I'm hoping someone can help me.
I have terrible driving anxiety issues. I never would have thought this would have happened to me as I was always a confident driver since first getting behind the wheel.
Let me give you a little background. In my last year in college (over 20 years ago) I started having tremendous cervical/facial pain. As time went on it got worse and worse till within a few years I was in substantial pain (7 or 8 out of 10 pain score) almost 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week. At some point I was officially labeled as being a "chronic pain patient". For the first decade of this I was treated with NSAIDs and occasional steroid injections. Eventually the NASIDs took their toll on my GI tract and after flirting with an ulcer, I was put on opioid pain killers. These served to dull the pain but did not eliminate it. I had tremendous difficulty sleeping as the pain killers would usually only cover about 4 hrs which is about as much as I slept at one time. Eventually a sleeping pill was added, ambien first but this was switched over to termazepam later.
Between the constant pain, pain killers, sleeping pills, and stress I was pretty much a wreck though I managed to remain fully employed during the entire period.
About 10 years ago I entered a period where I was conscious of worrying about my driving. In retrospect, I should not have been making any long trips. Then it happened. One day while driving on the interstate I suddenly felt as if I was not in control. My heart started to race, I got sweaty, my fingers started to tingle and I started to feel as if I was getting tunnel vision. Luckily my wife was with me and I pulled to the shoulder of the road and let her drive.
From that day forward I didn't drive at all on interstates for several years. At one point I could barely even drive on normal surface streets. Eventually I forced my self to do some interstate driving but it was as if I were on pins and needles the whole time. I was never comfortable behind the wheel on the interstate even making 200+ mile trips. After being an very uncomfortable interstate driver I once again had a similar incident and stopped driving on the interstates at all again for years.
Forward a few years till today. I am now one of the rare people who had beat their longstanding chronic pain condition. For this I am immensely grateful. I had expected to eventually die with the physical pain I had endured for about 20 years. I no longer take any pain medications and only take a sleep aid (Lunesta) occasionally. However, I am still plagued by driving anxiety. I can now drive on regular surface streets without really giving them much of a thought with a few rare exceptions (steep roads in hill country). So, it doesn't effect me most of the time. Unfortunately I still have great difficulty driving on interstates. I can do for maybe 20 to 30 minutes at a time on highways I know, but I'm very nervous the entire time.
I have a job opportunity which I would like to take that would require infrequent trips on the interstate for about 100 miles. I tried to get on the highway today, but couldn't bring myself to do and took two lane back roads and even that was very stressful.
Can anyone offer me any advice? Hope? Tale of successfully overcoming their driving anxiety? At this point I feel as though I will never get beyond this.
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Originally Posted by jhunter89
