In today's episode, we are delighted to welcome on Amy, worked with earlier on last year and she's come on to tell you all her story. So, welcome Amy.

Hi,

Welcome, Amy. Nice to see you again.

nice to see you too. Thanks for having me.

So I suppose I better start really, Amy, tell me a little bit about your story before you, you got in touch with us, what was happening, that sort of thing. Really

Yeah, so, well, in terms of the driving, I essentially have lived in London for quite a long time, say like, gosh, 12 years, so just haven't really needed to drive that much, and my partner does drive, and we were getting a car, and it was just like, we'd gotten to that point where I was having to think about, I gonna drive in again after passing when I was like 17, which I think happens to quite a lot of people. They like pass straight after school and then we go to uni and then we move to a city And then, yeah, just don't drive for a very long time. so, yeah, it's sort of just. It came around as something I had to do, um, even though I've been putting it off, for years, because it's just something that it's not really been that important to me. It's more been like something other people have wanted me to do. so yeah, so I was just like, I'm, if I'm going to do this properly, I'm going to have to have some kind of like kickstart, which is why I got in touch with you guys, because I just. or like, I can't do this on my own. And I just needed like a little bit of support. so yeah, to get me back on the road.

brilliant. And we, and we'd done some training, didn't we? We We had a, like a, a get it done in a day, training day.

Yeah.

did you find that?

Yeah, no, it was great. I, um, I think beforehand I was really, really nervous about it actually. Cause I think personally, when I've got to do something. That I'm sort of like a bit nervous about if it's like half an hour, an hour, like a presentation or something, you know, you get it over with and you could be like, it's only an hour, but it was a full day. So even that was like, quite daunting. Um, especially obviously never like really meeting in person and. But obviously we had our like chat beforehand and that just like sort of really helped because we met and then obviously we met on the day um so yeah it didn't feel like awkward and yeah the day actually went really quickly if I remember rightly and we just drove around my local town for about five hours or so didn't we. Um, so yeah, no, it was brilliant, um, and it really helped because I'm still driving today. And yeah, so it did definitely do the job.

So how much had you been driving before? How long since you'd driven? No,

COVID, I went and did some traditional refresher driving lessons. I did like four or five, but I just didn't get on with it because it just, if maybe it was the person who I was with, but was very much trying to teach me how to drive again, rather than giving me confidence in what I already knew. So it didn't really work out. So I stopped that and I was just driving our, so we had quite an old car then. and then we got into a minor accident and the car got written off. So we didn't have a car for a few years, which is why I stopped. And then, like I said, we decided to invest in a like a proper nice car automatic, which is also key. Cause I learned in a manual and I think automatic is so much easier. And I think that's definitely helped with some of my sort of issues.

And when you think back, can you remember what your worries were about driving? Because you mentioned that it wasn't really about the driving skills. You didn't really need to learn how to drive. It was more about your confidence. So can you remember What were your worries? What were your concerns about driving before, before you found us?

Yeah, I think it was partly. Remembering how to drive in terms of like, like things like going on certain lanes and roundabouts, like all that I would remember. But for me, it was more like trusting myself, to remember how I, you know, how to drive. so there is aspects of the actual driving, that I wanted to improve on. But yeah, it was more just like, Even not knowing, not feeling comfortable in the car. Yeah, and just not trusting myself or other people on the road. And then the other thing was like the nerves before getting into the car. That was like something I wanted to try and tackle as well. So yeah, I think they were the main things really. And like just going, playing out scenarios in my head that I thought would happen before getting in the car, um, that never happened. And then actually things do happen and you handle them anyway. So. Yeah, it wasn't like specific things. It was more like an overarching fear. And yeah, I just, I don't really love being in the car as a passenger either. So it's all like interconnected. and so, yeah, I was just like, no, I need to do something about this and just sort of like rip the plaster off.

Thank you for listening. Find out about the different ways that you can work with us on our website, www.confidentdrivers.co.uk, and begin to transform the way you feel about driving.