Hey everyone, sorry that I’m doing this on a throwaway account.

The past couple months I have had anxiety in relation to driving has been off the charts. Most related to forgetting the last couple kms and thinking I have gone through a red light or caused and accident or something. Causing a lot of anxiety and catasrophizing. 

I drive a lot for work, typically 800km (500 miles) a month. And I have a 20 minute commute each way for work, mostly highway driving, and have been doing that for a number of years. I’ve always had highway hypnosis to some extent because the drive is so boring, but never had the anxiety until recently.

Today for an example I’m driving home on the highway, following traffic, and I get about 400m up the road and look in the rear view mirror and notice there is no traffic following me (I was following traffics right in front of me though). I then notice an suv speeding up the highway behind me. My brain immediately goes into catastrophizing that I ran a red light and caused an accident and this person in the suv is following me to get my license plate. So I decide to take a left at the next intersection to circle back and drive through the previous light again to check. Well the suv is now right behind me in the turn lane. I turn left and I go down a block to do a uturn and come back up to the highway to turn right and go back the way I came, we’ll I guess the suv did the same thing and now I’m behind this suv. 

Needless to say my anxiety peaked when I notice they did a uturn as well and felt like they followed me. 

Rationally speaking I know it’s probably a coincidence and that I would have 100% noticed if I ran a red light and/or caused an accident, but my anxiety is just full fledged taking over. I’ve had a couple of these episodes over the past couple months and it’s a trend I’m not super fond of. 

Not sure if I’m looking for reassurance or just to vent but ya… thanks for listening.