By Amy Moore, Content Team Contributor
When I turned seventeen, all anyone would ask me about was if I would start my driving lessons soon. My entire family was so excited for me, but I just remember being swamped with nerves. My friends spent their teenage years constantly talking about what they’d do and where they’d go once they were able to drive. They spoke of road trips across the country and evening trips to the beach for fish and chips, and yet there was no part of me that felt the same excitement. I would play along and pretend as though it was something that I dreamt of, too, when in fact, it was just another change in my life that I was dreading.
I knew that I was in a privileged position where I had the opportunity to start learning to drive almost immediately after my seventeenth birthday, and yet I just felt so anxious about the whole situation. I feared all kinds of things. I thought that I’d have a panic attack behind the wheel and wouldn’t be able to pull over. I thought that the roundabouts were just impossible to navigate and that I’d annoy all the other drivers because I wouldn’t ever be able to pull out of a junction. I simply thought that I’d never be able to drive. I thought there were too many factors against me.
However, what I realised soon enough, was that actually the biggest thing holding me back was being unable to trust myself. It took me months of weekly driving lessons, but eventually, I seemed to come to the understanding that unless I fully trusted myself in the driver’s seat, I would never even get through the driving test, let alone be able to gain the freedom that all my friends had wished for.
Anxiety is very good at making us doubt ourselves. It’s like a constant mantra of ‘what if you can’t do this’, ‘what if this really bad thing happens’, and ‘what if everything goes wrong and it’s your fault’. And when we tell ourselves about these things over and over again, our brains seem to tell us that because it’s so ingrained, then they must be true. The very idea of opposing the thought seems so impossible that it feels unthinkable to even try.
After nearly a year of driving lessons, I took my driving test. And for months beforehand, all those thoughts had been going around and around in my head. I had convinced myself that there was no way I could pass, even though my driving instructor seemed positive that I could do it, and my parents knew I was a good driver, their words just faded to nothing. I was so fuelled by anxiety that in the days leading up to my test, I made stupid mistakes in my last few driving lessons that knocked my confidence, and I felt so ill from nerves in the days beforehand that it seemed as though there was no chance of me even getting to the test centre, let alone actually attempting the test. But somehow, I managed to get in the car, and I got to the test centre.
It was only in those last few moments before I drove off for what could have been the worst forty minutes of driving I had ever done, that I just vividly remember thinking to myself that I was in complete control of this situation. Learning to drive is so difficult because you’re pushed into the driver’s seat knowing practically nothing, and then it’s like you’re thrown into the deep end, onto roads with other drivers. But what you have to realise is that you are in complete control of the situation, and you have to have faith in your own abilities. You have to challenge the constant cycle of anxious thoughts, otherwise everything seems impossible.
I managed to pass my driving test, and now I have the freedom to go wherever I want whenever I want, which has helped me immensely with managing my anxiety. It has taught me that to achieve things, I have to change my mindset. There is no use in doubting yourself all the time; all you need is the smallest spark of strength to confront anxiety. You have to challenge every ‘what if you can’t do this’ with the simple thought of, ‘but what if I can?’.