I finally got my drivers license at 34 years old, after dealing with pretty severe car phobia my whole life, so I wanted to talk about the process.
I'm not really sure where the fear started, it wasn't a specific event; as far as I know, I've never been in any kind of car accident. I have OCD, so if I had to guess, it's another 'lack of control' type of thing that OCD tends to grab onto pretty hard. (The therapist that I see for OCD is actually the one that cracked this and helped me make a plan for doing this, a lot of this post comes from her help.)
To be clear, this post isn't trying to convince anyone else to learn to drive or push anyone else into any part of this process, just to explain my own experience. I'd been pushed on this for about 18 years and the shame (even when people are trying to be supportive and not shame you) only makes it harder. It really is something you have to want to do. Something that made me want to get over it was that I grew more uncomfortable (and kind of angry, at myself I guess?) being controlled by fear, and I had recently (over years) gotten over a longer and more severe phobia, so I knew dealing with the fear would be awful and exhausting, but doable. I also felt like I'd have/feel more autonomy if I were able to do something/go somewhere without involving another person; I liked the idea of having my own social life and hobbies and schedule that I didn't have to organize with someone else.
When I started therapy for OCD, the therapist had me make a list of everything (related to cars/driving) that scared me, it ended up filling one side and half of the other and I had to shower after the session because I was a huge sweat mess. We talked about everything on the list, what I thought would happen in these scenarios, etc. Then I had to make list of the steps of driving, divided into ridiculously granular elements, like the first steps were something like "Open the car door, sit in the seat, buckle your seat belt, put the key in the ignition, turn the car on" etc. Then I had to do the tiny steps one at a time until I saw and felt that this part isn't scary. Even just the car being on scared me, I was worried something would go wrong spontaneously and it would crash through the garage door in front of it, but doing that step until it stopped being scary and got boring helped me see that that's not something realistic to worry about and I could move onto the next thing on the list.
I think the most important part of this working for me and the best advice I can give someone in this position is having someone teach you that is calm and patient and understanding and that knows you and your emotional limits and can read you well. This person for me was my best friend that I've known for 15+ years. She was very understanding of a 'driving practice' consisting of "we're going to sit in the car and turn it on a couple of times and never move it out of park and then go inside", and when I got to being on the road, didn't intervene or say anything unless the situation was actually dangerous, which helped me calibrate my own paranoia and realize situations I were reading as dangerous and scary weren't actually.
We started driving practice in a local parking lot, one that was to the side of the grocery store rather than in front of it, so it was basically completely empty most of the time. She told me how to adjust the mirrors/the seat and turn the car on, what buttons/pedals did what, and then let me figure it out at my own pace. Her not constantly explaining or talking in these moments helped me not feel overwhelmed and get overstimulated while I was learning a bunch of new things and trying to keep a handle on my panic. I ended up slowly driving and turning and reversing in the parking lot until it stopped being scary and got boring (over a couple of sessions) and the next stop was driving on the actual road. At this point I needed a permit to drive on the road, so I scheduled an appointment with the DMV (4 MONTHS OUT BECAUSE I LIVE IN NORTH CAROLINA), studied up until then (there are plenty of practice tests online + the driving handbook), passed the test and got my permit.
Around this point, we made a plan/ordered list of easiest to most difficult places to drive (locally). It went something like this: - Empty parking lot - Local section of streets with not much on them (low speed, no people around, rare to see other cars) - Back roads to the next state (low speed, no people, VERY rare to see other cars; lots of inclines and sharp turns, a good place to learn mountain driving with no one around) + the latter half of this trip is Baby's First Highway, it took me many trips before I did the entire thing instead of stopping right before the highway.
I started on the local section of streets and those expanded little by little as I got more comfortable. We kept making more lists, more incrementally of elements of driving I was scared of and needed practice with (driving around people, highways, freeways, driving in our small town, big city driving, etc) and practicing those until they stopped being scary. A really important part of this is being in control and making the decisions about what to do yourself, and your helper person being supportive, but not leading or pushing.
Basically: -Do the scary things in extremely tiny incremental steps until they stop being scary; don't push yourself too hard, you don't want to freak yourself out and make the fear bigger. I think learning to drive isn't the real big task, it's learning to manage fear.
