5 Ways to Stop Panic Attacks While Driving

Conquering a panic attack is tough to begin with, but dealing with one while driving seems impossible. Any clever techniques one might have found in ordinary circumstances, such as doing "the plank," tossing ice cubes down one's pants, standing on one's head, and indulging in distractions like knitting and piano-playing, simply don't work while moving at 60 mph on the highway. 

As my faithful readers know, I've struggled with panic attacks for years, and the very worst of them have happened on the highway. Until recently, even the thought of driving on the highway could send me into a nervous agitation for days in advance. 

But today—suddenly, weirdly—I'm not scared. Does that mean I'm cured? Not likely, but I'm onto something. Here are my five pieces of advice for those whose panic seems to strike behind the wheel of a fast-moving vehicle.

1. Don't ask for help, ever. For a long time I would allow others to chauffeur me around, remarking that "I just didn't like to drive" and "it's easier to carpool." I let my husband drive whenever we went on a trip, which suited him just fine. When I simply had to drive, I'd beg a friend to ride shotgun to talk me through it. All this avoidance solidified a message in my mind: "You are weak. You can't drive." Every time you ask for help, that message gets stronger. Instead, try this mantra: "I don't need any stinking help, because I am a leader among men, defender of the weak. I AM the help, damn it. So gimme the keys and stay out of my way."

2. Find the worst stretch of highway you can, and drive it. Do it now, and stop hesitating. It is this very stretch of highway that keeps you in thrall to your fears. Head into NYC or Austin, TX, at rush hour, and then go back to the same stretch when cars are streaming through it at a rapid clip. Take it slow and then take it fast. Drive until it becomes boring. Drive it again. Nothing else will ever seem as bad, and your fear of future drives will start to collapse. 

3. If an attack comes on, welcome it. The worst thing you can do is to be afraid when a panic attack strikes. Your fear will spawn further fears and fears of those fears until your fear is a layered as a teetering, malevolent sandwich. Understand that you are controlling the panic, not something else. Yours is the hand that turns the screw. So crank it up! Try to bring on the panic as fast and fierce as you possibly can. Pretend you are an actor in a play experiencing a panic attack. You want to win an Oscar for this performance. Really chew the scenery! Start screaming and cursing if you must, and use words like "doo doo" and "poo poo." Your kids will forgive you and will be amused. By riding into the eye of the panic attack and whooping as you beat your steed, you are owning it.

4. Stop taking bears on as passengers. I'm just saying, it's a stupid idea to ride around with assholes or bears. They will make you nervous and will probably gnaw on your arms while you drive. Your own personal "bear" might be that asinine baggage you're dragging around—you know, that mantra of yours that goes: "I am a weakling and a fool, and will always be such. I deserve to be eaten by a large animal." Ditch that, sister. Toss that bear out at the next rest stop.

5. If all else fails, stop the car and do jumping jacks. Pull over to a safe spot at the side of the road and do jumping jacks until the attack passes. You will look like an outright fool and will probably begin laughing at yourself, at which point you can get back in your car and drive. If you don't like jumping jacks, try the Charleston, the Macarena, or the horsie dance from Gangnam Style. I can almost guarantee that a panic attack will wither in the face of your extreme public shame at dancing to "hey, sexy lady"on the side of the road. N.B. Your kids may not forgive you if you need to use this technique. 

What about you? Do you have any tips for managing panic attacks while behind the wheel or elsewhere?

People pay good money for my anxiety symptoms

Lots of people would pay 50 dollars to have just a shred of the adrenalin that regularly courses through my bloodstream, rendering me dizzy, breathless, and fraught with the sensation that the world is a weird dream and I am seeing it all as if through a dirty shard of winter ice plucked from my driveway.

Why do I have such sensations? Well, because I am quite possibly an idiot. It may also be because I have a vivid imagination, which, if not occupied 24/7 with challenging and diversionary tactics, starts to eat itself. I try to think that nervous exhaustion will make me a better writer, and possibly give me colorful dreams in which bunnies give me candy. Unfortunately, it usually tends to limit my behavior, and it had started to limit it to such a degree that I suddenly found driving on the highway terribly frightening. The speed! The trucks! Without warning, my vision would get starry, my heart would race, and my hands would slip on the wheel.

The first time this happened, on the way to birthday party, I asked my seven-year-old to talk me in. "Talk me home, baby!" I shouted. "Talk about poop or farts if you wish, but keep talking, for God's sake! Mommy doesn't feel so good."

"Poop! Poop! In my soup!" he replied, helpfully.

Why am I so fearful? Is it because of the large tiger that I transport around? Maybe I should return the basket of spitting adders that usually ride in the passenger seat. They have become ornery, after all.

I decided I needed to arrest this nonsense in its tracks, so I recently signed up for an online course called The Linden Method. It cost 87 dollars. Yes, I am paying a lot of money I don't have, just to eliminate the unsettling sensations that others pay for when they eagerly decide to bungee jump, leap out of planes, see a horror movie, or ride a rollercoaster. (I hate rollercoasters. Horrible things.) Couldn't I bottle the stuff?

I like The Linden Method, so far.  I'll report more on it in future entries. Today, I decided I would try one of his tactics, called "diversion," during my MRI at White Plains Hospital. I had the MRI due to a strange little lump below my shoulderblade, which is most likely nothing whatsoever but needed to be "checked out."

The MRI is like being stuck in a tube while someone tries to create alternative music with a lawn mower nearby. The noise was tremendous and pounding: "Boom-boom-boom-boom! Mee-me-me-me-me! Wangh-wangh-wangh-wangh!" It goes on for numerous three-minute sessions and then you hear the tiny voice of the technician in your ear, under the giant headphones. "Everything OK?"

"Uh huh."

"Okay, three more minutes."

Then they take you out and stick a needle in your arm that injects something into your bloodstream and repeat the whole process again. And you can't move during the whole thing, not a bit! They told me that men don't do very well with the experience. Men cry and beat on the insides of the tube and are pulled out soaked in sweat.

"I can handle this," I said stoutly.

When they put me in I decided I needed a diversion. I recited the multiplication table in my head.
"4 x 4 is 16! 4 x 5 is 20! 4 x 6 is 24!" I got a little stuck late in the nines, and by the time I figured it out I realized I wasn't scared at all. I had forgotten to be scared. I was worried about the nines! I got so bored with the dumb multiplication table that I almost fell asleep. It was warm in that tube. No one was bothering me. My cell phone wouldn't ring here. I did get a little worried that the magnetic business involved would pull the fillings out of my teeth, but that was a passing agitation.

Of course, driving home I got a little nervous again, so when I started feeling jittery behind the wheel I impetuously tossed a cup of ice water all over myself. I had bought it at the hospital when they told me I needed to hydrate after the MRI. Linden had suggested that applying a cold cloth to one's neck was helpful, so I thought: "Why not take this theory to the next level?"

The ice cubes slipped down inside my shirt and fell all over my lap; some fell on the floor and crunched under the clutch. My shirt was soaked, but not from sweaty terrors. I felt like a dope but I didn't care. I glanced over to the car stopped next to me at the red light. Due to the tinted windows, I couldn't tell if the driver was looking at me with a puzzled expression. When the light changed I fired that little Jetta out of the gate.

"So long, suckas!" I said.

Yes, there ARE poets in New Rochelle! And they are reckless drivers!

As if delivered from the gods, TWO of my questions (#1 and #14) from yesterday's post have already been answered. All it took was five bucks to get to the root of this one, folks.

First of all, although I usually tromp the hellish wind tunnel past the Trump Plaza to and from the New Rochelle train station, I just couldn't do it tonight. For about the second time since I've lived here, I decided to take a cab home.

As those of you who do this regularly already know, the cab drivers here are willing to pack in a couple of extra passengers and deliver them one by one to their homes, school-bus style, charging each what a ride straight to his or her home would have cost.

I jumped into the front seat of a cab already occupied by two passengers in the back. The driver roared off while I fumbled for the seat belt, which was stuck fast.

"Aw, don't worry about that," he said. "I got insurance!" He immediately pulled right into the path of a car, which honked and swerved out of the way. Insurance? I continued to "worry" with unusual fervor about the seat belt until it was secure.

Meanwhile, we were driving over half of New Ro to deliver the first passenger. As he whipped around on her street, he suddenly announced that the gas tank was on "red line empty." It began beeping ominously.

"I can make it!" he shrieked. "Let's keep going!"

"If you run outta gas," said the woman from the back. "I will be I-rate!"

"Me too!" I chirped. We were steadily getting farther away from my home and walking was now an impossible prospect.

He dithered about it for a while, driving erratically about the city, while the indicator beeped.

"Get gas NOW!" said the other passenger.

"Aw, maybe I stop and get some gas. You ladies like that Hillary Clinton?"

"I prefer Barack Obama," I said, and the other passenger agreed.

"But she is a woman. You're not sticking with your kind?" he said, aghast that we would so betray our gender. "She's got all that experience in the White House!"

"Grrr," I said. Other Passenger and I both explained our reasons for supporting Obama. Cab driver still clearly regarded us as traitors to femalekind. Meanwhile, he pulled wildly into the "Jesus King of Kings" gas station on North Avenue. This station is all about delivering Jesus with your fossil fuels, and is covered with bumper stickers that shout "Repent America!" But the best thing about it is that right across the street we have the MACKADOCIOUS Hair Salon. You have not lived until you get your bangs trimmed at a place called MACKADOCIOUS.

We waited while the driver filled the tank. Then he roared off in his wild way, yammering about Hillary's qualifications the whole time. "She's a woman! She's powerful! She's got the stuff! etc. etc." We were unmoved.

After he dropped off the other passenger, made two illegal turns, and shot the wrong way up a one-way street on the way to my house, my cab driver then informed me that he is a published poet!

I think that he has been inspired by our fair city, eh? Sky scrappers, indeed!