Well, we were on a season break. We sharing with you some bonus shores from an old episode. Normally we create one short for each episode. For this break, we focus in on one episode in particular, which is episode 72. Rewiring the brain understanding and overcoming driving anxiety with Joshua Fletcher. And we've clipped this into several small shorts, all around five minutes each. This episode is probably the episode that we share the most with those of you who gets in touch and are asking for help. So, if you have driving anxiety, there's probably something for you in one of these shores.

coming back to that mystery anxiety. We only touched on that very briefly, didn't we? The fact that this can be. Other things, and you mentioned it that it could be something that happens while you're driving, but it could also be a thought about work or something seemingly random. So I think that's important. Just to go back to a little bit for those listeners who feel that they, nothing happened while they were driving, so there's somebody in particular that I'm thinking of who is very well known, who has said that they were driving, they've always been happy driving. Nothing happened while they were driving. There was no driving incident, but suddenly got whammied out of nowhere. The stress doesn't have to come from the driving itself, does it?

No, I'd actually argue that most driving anxiety starts nothing to do with the car. Um, I often use an analogy, um, which is not mine. It's not necessarily original, but I. Honestly believe that to be the cause of most, most disordered anxiety, nevermind driving anxiety, is that we have the stress bucket, the stress jug. I call it stress jug. You know, if you go on Instagram or TikTok with someone, obviously using it and using the same analogy, but I, I do like this analogy because it's, it describes almost the beginning of every person's. Disordered anxiety, phobia, phobia, A misfiring threat response thing we're gonna talk about. So if you're driving along, suddenly you feel anxious for little to no reason or an over, uh, what feels like an overreaction to a thought. This is because our stress jug has filled up. The proverbial straw broke the camel's back. The stress has been building for ages. The size of that stress drug is dependent on genetics. So if your mom and dad are anxious, then sorry, you probably got a very small stress ju. Mine's very small. Gotta be mindful of what's in it. And yeah, often when we're driving, we've got time to ourselves, thoughts. We can reflect, we can ruminate. Maybe we're a parent, maybe something's going on. Maybe we've got relationship issues. Maybe we've got financial issues. Maybe we've got trauma from the past that we've not spoke about. Maybe we're going through grief. Maybe we've gone had unprocessed abuse. Maybe we're in a work system where we're being treated unfairly. Maybe my child, eldest child's poorly, maybe my neighbor's keeping me up at night, maybe. Whatever. This keeps building up and up and up. A mixture of worry and stress, worry and stress, and it's fine. We're built to tolerate stress. However, when I was talking about the amygdala again, which I always bang on about when stress gets so much, the amygdala misinterprets that amount of stress as potential threat. So don't be surprised if suddenly you hear a loud noise on the radio or you just have a thought when you're behind the wheel. That was an extra drop, the final drop that made the jog overflow, the amygdala then steps in. You are not in control of the amygdala. You know you're not in control of the amygdala. Cause it's that thing that wakes you up when you have one of those falling dreams. Or if you have watch a scary movie, ah, you didn't do that. You know, uh, or if you step out into the road accidentally don't look and you almost hit, so you step back. That's the amygdala. It's not you. Um, and it's also doing that here. But when you're behind the wheel, mystery anxiety is usually when the stress jug is filled up, it overflows. And even the smallest thing my. Nervous breakdown. When I developed panic disorder and agoraphobia, I dropped a spoon at work and that was it. I suddenly hit by this derealization sense of doom dreads, something awful is gonna happen. My hands looked like clay racing thoughts, horrendous exec, substantial thoughts. I thought I was going crazy. I was having a panic attack on adrenaline rush. Didn't even know it was my first ever one, and actually at the time, my stress juggle was so full. Some people then go down the, the route of, well, I've emptied my stress drug, I do this, I eat healthy. My gut biome is plus 5,000. I'm, I've cut out gluten, I don't drink, I do this and blah, blah, blah. I gone to therapy. I, I'm of the oak of just do what non-anxious you would do. But the main thing for people with disordered anxiety and driving anxiety and panic disorder that keeps refilling the jug. Is the fear of anxiety itself. So you can do all those things and you know, I did all these things, I'm still anxious. Well, you're doing it because you're not addressing your phobia. You're doing it with the magical wish that it will get rid of the phobia. You know, if I eat celery for breakfast to be sad all day because I've eaten celery for breakfast. The antioxidants will make me less anxious. Well then actually that's nothing to do with the amygdala, rewiring, adrenaline, uh, releasing adrenaline and cortisol into bloodstream. You're not addressing the foia. It's like, I'm going to do Tai Chi for an hour and hope that I have no longer have a foa of spiders. Doesn't make sense, you know? Um, and so what I say to people is that particularly if I'm working with people, is like, let's address the fear of fear first. And then we can go prodding around in your childhood or whatever and talk about your personal life, and then you can leave overcoming a fear and a phobia and also less weight on your shoulders. And then so you're less prone to having those spontaneous bouts of mystery anxiety because your stress drug is overflowing.

Yeah. That makes so much sense, doesn't it? Yeah, definitely.