I have this thing where, if I haven’t driven my car in a while, I am extremely scared to get behind the wheel again. If I drive my car every day I don’t experience the fear, but as soon as I go a day without driving, I experience an almost crippling fear about driving again. The fear grows each day that I don’t drive, and makes it harder every day to begin driving again. As you can imagine, this can cause a lot of problems for me. I am currently experiencing one of these episodes as we speak.
For the last three days, my car has been at the car mechanic. Bentleigh, where my car is currently being serviced, is about a ten minute drive from my house. I have to pick my car up today and drive it home, which is giving me an unhealthy amount of anxiety. From the moment I woke up this morning, I was brutally aware of the fact that I would have to pick up my car this afternoon. I could barely bring myself to do anything today, so great was my terror.
It’s now 3:10pm and I’m on the bus on the way to the car mechanic. I can’t believe I’ve put myself through this high level of anxiety to get a car air conditioning service. Moorabbin and Bentleigh really aren’t far from each other, so I thought maybe I’d be okay with the idea of driving home when I booked the appointment. I was wrong.
I know getting my car serviced, even if it’s just a car air conditioning service, means my car is safer and better to drive. I hope that one day this gives me the peace of mind I need to not be anxious behind the wheel every time I go without driving for a couple of days. They’re right that exposure therapy works, but I wish it wasn’t so easily reversible.