Hello, I am Karen

[knhansen]

Thank you Rich, for creating this board. It does help to know I am not alone with this problem. I am 48 and I think it is interesting to see that so many of "us" are women in our 40s-50s: what's up with that?

I am an emergency doctor, and deal with stress and crisis at work on daily basis but never have had panic attack anywhere but in the car. Basically this thing seems to have come on me from left field. I have probably driven 300,000 miles in my life, 80% of them on the highway in busy area (Washington and Baltimore beltways, I95...). I have always been a cautious driver. Recently I found that certain merge areas (like on my commute I have to merge onto a beltway into the left lane, then go across 3 lanes of traffic to get to my exit within a short distance) became increasingly difficult. I would dread that part, and essentially have panic attack every time I had to do it. So I started getting creative and tried to find routes to avoid that spot. Then I started having panic attacks whenever I was on any highway and found myself pulling off to the shoulder several times during my commute just to calm down. So about a month ago I started using only secondary roads. Now it takes me an hour and 15 minutes to get to work :( !

I think the program is very good, I am starting to be able to go one exit without feeling too bad. The problem I have is figuring out how to structure my "rungs" so that I can get back on the highway. The roads here are often very congested, and people are so rude!

Anyway, good luck to everyone who is working through this too!

[Rich Presta]

Welcome Karen!

Men are less likely to openly discuss their anxiety and fears, so it appears that the women outnumber the men tenfold. The difference isn't near as substantial as it appears.

Rich

[melissanecz]

hi karen -- i noticed the same thing...age, gender and do we all have kids? i, of course, don't know what any of it means but it is interesting. i find myself more nervous when my daughter is in the car.

[Fiore]

I too have noticed that many of the people in this forum are women, many of us in the 40-50 bracket. At the point where I had my first significant panic on the road, it was Christmas Eve, I had been doing last minute shopping and probably had a million Christmas-things-to-do going through my head. I had also applied for a job I was very keen to get (and I did get), but all up, a stressful time and I think the panic attack was just the last straw.

Although the stats might suggest that more women fall into the panic/anxiety traps, I also wonder if women are more likely to face their issues than men are.

Fiore