Hi everybody,
I'm new to driving even though I'm only 21, I've had my permit since I was 15 but never really was much of a driver and I'm pretty nervous while driving, so I don't have my Lisence yet.
Lately I've had excellent progress and I'm so much more confident now and I think I might be able to take the test now (I've failed it twice before when I was like 17 or so).
I was driving right onto a bridge and there's this slightly scary bit where you have to merge into the road to get to the bridge. It wasn't really that bad since my dad was there to help me decide when to go, and I merged quite nicely. I wasn't that confident while doing so however, and an evil little thought wormed its way into my head about how I was probably lucky and I didn't actually use skill to make that move and if I'm not careful next time I could crash.
Next thing I knew I was calming a racing heart down and breathing hard and feeling panicky. I didn't have an attack, fortunatley, but I was about halfway there. I was already on the bridge and I was freaking out about not being able to stop since there was, of course, not really any place to pull over on top of the rise or on the bridge itself, and I didn't want to spoil the sucess I've had recently with my Dad teaching me. I had the oddest feeling of wanting to just STOP the forward velocity, the speed was bothering me. So I just held on and a few minutes passed and I felt much better, if not a little jittery for the rest of the night.
It makes me mad because I have been anxiety-free for the longest time and now that I had that I've been quite anxious the last couple of days and that feeling has stuck with me and I feel like I'm reverting to how I was a few months ago.
And what's really weird is that there wasn't any big concrete reason for feeling panicky--like being scared of an elevator or something, and it happened a few moments after what I was worried about, all delayed and everything.
So anyway, thanks for reading this long post.