Fear of Driving (and Crashing of course)

There is a special kind of look people give you when they find out you're in your thirties and having driving lessons.  They cock their head to one side (usually the right), adopt a cooing tone and say "Ooooh...good for you" in the manner that one might use to address a small child who has just mastered wiping its own arse.

I've had to put up with many a cocked head/patronising comment over the last few months as I have been struggling to overcome a long-held phobia of driving.  And what a phobia it was, a great big snake of a one.  And yet driving is something that so many adults do easily, it seems like an unspoken taboo not to want to.  Those of us who are afraid of driving just shut up about it, walk a lot and use the bus.

The roots of my phobia are embarrassingly clear.  When I was 4 I fell out of a car on a dual carriageway.  This was in the days when it was OK to squeeze as many kids as you could on to the back seat (seatbelts were for wimps in the 1970's). It wasn't surprising that occasionally the door sprang open and one of the nippers popped out.  Combine that with an incident when the brakes failed in a car I was driving around a busy North London (people of Holloway, you are lucky to be alive) and it's not surprising that I ended up avoiding driving, then stopping altogether.

So fast forward a few years and I tinker around with a few things.  Hypnotherapy didn't help, though having to walk home in the rain afterwards did (hmmm...if only I drove, then my feet wouldn't be so soggy).  The trapeze course was good fun if you like hyperventilating whilst 12 feet in the air.

There are times when you feel like a wuss for being unable to do what a large slice of the population takes for granted.  It's also quite boring to stay afraid - life is all about change , and eventually it's time for a new attitude.  Like the lady says, sometimes you've just got to Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway.  In the end, I decided to just grit my teeth and go for some driving lessons.

And after 7 years of being terrified, I have been driving!  To places!  And back again!  Without killing anyone!

So if you see a red Mini on the streets of Brighton, give me a wave.  Just don't expect a wave back - I'm driving, not multi-tasking. And if you have a fear, just face it.  Patronising comments are really no big deal at all compared with the freedom of escaping from a fear that holds you back.