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Autism & driving stress

Dindles-p

Hi! I drive a lot for work and can’t change this, but I absolutely hate it. Driving causes me so much anxiety and sensory overload. I struggle to cope with traffic a lot. I’m self employed and I can’t make any changes to this as the driving part of my job is essential, but I was wondering if anyone has any tips on how to cope a bit better? Any fidget toys that are good for having in the car, exercises to help calm down? Safe ways to help with the stress of it all? Thanks!

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  • Dindles-p said:
    I was wondering if anyone has any tips on how to cope a bit better?

    For a while I had a job that required me to drive from the East of London, through the city centre to Heathrow out West, in rush hour both ways and it was horrible.

    I found I had to use a mix of mindfulness and meditation, breathing and forced relaxation exercises mostly in order to keep my stress levels down, especially in situations where other drivers were being very aggressive.

    I would use techniques like forcing my shoulders to relax when I found them to be tensing up and combine this with deep breathing exercises to start to relax my body. It kind of reverses the stress response by reducing the effect and this feeds back to reducing the stress resposnse.

    Adopting a more zen approach to getting there, letting other aggressive drivers cut in when they were trying to get out of the cycle lane and generally trying to take a much more chilled approach to it were essential to avoid arriving at work wound up like a spring.

    Allowing plenty of time for the journey also allowed me to accommodate delays better and using good route planning apps to check road works or accidents in advance gave peace of mind.

    In the car keep music to something slower spaced to encourage a lower heart rate. Also keep off caffaine before driving if you can - this will only put you more on edge.

    Try to stay hydrated although I recommend you check the current law as I think even taking a drink from a bottle may now break traffic laws.

    On the subject of traffic laws, using a spinner may be seen as not being fully in control of the car so I would avoid this - some traffic police are quite lacking in understanding or tolerance in my experience.

    Overall, mindfulness and meditation are the most effective tools and the rest are good add ons.

  • in reply to Iain

    Thank you for response, I'll definitely try those things! I think it would help for me to be more relaxed whilst driving and not feel like I was in such a rush all the time, I'm always so tense when I drive. So I will try what you've reccomended!

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