r/drivinganxiety

I’ve only been learning to drive for about 15 hours now with an instructor. I feel super anxious and nervous, nauseous before each lesson, but once i’m in the car, it gradually begins to ease. I drive super slow and that has been helping a bit. And i feel good after each lesson—until I make a mistake that is.

Like today, i braked hard on a narrow blind turn on a downward slope in an underbridge where there were pedestrians and another car overtaking me. My instructor said I shouldn’t have, because the guy behind almost rear-ended me. My instructor was on his phone and not watching me, when he should have told me to take it the slowest i could possibly have (he mentioned this later). Now the rest of the lesson was fine, and i was becoming more confident with each day, but when i make mistakes like this, it makes me more anxious and worsens my fear before the next time i get behind the wheel with him.

How do i stop dwelling over stupid stuff like this?

I've been taking driving lessons but whenever I drive with my mom she gets anxious and when she gets anxious she gets snappy and bitchy and in return I get anxious. She kept grabbing the wheel, saying I was too close to the line then when I turn into the wawa I'm trying to straighten and go forward and my mom grabs the wheel and I drove into the curve because she was yelling at me to slow down and she grabbed the wheel and I got distracted. Then she was yelling at me to back up, stop, park. I just can't. I do fine with the instructor because the instructor is chill and i can be calm but with my mom, things like this happen!