You are listening to the Driving Confidence Podcast for drivers who want to be calm and confident on the road. We will be sharing tips, stories, and advice to beat driving nerves and anxiety and build your driving confidence. Whether you are just starting out as a learner or have had your driving license for years, if you want to transform how you feel about driving this podcast is for you. In today's episode, we are delighted to have on award-winning author and social science researcher Carla McLaren. And Carla is an expert in emotions and emotional language. So Carla, thanks so much for coming on today. Thank you so much, Kevin. Tracy. It's so good to be here and to talk about this really, these really important emotions. Anxiety, panic, fear, nervousness. Yeah, because they have a lot to tell us, but sometimes it feels like they're annoying. I. Yeah, definitely. And for our listeners, the reason we got in touch with you is the majority of our listeners are nervous or anxious drivers. Mm-hmm. And we hear the same emotion words used all the time, which heart nerves, anxiety and stress. Yeah. And we are beginning to try and encourage people to expand their vocabulary and to use different emotion words, but. We just couldn't explain in a really articulate way why that would benefit them, and that's why we were looking for an expert and we found you and there is so much information on your website. And so as soon as we saw it, we were like, yes, we need Carla to come and talk about it. So here you are. Thank you so much. And you know, you were saying there's been a lot of research done in the last 10 or 15 years that shows that having a larger emotional vocabulary all by itself can help people regulate their emotions. That is pretty simple. Right. Just instead of saying, I feel stressed, you can say, I'm feeling a little bit of anxiety and perhaps some fear, and Okay, I'm feeling panic. I'm also feeling angry. Do you know what I mean? So instead of using sort of a word that weasels, its way around what you're feeling, become very, very specific and just saying those words. It's very strange, but just saying those words to yourself and articulating to yourself what you're feeling helps your whole organism sort of go, oh, it's an emotion. I'm not having a heart attack right now. It's an emotion. So you can, you know, and then as you start to understand the emotions more, you can say, oh, so fear means. My intuition and, instincts are heightened and anger means I need to set a boundaries somehow, and panic means I may be in danger. Right. I sort of see it as if you've ever gone into the cockpit of a plane or a jet, and you see all these buttons and you think, no one could ever learn this. It's impossible. We're. You know, if you've learned to fly, you know that eventually you know what everything means and then you can fly the plane. But when you first look at it, it's completely overwhelming. So that can be how emotions feel to people. Nope. There's too many of them. Many of them are dangerous. I don't want to touch that button. I'm quite like that image. But yeah, that image that everybody has of that. Jet plane or that jumbo jet with how many buttons or dials there is. It's very similar to someone starting to drive there. Feels so much to do, doesn't it? Yes, I, I remember I was thinking about when I learned to drive and the big thing was getting on the freeway. Are they called freeways there? It's the fast one. It's the motorways. The motorways, yes. So you're just fine on the streets and then you have to get on the motorway. And I remember screaming, I remember just like putting on my turn signal and screaming as I got on, hoping that everybody would know that I was coming. And now sort of, I can just get. On the freeway, you know, just get on and, uh, if people are in my way, I'm like, come on pal. I'm actually able to be angry instead of just squealing. Now I. You called the word stress, you described as a weasel word. Tell me about that. I love that it's a way to sort of not say I'm feeling emotions. So, there's a lot of ways where people try to get, sort of, get away from their emotional vocabulary, and you say, well, how are you feeling Bad? Like, whoa. That could be anything. Um, stressed. That could be anything. And so, you know, becoming more articulate about What do you mean bad? What bad? How Well, I think I'm feeling depressed. Okay. So depression does this, so what do you wanna do about it? Instead of just bad? If you're, vocabulary is full of inarticulate. Weasel words, then your emotional awareness is gonna be inarticulate as well. And for instance, when you're driving and you just need to scream to get on the motorway, you just need to scream. You may experience those emotions if you don't know what they are, and I didn't when I was younger. You may experience them as that they're feeling abusive towards you. Right? Yes. Why? Why would that help me drive to feel so many emotions that I need to scream? And it turns out because my body was telling me this is dangerous, this, it's not the place where people are getting onto the motorway. That's where a lot of accidents happen. Especially if someone like me doesn't know you're supposed to get up to the speed of a motorway. We have a thing here, there, there are lights that stop you before you get on the motorway when there's traffic. So you have to go from zero. To 60 miles an hour. I dunno what that is in kilometers. But I've got an old car. My car is from 2006. It doesn't do that. Yeah. So I don't scream at this point. I'm like, you guys, I, this is an older car. Okay, you're just gonna have to make room for me. But still, yeah. I need some grace. Yeah. Yeah. How, how would that be? But it's difficult, right? It's not safe to be, in a car that cannot make it onto the motorway appropriately. So those emotions are necessary. They're telling me the truth. They're not lying. I describe those words so you, the word you used, weasel word. And I love that. I'm gonna start using that. I think I've always called them like umbrella terms, those sorts of coverall type words. Yeah. Like say they mean nothing and everybody agrees and sort of says, oh yes, I'm feeling stressed as well. So it's almost like a, a sort of lazy shorthand that doesn't really. Get to the bottom of what somebody's feeling or what they're experiencing. So yeah, weasel words, I'm, I'm gonna use that. You're gonna hear that in future podcast episodes. Weasel words. Now I called them weasel words because it's just funny, it makes me laugh. But what I realized is people may not have the vocabulary that they need, so they're not weaseling out of something that they know. They literally don't have the words. So, What I'm calling them now and it's much more boring is, alternative emotional vocabulary. Weasel words is funnier. Weasel words makes me laugh, but weaseling here, at least in the United States, if you weasel out of something, you're kind of cheating. Right. You're cheating. So, we can talk about him as weasel words, but yeah, I like umbrella. I like umbrella. Yeah. Yeah. There we go. Word swapping. Word swapping. Those are sort of emotional umbrella words. Could be anything. So let's talk about some of those alternatives then. So if somebody is, I mean, nervous nerves and nervous. Anxious. Anxious, the, the three main ones, aren't they? Yeah. You know the, the, I'm feeling nervous. I'm feeling anxious. I'm feeling stressed. You have a wonderful vocabulary list on your website, which is free for anybody to find. So I highly recommend the listeners the links for that will be in the show notes to go and find this vocabulary list. But Carla, can you give some examples cuz you break them down into different levels, don't you? So mm-hmm. How intense. an emotion might be and some alternative worse for anxiety or nerves. Yeah, and I would say nervous is one of the words that we would use. I mean, it is a valuable vocabulary word and anxious as well. When people are feeling nervous and anxious, generally there are two or three emotions present. They are fear, which is your awareness of the present moment. Anxiety, which is your awareness of the future and anything you have to do to prepare for the future. Anxiety tends to be a, a forward-leaning emotion with a lot of energy in it because there's a lot to do to get ready. Your anxiety will generally move in response to. What needs to be done. So if you've got a ton of tasks that are not finished, you can expect to have more anxiety, you know? And if you've got a deadline that's coming right up to you, expect to have more anxiety, right? So anxiety is a very kind of forward-leaning, energetic emotion, which can destabilize you if you don't realize, right? That much energy and that much forward leaning it, right, it topples you. It can topple you. The third emotion that's there is panic. And panic is a marvelous life-saving emotion that is necessary, especially in a situation such as driving where literally you are in danger, right? We can do whatever we can to make ourselves safer drivers, but we can't control everything, and so, If you don't know that your anxiety is trying to look out, however many meters ahead of you. And when you get to the place, and this is gonna be a difficult interchange, and oops, my tires may not be appropriately inflated. Uh, do I have enough petrol? Do you know, you wanna know all that before you go? Panic is also there because there is a danger to your life when you're driving. It's real. Right. And so panic has the fight, flee, freeze, or flock to safety behaviors in it. So when you're driving, you can expect fear, which is the present moment, anxiety, which is out in the future, and panic to be there. Right. So being a nervous or anxious driver is a little bit more honest than most people who say, oh, driving's nothing. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Driving's nothing. Or people, I don't know if you've seen this, where you are, but I see people in cars, reading a book. I'm like, okay, okay. I'm getting away from you. I'm like, all right, I'm driving around you and go. I've seen people, I've seen women putting on mascara. Yeah, that does happen here sometimes as well. I think that's hard to do when you're not moving. That's absurd. That's absurd. My struggle, I must admit, I definitely struggle. I definitely struggle with husband. You can poke your eye out. Okay. So that's a person who's not listening to fear, anxiety, or panic. We don't wanna be anywhere near that person, right? We want to, I'll slow down. I'm like, you go, you go be yourself. I don't want you anywhere near my car. So yeah, there's so many different levels of awareness of the danger of driving. Right, and these three emotions are crucial for you to be a good driver. And the reason it's important to start kind of articulating between is this about the present moment, that's fear. Is this about my preparation for what's coming? That's anxiety. Is it about saving my life? That's panic. Then I become more able to understand the differences between them instead of having all three of unarticulated filling. My entire organism. Right? And so if I have a lot of anxiety before a drive, then I'm gonna check my tires. I'm gonna do what anxiety asked me to do, which is to prepare. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna check my tires and my windscreen and this and that. And if I feel my panic come up while I'm driving, I can ask, am I in danger right now? And then, No, no. I said, well, thank you. Panic instead of shut up. Panic. You're a liar. I would say thank you. Panic. Thank you. Panic. Now, um, you can step back and then let's continue driving. But for a lot of people, these three emotions feel like abuse, right? Yeah. They feel like I'm being overwhelmed, I'm being abused by my own emotions, and they're just trying to help. But sometimes if we're not aware of what's going on, it can feel like they're ganging up on us. And that they don't mean us well, if that makes sense. But they really do. So listening to it, I was Dr. I was driving down, we have a lot of uh, two-lane country roads near where I live, and there's no barrier in between them. There's just a little lines on the road and I was driving and thinking. How amazing it is that more people don't crash into each other, right? How amazing is it? What are we, maybe a meter apart on these roads going fast? We're going very, very fast and we're somehow missing each other. So there's this sort of community agreement with drivers that we are. Going to behave, we're gonna stay on our side of the road unless someone's reading or applying difficult makeup or under the influence, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I mean, it's pretty much a miracle that we all get to where we're going. It's amazing. It's so much relies on the agreements between all the drivers to behave. It's the way we act, isn't it? And I love the way you, you was thanking the panic. Yeah. And I mean, we've done this lots of, when I'm, when I'm training people to drive, thank you for not hitting that speed bump. That's what the car would tell you. It's like, thank you. Yeah. And it's like I've never been thanked before like that. And again, people are looking at me as if I'm. What's happening, but then they start picking up on that and they start thanking themselves for, you know, a smooth gear change or whatever it may be. And it's like, yeah. I dunno whether or not you are quietening down that panic, that fear, when you say that, would you say that, is that what you're doing, you're trying to quieten it down, or is it just being aware that it's there and at this moment I'm okay. Yeah. And I think get into a relationship with it. Yeah. Because if something's coming at you at high speed, you need your panic. Right? I immediately available. Right. Come out panic. Let's play because now you do your thing. Because I don't know what I'm doing and I, we've all had this situations where something really dangerous was going to happen and somehow we got away. Right. Somehow we got, we returned. We did something that you couldn't possibly think of. You couldn't think, I am going to turn the wheel at this velocity and I am going to do this. You just do it. And that's panic. You say, woo, thank you. Panic nicely done. But a lot of people don't even know that it is panic that that's its job. So yeah, to say thank you panic. I don't think this is that kind of an evening. Right? So just chill a little bit. You know, I'm always, I'm always available to have you come out when it's time, but I don't know if this is time. Right. So sort of getting that kind of friendly, friendly communication with your emotions, that becomes useful, doesn't it? Yeah. That's what it's, that's the bit that I've just is picked up and then it becomes a useful emotion. Yeah. Many people are trying to. What they're trying to do, and the reason they, they come for help is because they want to get rid of these emotions. They want to be able to drive mm-hmm. Without them. Yeah. and actually they're not really scared of driving. What they're scared of is experiencing the fear, the panic, the anxiety, so they become scared of. Having the emotion. Yeah. It's not really the driving that they're scared of. It's the emotion that they're scared of. So that trying to switch that round and saying actually, These emotions have a job and they're telling me something and they can help me. And the way you described that about having the panic and anxiety about all the things you've got to do going forward with driving and a little bit of fear in there as well and breaking it down and understanding it feels much more manageable. Yeah. And it's, you're never going to get away from emotions. And I could say that that person who's reading in his car and the person who's putting on difficult makeup, they are not listening to their emotions. Right? They are not safe drivers. They're going to endanger themselves and me, and I am. Not supportive of that. Right. That makes me angry. I'm gonna set a boundary around that. Yeah. I was also thinking as you were talking about thanking the car for not going over the speed bump, you know, because that's jarring. But when we get into a car, our bodies, sort of expand. Our body schema expands to the. Like we feel what's on the road as if we felt it with our bodies. And so your entire sort of organism has now got a bigger body. A bigger body with metal parts and rubber parts and plastic parts that now you have to really keep an eye out for. I don't know if you've ever been in a rental car and had the experience of not knowing what the heck's going on. Where's the mirror? Like your, your entire body scheme of falls apart. And you're pressing the button and you don't know how big the car is. Right. And I've actually scraped a car that was much, much bigger than mine. Luckily, I was scraped it on a rubber bumper. I was like, okay. So I didn't hurt it, but I didn't have any like, awareness of how big this car was. And so I wasn't safe. Right. Yeah. And so my panic and anxiety were quite up and my fear were quite up trying to help me. Now kind of remodel myself around this entirely different big body that I now had. I was just talking to someone who had a mobile home with something up on the top that was like a air conditioner, and she drove into, A car park. Oh, with absolutely no awareness of how tall she was. That's a couple of thousand dollars right there. Yeah. She wasn't a bad driver, but she had no concept of how tall her, her new body was. Right. And it took the air conditioner right off the top. Oops. I mean, it's so embarrassing. It's mortifying. But she didn't have any concept. Of the, the height of her vehicle. Yeah. Yeah. I like that idea. That's true. You do sort of become one bigger with your car and you do become bigger and you do, you do feel those little scrapes as well, don't you? even if it's on a rubber bumper, you're still sort of Oh yeah. Or if you've ever sadly drove an over a little animal who darted out in the road, you can feel it. You know, you feel it and you know, you have just as if you had stepped on the animal with your bare feet. So there's a lot going on in a car and we need these emotions to come out and help us because it is, it is an unnatural behavior to drive. Right. There's, yeah, it's unnatural. And, and you know, we get to the place, we're like, hahaha. Listen to the radio, do this, do that. I'm talking on the phone. Yeah. It's unnatural that you're doing that. Yeah, and I love the idea that people who do experience their emotions related to doing something that's a bit more unnatural. Like you say, they're the ones who have been a bit more honest about the experience of driving and potentially the people who are paying more attention and are gonna be safer on the road because of that. Okay. Yeah, no, I agree. And they'll make it safer for others. Yeah. Right. They will be, there'll be a positive effect on the road instead of just someone who's sort of cattywampus and blah, I'm gonna drive my car, whatever. I don't wanna be around those people. Yeah, yeah. I know. I think it's really interesting. It is like trying to think of, you know, you are at one with the car. Yeah. And then I suppose the, you know, you have your emotions there, but then that, does your behavior then change because of that? If you are at one with the car and you are I'm gonna say, able to manage those emotions, yeah. They're still there. You, you can't, you know, forget them. Yeah. But they're still there. But then would that behavior change on the road, would you say? I think it does because now that I know the car and uh, I've kind of uploaded it into, I know where all the bits are. Now my anxiety doesn't have to do quite so much cuz I'm not in an unfamiliar situation. I'm familiar with it. Sort of like the first time you ride a bike. You're a mess and you know, then you can ride with no hands. You know, after a while it's, it's like that you become, you feel safer because you are safer, you know more, and you have a connection with your car that, that is reliable. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, and you've ticked off the task list that was creating the anxiety, so you've, hmm. You, you've done what Anxie has asked you to do. You've done what it required. You've ticked off the list. Mm-hmm. Nice. Yeah. How about. Shame. Now. I know that sounds a bit of a strange one. And it was a, it was a bit of a surprise to me when we first started working one-to-one with nervous, anxious drivers. This word of shame came up again and again and again, and it was quite a shock for me that. So many people who have passed their driving test then go on to experience shame because they avoid driving or they don't drive, or they are dependent on other people. And then also people who have failed their driving test multiple times. Mm-hmm. Also talk a lot about. Shame. The shame of not being able to pass their test and get their driving license. Mm-hmm. So it's shame trying to tell people something. Shame is a difficult one because most of us learned about shame by being shamed. Right. That's very different than a shame that comes from you. And basically what shame does, it's a behavioral. Mm. Guideline emotion. So shame tells you how to behave. It follows your agreements for what is important to you. So if what is important to you is to be kind to people, and you're kind to people, your own shame should not come up very often because you're doing what you said you would. But if you're having a rotten day and you just snap at someone, your shame should come up and say, hold on, excuse me. What? Because that was not our agreement. Right? And you should feel. Normally ashamed and apologize and promise not to do it again and make your amends and go on without shame. I think we know there's a word, uh, shameless in English. Yeah. We know that we don't wanna be anywhere near a shameless person because they have no behavioral guidelines. They're like a pinball spinning around the world and, and they could hit you at any moment, right. The problem with shame is when the agreements that we've taken on are impossible, we cannot live up to them. So for instance, you should pass your driving test on the first go, right? Even children can do it, right, and you can tell yourself all this stuff and then you don't do it. Now you're gonna feel all this shaming message come. When it turns out you couldn't live up to that shaming message, that wasn't possible. And it's not even realistic. A lot of people do not pass their first test. Yes, those are difficult tests. Those are super, I'm gonna use a weasel word stress. Those are stress tests, right? They're just really intense and you're not only having a test, but you're having a test where your body's involved and your, and your skills are involved and someone's watching you with a, our people had clipboards. They had clipboards that is not, I don't want you as my passenger in the car. Get out, get outta my car. Right? It's so bad. And so if the rule inside is I must pass the first time. Then there's no way to rise above it. You have failed. You have failed this rule that you made for yourself, for someone gave to you. And so what we do in this work is help to find what shaming messages we've picked up and whether they're even worth having, there's a lot of shaming. There's a, there's an social media place called Instagram, and I call it Shame Graham. Insta Shame, where everything, everything is, you know, you're putting up yourself up against an impossible. So I just kind of go to Instagram every now and then. I'm on it, but I don't do anything. To shame other people. Thank you. But I just watch Wow. Look at that. Look at that. Look at all the ways that I could pick up messages that would make my life a living hell. Right. So what we do in this work is, take those messages back out and renegotiate them or get rid of them completely. Right. And it's a part of sort of self-actualization to decide what. What morals and ethics am I going to live by and have I chosen them freely or am I living by morals and ethics that were handed down to me or these, you know, absurd Instagram nonsense or, or rules about getting done the first time and not being able to say that was a difficult driving exam. If you don't have any room, To say that was difficult and I understand why I failed. If, if your shame is saying no, you should have, you won't even hear, you won't even be able to say, okay, what I need to do is work on the questions, or what I need to do is work on, do they do parallel parking in in your exams? That's a nightmare. You know they've got cars now that parallel park for you. It's so difficult to parallel park that. We've got cars that do it for you. Carla, if you have problems with parallel parking, we've got, that's one of our episodes. Listen out, I'll you in it is so hard to parallel park, right? If you get it wrong, the first bit, you're gonna like. Dang it. And then there's people coming by and they're, uh, oh. It's hard. You're like, you know what? I'm going around the block. I'm just going around the block. I'm not gonna do this right now. So, so you know the, to know what you need to work on, that would be a way that maybe the shaming message is when I fail at something, it is normal to feel upset about it, and then I'm gonna figure out how I can do it better next time. That is a shaming message that would work. But the one that is, everyone should do it the first time perfectly. That's, that's unlivable, right? Yes. And so what happens for people is they think it's the shames problem, right? Instead of this message that I picked up that my shame is now working on is a terrible, terrible message is and needs to go away. But look at all the things that my shame does that are really easy to live with. Like be a nice person or floss your teeth or sort out the recyclables, right? There's lots of messages you can get to to manage your behavior that are completely livable. Yeah. And then there are ones that come in from Instagram or parents or church or school that are just never going to work, or people driving is easy. You know? Yeah. Driving's easy. Why do you have trouble with it? Because I do pal. Yes. Because I'm a different person than you're, that's why I could so easily say parallel parking is so easy to do. Why can't you do it? Yeah. Yeah. And I would say because there's something wrong with you, and it is, those messages aren't, What you're saying is there's messages that you can choose to take on because that's my choice, that I want to be kind to people. That's a message that you set up for yourself. But these other messages are very often, like you say, they're, they're from outside. They weren't messages that you chose. They were messages that came from friends, family, school, community. Yeah. Um, culture. Yeah. Social media, like you see social media. So is which ones have you chosen yourself or which ones have been forced upon you, then making you feel this way. Yeah. I was also thinking about shame and anxiety. Anxiety is the emotion that helps you get things done right? Shame is the emotion that helps you get them done well. Right. There's, there's some kind of message about, I need to perform, I need to, that sort of thing. So when those two emotions get together and you don't realize that they have, it can be an intensely energized, forward-leaning emotion that's constantly telling you you need to do better and that can just feel terrible. So it's really important to know, okay, shame's here, and what are the messages it's trying to give me? Are they livable? Right. So that can be a lot of what's going on. I call it, um, in my book, embracing Anxiety. I call her shx anxiety. Cause it's shame Yes. And anxiety working together. And you want, when you do something, you want to do it well. Right? You want to perform well. But if you've got, you know, sort of these monstrous shaming messages and way too much anxiety, it's just gonna feel like an overwhelming situation. Yeah, and that definitely, that resonates I'm sure that will resonate with our listeners, that really I can, yeah, as soon as you said that, I'm like, yes, I can feel that. I really think that's what a lot of our listeners are feeling. That and without realizing, so the two combined shame and anxiety together. Never quite being good enough. Because a lot of people also talk about imposter experience, so that's, that's a similar sort of never quite feeling that you've achieved it even though you passed your test. We've had several people say, I thought once I passed my driving test, that would be it. I would be okay. Yeah. And then they're not, yeah. Oh, that's brilliant. So we, we combine, nervous and excited. So we talk about nerve sighted. That idea of, they're very similar feelings when you're feeling nervous and when you're feeling excited, the sort of butterflies in the tummy can feel quite similar and you can be both nervous and excited at the same time. So we do nerve sighted, so yeah, that's another one now. I like that one. Yeah, I was thinking of, um, stage fright and actors know that the cure for stage fright. You never wanna be completely calm going on stage because you'll be boring, right? You need to have that excitement, energy, and yeah, it can tip over into anxiety and panic, right? Um, but I'm thinking about how driving really is a public activity. Right. You are, to a certain extent, you are on stage driving. Mm-hmm. You are, you are being seen and you are now moving within this, you know, group of cars all making these decisions together. I was just thinking about, there was traffic studies done here in the United States that showed that cars, they move like flocks of birds. And the car, like groups of cars begin to behave like a flock of birds. And that's why it's nice to be, what I was taught in driving was you wanna be in the middle of two flocks. You don't wanna be in the flock. So they call the middle person lone wolf. Right. I don't know why all the animals got on the, on the road. I dunno what's happening. But my favorite position is lone wolf. Right? Because I have lots and lots of time around me to respond. Yeah. But people in the little flock, I. If something goes wrong, a lot of those people are gonna be involved in whatever happened, right? While I'll be back here just smoking a cigarette and reading a book. No won't. But you realize on stage, sort of when you're driving, People can see you. People have expectations of you. I don't know how many times you've been looking down and people honk behind you cuz you missed the light. They're like, thanks Daniel. Thank you. That's really interesting. Cause when, when I teach people, I teach them to drive in space and when I tell them that it's like, They look at me as if to say, what are you talking about? And I'd say, just give it a go. Just have a, have a go at driving in space and see what you notice. Yeah. And they, their feelings, they get like, it was so much easier. Yeah. You know, they, and, but they don't have that, that thought process of I'm being studied by someone else, I'm just being able to be me. Yeah. And I think that's quite interesting though, you said like on stage or when you're driving is very similar. It's a public affair. Yeah. So what do people want to be seen as, you know, when they're driving is quite interesting. Yeah. You realize, I don't know if you have this here, but there's a tradition called cruising here, especially with young men, they bring out their completely tricked out cars and their, their arms like this. They're driving like they don't care. And I'm like, if you didn't care, why did you spend 19 hours cleaning that car yesterday? Liar. But that, that's the thing, is to make this completely tricked out car and then look like you don't care. Do have the image. I have not fooled my friend. So Carla, before we start finishing up, when we first got in contact with you and said we wanted to talk about emotions around driving, was there anything that you thought, oh, I really want to talk about that. Anything that we haven't covered? I was just thinking about boundaries around your car, safety boundaries around your car. And the emotion of boundaries is anger and anger is how you set boundaries. And a lot of people have been taught to sort of hate anger because many people set boundaries with violence, right? They, they're very unkind with it, but basically, It is just boundaries. So if you're feeling angry, something has crossed a boundary. Whatever boundary you have or whatever values and how you respond to that is up to your emotional skills. So you could repress the anger and just never bring it up again, and then the person will continue to do it cuz they never heard otherwise. Right? Or you could explode at them. Right, which is what most of us have experienced. Shut up, or people honking their car, you know, their horns really loud, da okay? Um, but you can also do it in a respectful way. You can set a boundary in a respectful way, and that's what we mostly do in our cars, right? We don't drive up into somebody, especially when there's bicyclists or motorcyclists. Um, if you've ever ridden a motorcycle, and I have. Your boundaries are your skin and the tires, right? Mm-hmm. It is a very scary form of driving, and if people get too close to you, you feel very unsafe because you are right. And you'll see motorcyclists pointing at you to say, you are too close to my back tire. Right? You will see them moving around and getting away from you, but if someone. Sort of offends against us when we're driving our sense of boundaries will be what? Offended against it. Destabilized. Yeah. And so we may experience anger or sometimes here in the United States road rage, right? Yeah. Here too. Yeah. And we watch road rage. To, to have some kind of anger come up is a natural response to having your boundaries stepped across. But because there's that danger in driving, it's, it's real. Panic is also there. Anger does not have a fight mechanism in it. Panic does. So when people attack. They're in what we call anger, spanning plus anger. No, but so feeling angry when you're driving, when someone does something offensive, when they all of a sudden open a door and you have to go around them, you know, when they're parked and they open a door like, thanks, Dude, and you know, and then you have to go around them. It's normal to feel angry for a while, but to be able to know what anger is, will help not go up into road rage or fury or try not, I'm gonna go around the corner and I'm gonna hit their door this time. No, don't do that. That's not, that's not good. That's not a good idea. You can feel that way. But I look at, you know, when people are feeling rage when they're driving. Is that they feel they're afraid, right? Mostly they're afraid and it looks like they're tough and angry. I mean, here in the United States, people actually have guns in their cars. Yeah. Welcome. Welcome to the dream of our country right now. Okay. But I tend to speed because I love to and I got caught twice and. If you get caught twice, they raise your, insurance rates. So I had to take a course, so I did, and it was a really good course because it taught me a lot of things that I didn't know. I hadn't had a driver's course since I was younger. Um, and one of them is, I don't even think I ever learned this. You wanna drive in such a way that no one has to slow up or speed down or avoid you because you've done something. Right. So as I'm getting on the freeway and I cannot make it to 60, I have to do a lot to figure out how I'm gonna make it so the people there don't have to slow down. And sometimes I'm just like, I'm sorry. Uh, this is all I can do. Right? But that's been such a, an important thing for me since then is to just make sure nothing I do just accommodates another driver. And that's boundaries. It's also a really good shame message that I can live up to hopefully, when I don't have to try to go 60 right away. But, that my job is to be a peaceful influence in the drivers around me, right? Is to not make them have to swerve or. Speed up or do anything because of my presence. And that really helped me kind of more key in to the social nature of driving. See, I, I love this cause I'm probably a little bit different to most driver trainers, instructors. Yeah. I play a lot of games. And, and there's always a reason behind it, but one of the games I play is to see how many thank yous we can get while we drive. Exactly. Me. Again, you talk about the social element with drive-in. That is exactly that. If your, is your, your goal, your outcome you want from this drive is for people to say thank you to you. How do you drive in such a way that that happens? Yeah. And I just think it's a, again, it's a different way of looking at driving that we don't tend to do, and I think with, with the emotions there of the road rage. Yeah. If people are gonna say thank you to you, does that actually mean that you're gonna have road rage? Probably not. You, you've decreased that risk, haven't you? Yeah. Yeah. You haven't frightened other drivers into sort of going over their capacity to manage their emotions. Right. My husband, he's a lovely man. He's lovely. You would have him over to t, but when he gets in the car, he's like, do you know like dogs who get in a car and all of a sudden they bark at you like they're normal dogs, but they get in a car. He's like that. And if he's driving in the fast lane, there's a rule here in the United States. States is if someone comes up on you, you must move over, even if they're going over the speed limit. Now he does not believe in that, so he actually has like a fight with the person. But I like Tino, get over, get over Tino. But he's actually picking a fight with people on the road. I'm like, I'm not driving with you anymore. You are outta control Frank. So people don't get thank yous. You know, he doesn't get thank yous for how he drives he to screw you. And he thinks I'm teaching these other drivers how to drive. I'm like, you're not teaching them anything my friend. I hope you get tickets and you have to take that course that I took because, cause you're not behaving well. But it's more, I'm, I'm gonna be very sexist right now. It's more of a masculine thing that I see. Here in the United States is, is there's a competition in driving, but who can drive faster? Who can do this better? I'm like, you're not happy right now. This is not making you happy. You're miserable. Look at me. Your face is miserable. Love it. It's, it's interesting, we get people to talk about their driving experiences and it's, I just love this. If I'm ever in California, I'll know where I'm driving. It's like, you drive near me, you'll be fine. Oh. Thank you so much for giving up your time this evening for us, this morning for you. We are really grateful and I, I really do think that. Is gonna be really helpful for people to listen in and just think about identifying their emotions. What are their emotions trying to tell them? And that I, that idea that emotions come together. They don't always, they're not always just one individual emotion. Often they, they come in pairs or threes or a gang even. So I'm just trying to work out what it is that they're trying to tell you instead of trying to stop them. They can be helpful. They can be helpful. Yeah. And obviously we, in the show notes, we will have links to your website. So there's that fantastic, vocabulary list on there. And your blogs are incredibly helpful as well. There's information about each of the emotions on your website for people to have a look at. And then of course, your books as well. So embracing anxiety, and then I'm holding on for the new revised edition of, the Language of Emotions, cuz that's been revised and coming out in June, I believe, isn't it? Yes. And it's on Amazon uk, uh, to pre-order. Woo. That's great. Yeah, so we'll, we'll have links to that. So this episode will be going out in June, so that will link in really nicely and people won't have very long to wait until that revised edition comes out. So anybody who wants to learn more about emotions, can take a look at your books. Thank you. It's been amazing. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you.