Information sheet: Driving & Stress
Driving & Stress
Fantasy and reality
The advertiser's dream sells us smooth drives along clear highways through idyllic landscapes under wide-open skies. Meanwhile, back in the real world, we proceed with difficulty through a battleground of bottlenecks, snarl-ups, gridlocks, cut-ups, wheel-clamps, break-downs and carnage.
An estimated 3,600 people will die and 310,000 will be injured this year on U.K. roads. Stress has reached such high levels that one insurance company has set up a national helpline for drivers.
Stress in the driving seat
From the outset, from the moment we sit in the driving seat, we are trapped in a strange contradiction: to move forward, we must keep still. We are belted into tight confines where arms, legs and torso must occupy prescribed positions. We are then subjected to a battery of urgent incoming signals from all directions and we must respond quickly but with only small, localised movements of our hands and feet. To achieve this we have to inhibit the more wide-spread muscular and respiratory reflexes that are essential for effect-ive release of stress.
Addiction to speed
As we experience the surging power of the engine devouring the ground ahead we may have ambitious fantasies of rapidly extending our horizons in a forward thrust that has no limit.
Addiction to speed is fed by a crossing-up of our natural physio-logical responses. We can so easily make the car move forward merely by applying our right foot to the accelerator; but this involves pressing down with the toes. We are effectively adopting an up-on-the-toes position that is more proper to a state of suspenseful alertness and standstill. We are conditioned to believe that this is the way to move forward, but in reality we are motionless. Such is the strength of the illusion that we become desensitised to the stress imposed on the ankles – the ankle of the right foot as it pointedly propels the vehicle forward, and the ankle of the left as, "taken aback" on the heel, the foot hovers in readiness over the brake pedal.
Delay condemns us to a state of suspense
We suspend our breathing and tighten our muscles as we resign ourselves to enforced immobility and confinement. Getting out and walking around would help us release our stress naturally through combined muscular and respiratory action, but this turns out to be impossible. For some of us, delay is intolerable.
Breakdown can feel like some disastrous personal failure
For many of us, our car represents effectiveness in reaching destina-tions and achieving goals. It can also compensate for lack of power in other areas of our lives. A measure of all this is how deflated, impotent and abandoned we can feel when our vehicle breaks down. As well as being actually stranded, we can feel left helpless to face uncomfortable truths about our dependency and the illusory nature of our self-images.
Road rage
Stress on the road cannot be naturally released because we are unnaturally enclosed and restrained. We may then resort to using our car as an aggressive force, believing ourselves to be armour-plated and invulnerable. The road becomes an arena of war; from within our vehicles we first threaten other motorists, and later we may emerge to deliver torrents of abuse or even engage in hand-to-hand combat. Our past unresolved conflicts can get played out on the highway.
Emergencies take us by surprise
We unconsciously enact the Startle Reflex: the head jerks back as a sharp intake of air oxygenates the blood and clarifies the brain in readiness for a decision that must be made quickly. Usually we would exhale and blood would be rapidly pumped to the muscles of our arms and legs to mobilise them for action.
But in the car we have a limited choice of small, indirect actions that can involve only our hands and feet. Expansive respiratory and muscular stress-release reflexes cannot take place. This inhibition of response can result in stress-related conditions such as anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, ulcers, migraine, asthma, etc.
We may keep our stress to ourselves; we may take it for granted that stress is a driver's lot and feel afraid to confess how we feel. We will not want to scare those who depend upon us and our driving.
Accidents startle us
They bring into play the Startle Reflex. The instant inhaling and holding-in of oxygen imprints the experience deeply in the brain's memory banks. This is essential for our survival: threats to life must be remembered in order to be avoided.
These imprints of traumatic events are often replayed in the form of flashbacks when we are asleep or relaxed. This will tend to recur until they have been discharged and can be forgotten. The process is natural but can seem interminable. Talking our memories out with those we are close to can help the process along, but this may require more time, patience and skill than they can offer.
Can counselling and therapy help with driving stress?
The untroubled operation of a personal combustion engine is seen as a mark of full man/womanhood. We don't want to lose face by expo-sing our motor-related fears, griefs and rages.
A skilled and experienced Centre worker can help us to help our-selves with our driving stresses, initially by providing a fully confidential opportunity to get them off our chest. Our natural homeo-static processes of release of held traumatic imprints such as road accidents can be sensitively assisted, while our inner self-healing powers receive gentle encouragement.