1 26:39

We talked about practicing symptoms with interoceptives. We talked about using imaginal exposures. Both of those things have nothing to do with actually being in the car on the road. We talked about misconceptions about how to do a driving exposure or what it means. We talked about what is avoidance and what it is not in a driving exposure. So we got a lot of good stuff here and we finished by saying don't forget the part where you learn from the experience.

Speaker 1 27:05

And before I sort of wrap it up, just a quick reminder that professional help can be really helpful here. I understand it can be hard to find an exposure therapist. I did a talk last fall that I did a lot of research for and the data on how difficult it is for therapists to do exposure is shocking and I know it's hard to find those of us that sort of specialize in this and are willing to do this work. But it really is the best way if you can find it and access it. Professional help when trying to develop an exposure plan for driving anxiety is really, really useful. I have therapy clients that are overcoming driving anxiety and panic while driving and they started with spinning around in their kitchen chairs. I have two people like that right now actually, and they're actually doing much better driving because of the interoceptive exposures. In that case that worked out. But guess what? They didn't know that. They had no idea that that could be a thing. They just needed a little bit of help and there's no crime in that.

Final Thoughts and Professional Help

Speaker 1 28:02

So if you can access it, if you can get to it, having somebody to help you see these things and then build an effective hierarchy is a good idea. Otherwise you might see like, okay, I know, I have to. You know, willfully tolerate and do exposures. You might think that only means that I have to get in the car and drive my 4000 pound machine to a spot far enough from home, or it doesn't count. And that's just not true. So if you can get the help, if you can access it, if you can, if you can find it and access it, consider it, it can be very helpful. So that's it, that is episode. What episode is this? That's episode 315 in the books, talking about driving anxiety and exposures for driving anxiety.

Speaker 1 28:42

What am I going to tell you to wrap it up? Oh, I'll do the usual. Remember, there's other goodies at my website, on theanxioustruthcom, so go is truthcom. So go check those out. If you're listening to the podcast on Apple podcast or Spotify and you can leave a rating or review, maybe leave a five star rating if I've helped you today or taught you something today or ever, and if you really like this podcast, maybe write a quick review, just a couple of sentences saying why it's good, that helps other people find the podcast and more people get help, and then I feel good, of course.

Speaker 1 29:09

If you're watching on YouTube or really today would be listening on YouTube like the video, subscribe to the channel, hit the notification bell. You know all the YouTube stuff I'm tired of talking about. And what else can I tell you? With driving anxiety, I know it might seem like this is just absolutely impossible, but any day, any time, you can change direction. Open up your mind. Not open up your mind, but open yourself up to different experiences. Be willing to loosen your grip a little bit and at least consider that I might be able to move through this fear, even if I have to start driving exposures in my kitchen.

Speaker 1 29:43

It counts. Do not discount the tiny little steps you take. Every time you open yourself up to something that you thought was impossible or that you shouldn't do, you could be learning, which means you're starting to win, and it all counts. It will all add up. Keep going, be patient, be nice to yourself, root for yourself, because I'm going to root for you, even though I don't know you're doing it. I'll still root for you silently, and that's it. Thanks for hanging out today. Hope you found it helpful. I will see you in two weeks. Don't know what we're going to talk about, but we'll talk about something. Take care of yourself. I'll be back next time you.