{"id":33092,"date":"2016-10-21T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2016-10-21T15:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=33092"},"modified":"2016-10-11T19:46:54","modified_gmt":"2016-10-12T02:46:54","slug":"what-can-i-do-about-my-terrible-road-rage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/dear-gt\/what-can-i-do-about-my-terrible-road-rage","title":{"rendered":"What Can I Do About My Terrible Road Rage?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear GoodTherapy.org,<\/span><\/p>\n

I figured it was time to write in with this question since I just got out of my car shaking with anger<\/a> for the third time this week. I’m not sure whether my luck is worse than most when it comes to near-accidents and inconsiderate drivers on the road, whether I deal with these instances worse than most, or what.<\/p>\n

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Obviously, I think I’m a great driver. But everyone thinks that. To me, it feels like I get cut off in traffic all the time, people honk at me when I’m doing perfectly reasonable things and obeying the law, and I’m usually very considerate when it comes to people merging, etc. But I find myself yelling at other cars and drivers multiple times a day, flipping people off, and having strong emotional reactions<\/a> to other people’s behaviors on the road. I can’t arrive anywhere without feeling anxious<\/a> and very angry. I’m willing to admit I dish it out, to some extent, but it still feels like the bulk of the injustice is done to me.<\/p>\n

I know you can’t help other people (or me) become better at driving, but can you help me figure out how to get from point A to point B without seething and compromising the health and safety of myself and anyone around me? \u2014Driving Me Mad<\/strong><\/p>\n

Submit Your Own Question to a Therapist<\/a><\/p>\n

Dear Driving,<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, so you\u2019re <\/em>the one who flipped me off yesterday?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m kidding. I also would agree with your assessment that, yes, most drivers (myself included) seem to think their driving is just fine and it\u2019s all the other bozos on the road who need to get it together. You\u2019re not the only one muttering, \u201cHurry up, slowpoke!\u201d \u2026 and so on. In that sense you are not alone, especially should you live in (or ever visit) a major metropolitan area such as Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Boston, Seattle, or Washington, D.C., all with notorious commutes.<\/p>\n

I could not presume to tell you what, exactly, is at the root of your so-called \u201croad rage,\u201d but I think it\u2019s a good thing you\u2019re addressing it. All of us get irate from time to time, but this sounds like it could be escalating and ought to be curbed somehow, lest you get so distracted you end up in an accident or an altercation with another driver. It also might be affecting your blood pressure, digestive system, and so forth. A surplus of stress<\/a> always takes its toll.<\/p>\n

One facet of your letter has to do with, to my ears, control or lack thereof. We are of course powerless over other drivers, though it\u2019s easy to forget that when we\u2019re sitting in our cars, in our own little bubble of comfort. It can be jarring, even scary, to sense chaos threatening that bubble, with other drivers following very different rules and protocols, or appearing to not give a damn about anyone else. Sometimes it seems every driver (except us, of course) has the attitude of \u201cMe first, out of my way!\u201d So it goes in the age of the selfie.<\/p>\n

Combine this with our typical American individualism, our assumption of a right to \u201cdo things my way,\u201d and our ever-expanding demand for speed and you get a prevailing ethos of anxious impatience and jitteriness. As one billboard for a smartphone recently declared, \u201cIt really is all about you.\u201d<\/p>\n

But look a little closer and I think you\u2019ll find that anxiety, even existential dread, is a subtly unacknowledged factor behind much of this. It may sound like a stretch, but hear me out.<\/p>\n

Driving is a quintessentially American activity, and our sense of community has shrunk so much that, in a way, our freeways and highways are some of our last shared public spaces. But we seem to have lost, in many ways, even this <\/em>fleeting sense of \u201cshared\u201d space; all of it seems to have morphed, at least in part, into \u201cmy space.\u201d Stop by your local Starbucks and what do you see? Everyone doing their own thing with their personalized headphones, laptops, or smartphone screens, tuning out the world. We crave a comforting bubble within which to operate, free from intrusion, the borders of which are under our control. This may be a kind of bulwark against chaos, a way of self-soothing our era\u2019s growing uncertainty, where the rules of engagement (see our current national election) seem as undefined and disorderly as ever.<\/p>\n

At the same time, most people I know feel enormous pressure to perform in a variety of ways: as a student, parent, worker, partner, all or some of the above. Strangely, the need for speed has only ratcheted up the pressure on expectation for faster, more. <\/em>Some of us have more than one job while juggling big payments and debts. Our economy is now globally competitive. Thus our bubbles of comfort\u2014within our cars, homes, and laptops\u2014may become a way of soothing the terror of not being productive or inventive enough in an ever-more-fierce, demanding, chaotic world.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sensing a deeper fear or resentment against having to make these hazardous journeys, without proper protection, almost like a child being sent into a school full of bullies, without anyone realizing what hazards you\u2019re actually facing.<\/span><\/p>\n

One senses this on the road, where there is anxiety about feeling blocked or treated as insignificant, or aggressively affronted by a stranger; one Buddhist author I admire, Ch\u00f6gyam Trungpa, said speed is equivalent to aggression<\/a>. I might tweak that a little to say assertion<\/em>, as a defense against anyone intruding on \u201cmy space,\u201d or the equally unsettling prospect of feeling insignificant or intruded upon (\u201cThis is my <\/em>road, not yours\u201d).<\/p>\n

Thus you might develop compassion<\/a> for the situation as a whole, including your own anxiety\u2014make space \u201caround it,\u201d as it were, as anxiety is basically fear<\/a>. I often find the outside world becomes a reflection of our own internal state. (Pema Ch\u00f6dr\u00f6n writes nicely about this in her books.)<\/p>\n

Finally, there seems to be an almost childlike terror in your message, a fear of loss of control, of frightening or sudden intrusion. I don\u2019t think one has to take a strictly Freudian<\/a> interpretation toward \u201cThey cut me off!\u201d as (literal) castration anxiety. Though perhaps there is a symbolic <\/em>fear on your part along the lines of feeling disempowered, helpless, that takes the concrete <\/em>form of anxious agitation and anger on the road.<\/p>\n

My therapist\u2019s ears perked up at the phrases \u201cinjustice\u201d and \u201ccompromising health and safety.\u201d My intuitive mind wants to link these two together and start to speculate on how such a compromise feels imposed upon you, whether you like it or not. I\u2019m sensing a deeper fear or resentment<\/a> against having to make these hazardous journeys, without proper protection, almost like a child being sent into a school full of bullies, without anyone realizing what hazards you\u2019re actually facing. What, in other words, is the larger or broader emotional context of your life? It can be easier to be angry at faceless drivers than those closest to us, loved ones or family; is it possible these rude drivers (and there are many) are not the only ones you\u2019re resenting? If this is the case, why? What is making you angry or anxious in your other situations\u2014at home, at work, with family, and so on? (Anger is usually the \u201cfirst line of defense\u201d atop deeper emotions.)<\/p>\n

I sense, in other words, a more personal injustice being felt by you, one that is coming out behind the wheel. You might confide in a counselor<\/a> to release some of whatever angry or hurtful emotions you might possibly be sitting on, maybe communicate them to the right people to help you with whatever feels burdening or imposing. Perhaps a counselor can help you figure out what these emotions are, as sometimes we genuinely don\u2019t know, only that they keep popping up out of nowhere.<\/p>\n

Most of all, allow some empathic<\/a> space for yourself to be human. This is a more common problem than you might think, which is why I\u2019m so glad you wrote in. More often than not we are, for all our hyper-individualization, in the same collective boat, trying to right said boat through choppy waters. Thanks again!<\/p>\n

Kind regards,<\/p>\n

Darren<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Darren Haber, MA, MFT, responds to our latest reader-submitted Dear GoodTherapy.org question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1061,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[625,542],"tags":[425,231,522,25],"class_list":["post-33092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dear-goodtherapy","category-featured-articles","tag-aggression-violence","tag-anger","tag-dear-gt","tag-psychotherapy-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1061"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}