Overcoming Freeway Phobia

"As a true 'California Girl,' and a native born Angelino, I started driving at 15 years old, which was 42 years ago. I passed the drivers' license test on my first try, on March 7, 1971, and on March 10, 1971 got in my first accident — a minor fender bender. Over time, I got in several more minor accidents. When I was in law school, I actually got hit twice by other drivers, resulting in my car being officially totaled both times. Yet, I was an easy and confident driver, and a fan of moving quickly down the Southern California highways and freeways. 

I went to college an hour and a half from my childhood home, and on more than one very late weekend night would find myself driving home for a family meal the next day. As a young film producer, I would drive all over southern California to film shoots, sometimes going to work at 5 in the morning, sometimes leaving an all night shoot at 5 in the morning, and never once did I have a problem driving home on the freeway.

No weather condition would inhibit my driving, it could be raining hail as it did one notable weekend day when I was driving to my parents second home or there could be blinding fog, where you literally couldn’t see two feet in front of your headlights, as I experienced on a location shoot in Northern California. It didn’t matter. I was a free woman, able to move back and forth on the roads at speeds up to and exceeding the legal limits of 65-70. 

Then, around the time I became pregnant with my first child at 35, I lost my freedom.

It was a gradual erosion of ease. First, I had a very hard time driving in the left lane on the freeway and if there were a concrete wall on the left side instead of a fence, I would literally break out in a sweat. Then I started having a hard time breathing and calming my heart when I drove in any lane on the freeway. Finally, the year my daughter was born, I had to be rescued by my father from an island in the middle of an intersection of multiple freeways. 

Sadly, and to my great embarrassment, I swore off of freeway driving. I could no longer breathe when I tried to negotiate them. The problem didn’t stop with freeway driving, it kept on spreading, I couldn’t drive on fast roads, then I couldn’t drive on wide roads, then I couldn’t drive in the canyons that are through ways in the city of Los Angeles, then I started having trouble making left turns, and finally I couldn’t drive in the left lane without panicking.

Over five years, my freedom behind the wheel became severely restricted. I either would have to have an assistant drive me to locations, or spend hours mapping out routes that avoided all the above-mentioned dangers. As a take-charge film producer, I began to search for a cure to this debilitating handicap I had acquired out of nowhere. I went to several psychiatrists and psychologists who specialized in phobias, and behavior control, I went to 'regular shrinks,' I went to hypnotherapists and none of these practitioners were able to effect much of a change in my ability to drive unfettered by fear and anxiety and yes, I tried an assortment of psychopharmacological aids. 

This year marked my twentieth year of being unable to drive on the freeway. In these twenty years, I’ve won three Oscars, and numerous other professional awards, written and produced countless feature films and TV movies, and successfully run both entertainment and other media companies. With all this success in my life, I still could not achieve success in conquering four to six lanes of blacktop. To say I am frustrated would be the understatement of the century. 

When Mark, who is a business friend, reached out to me to see if I was interested in becoming a beta tester of a new type of coaching that in a few hours can eliminate blocks that get in the  way of important work and life goals, I eagerly jumped at the offer. To be honest, his description of how it worked sounded like a bunch of new age BS to me, but I was willing to do anything to get back on the freeway. That included acknowledging there are different parts of me, as I see myself as a 'ballsy chick,' and yet I am a total complete wimp when it comes to freeways.  Although getting my parts to have a dialogue with each other sounded like a joke from a Woody Allen movie. 

To my complete delight, and total surprise I found out I was wrong. All of my work with Mark, which to date has been three sessions, one lasting about three hours and the other two half an hour, have been conducted over Skype. The first was session interuptus, as my Internet kept cutting us off, and yet, neither the distance, the interruptions, nor the electronic means of communication interfered with my achievement of miraculous results. 

Prior to our official first session, Mark had asked me to think about the answer to two questions. The first was how not driving on the freeway impeded me. This was an easy one to answer, as I had twenty years of responses to give him. The second question actually made me angry, because I thought it was so stupid. Mark asked me to think about what I might be getting, in a positive fashion, from not being able to drive on the freeway. I told him there was nothing positive about this handicap. He asked that I try and apply my Hollywood story telling skills to my own story and make something up, and see if it would resonate. Not wanting to be seen as recalcitrant, I agreed. 

Our session began with Mark asking me to tell him what success would look like in our work. I responded driving on the freeway, in a 'duh' tone of voice reserved by teenagers for their parents. He asked me if there might be any other in-between metric for success, explaining that the work he does is about enabling someone 'stuck' to get to a different path and it’s useful to have a couple of milestones on that path — including how I could know I was in a new place at the end of the session. 

I actually had a very good 'in-between metric.' About seven years ago I had lost the ability to make a left turn on a busy street that lead to my house from a distant part of Los Angeles that I frequented. My inability to make this one simple left turn had added thirty or minutes to my return drive from this part of the city, which was a real pain. I told Mark that if I could make that left turn again, I would feel that we had achieved enormous success. 

Mark asked me a little bit about how the problem had started, what I thought might have triggered it, what was going through my mind when I thought of driving on the freeway, all the standard questions I had been asked over and over again when I had sought help from other people. Then he asked the what benefit do you think you get from not driving on the freeway question and I delivered my carefully chosen quips, having to do with people paying attention to me, or feeling sorry for me, and a theory I had cooked up that my journey’s although longer on city streets are safer than the ones people have who drive on the freeway. None of these answers felt 'right,' although the last one came close, as I was to discover. 

Mark also asked me to talk about what was really important to me — what’s the end result of the things I do in life that I really value. The answer to that question was simple, I love helping people achieve their goals in life. In looking at how not driving on the freeway connected with that, I realized that it was a trait I possessed that allowed me to talk about myself in a way that exposed a vulnerability that made me more like the people I helped. 

Once we established what I wanted as an outcome in driving and what was important to me in general, Mark invited me to close my eyes and try to find the part of me that didn’t want me to drive on the freeway. To my surprise, I did with total complete ease. A cute little twelve-year-old girl, her hair in pigtails, freckles on her nose, who was as sassy as all get out and wasn’t going to let me drive on the freeway. Mark instructed me to ask her, 'what about that is important,' and she said because it wasn’t safe. It turns out this girl’s job is to keep me safe. 

One of the really interesting things I haven’t done yet in this coaching is discover why she thinks being on the freeway is unsafe, or why she didn’t decide it was unsafe until I was thirty-five, but part of me doesn’t think the answers matter right now. Those discoveries, I feel, although vitally important to my emotional health in other ways, are not part of what my work with Mark is geared towards resolving.  Although he did invite me to do another short session if it feels like it’s important to know — and even more important, develop my own relationship with this little girl and increasingly interact with her directly.  (There goes Woody Allen again.)

What I did learn was this girl only wanted one thing, for me to be always safe. Once I knew this, I was able to start having a conversation with her about what was unsafe about the freeway and left turns. I also was able to start to build a partnership with her. We made a deal her and I, if I would take it very gradually and not scare her too much, she’d let me try and start making that left turn on my drive home.

That was the end of my first session with Mark. Doesn’t sound like three hours, I know, but a lot was discussed in those three hours and a bond of trust was developed between Mark and me. Mark facilitates with absolutely no judgment implied and with great kindness. He does not try and talk to 'my parts,' he respectfully asks me to ask them questions. Now, I still think it sounds like a lot of BS, when he talks about respecting my parts, (also I find it very funny). The thing is, I also am discovering it works. 

After our first session, I spent about ten minutes a day slowly and with 'respect,' for my twelve year old friend’s desire to keep me safe, making the left turn. Every day, it got a little easier. Then I tried another place I had a hard time driving and it became a 'no-brainer.' Finally, after ten days, I drove on the freeway for the first time in twenty years. It was only in the entry lane, from one on ramp to another, but it felt like I had just won an Olympic event. I patiently practiced, moving on from one on ramp to two, but I couldn’t merge into the first right hand lane. 

Mark and I met again over Skype and he facilitated another conversation with my young friend. He asked her why she didn’t want me moving over into the main stream of traffic and she was very adamant that this wasn’t going to happen, it just was not safe. I was frustrated. I couldn’t even move over one lane for a 100-foot drive, how was I going to regain my freedom?  Mark cautioned me that treating the little girl like an angered and frustrated parent would was counterproductive.  She as all little girls would just pout and dig in her heels. He guided me to be more generous and open with her by working to compromise and gently and slowly ease her transition. 

In fact, this is where I think Mark showed true genius. He asked me to see if my young friend would make a deal with me. Instead of not stopping me from driving on the freeway, would she consider taking a proactive role in helping me drive on the freeway? Was there a way we could work to conquer this fear together so that she could be freed up to do bigger and better things for and with me? Now, instead of thinking she would be killed off and have to disappear for me to be free, she saw that actually she might be able to take an even bigger role in my life if she didn’t have to spend her time and energy on keeping me safe on the roads. 

I actually started talking to her about 'fighting other dragons,' a motif I play with quite a bit in my conscious life. This idea excited her and she agreed to try and let me move over a bit and see how it felt. 

It’s been a week now, and it hasn’t been easy and the movement hasn’t been continuous. Some days I can move over, some days, I can’t. Some days when I move over I’m terrified, some days I’m not. But every day, I think of myself holding her hand as I enter the freeway and of us working together to conquer this fear, turning us into a team with one goal, instead of two people warring inside of me. 

I think it’s going to be a very long time before I am sailing around again on the freeways and highways. Longer still until I am doing it in the hail and fog, yet I know with a certainty I didn’t possess before that, the day is within my grasp. 

I ask myself if I would have gotten here without this coaching. Was it just time for me to let go of these fears?  I can truthfully answer that I believe I would never have achieved success without Mark’s skillful aid. Do I feel stupid talking to an imaginary twelve year old inside of myself? I don’t know, lots of people talk to God every night, is that stupid (by the way my answer is no to this). It actually feels right to be talking to her, and she feels as real to me now, as my arms and legs, and the lines on my face. 

Without this coaching, I would never have gotten back a sense of freedom that I have long thought would remain elusive to me for the rest of my life."

— CEO, Media/Communications Firm & Oscar-Winning Producer/Screenwriter, Hollywood, CA