Now What?

Over the last two years, I've been working on overcoming severe anxiety around driving and cars in general. I recently hit a huge milestone with it, and my therapist asked me a question after I told her about it: What do you want to focus on next?

I was honest with her. I have no idea.

When you've been so zoomed in on one aspect of your mental health, it's hard to step back and realize the progress you've made. Maybe you feel like you haven't made any progress, but I disagree. I don't know what you're going through or working on right now, but I know that you're still doing it. You're still waking up every day and living. That's not nothing, folks. That's huge.

When I hit this milestone in my treatment, I cried. I couldn't believe I had overcome something that even six months ago felt so far away. I kept saying I did it, because there was a very real part of me that didn't believe it would ever happen. It made me feel so proud of myself, which is something that, in the past, specifically regarding my mental health, I've never really allowed myself to feel. I was convinced there was always more I could do. Maybe that's still true, but right now I deserve to celebrate.

But once the celebration is over, then what? I did the thing once, can I do it again? Do I even want to? Should I be looking for another goal?

My therapist suggested I start looking deeper to find the trigger of my driving anxiety. We've been struggling to find that since I starting talking to her back in the summer of 2020. I've written a lot about my anxiety on here, but I'll give you my theory about what triggered it: Basically everything that happened in 2020. Losing my grandma, COVID, stress and more stress. All of that built up anxiety had to come out somewhere, right? This seems to be the most likely explanation to me, mostly because I never really had such a strong reaction to driving before that.

I'm the kind of person who wants a clear answer to everything. I spent years trying to find a label for what I was feeling growing up, long before my diagnosis. It's frustrating not to have a clear cut answer to what the trigger of all this was, believe me.

Even when we hit milestones like this, the work is not over. We have to keep working on learning what we need and trying to do things even when it's hard. We can do it, y'all. I believe in us.

Good luck with whatever you're next milestone is!

–Abbie