Catoblepas

It’s definitely an understandable way to feel after a bad accident. It’s really fortunate nobody was hurt! You’re a young and inexperienced driver, there’s a reason as a group y’all cost more to insure, lol. So it’s definitely something that’s common, and plenty more people (like me) have only avoided similar accidents through dumb luck.

Is giving up a car completely something that’s feasible for your location and lifestyle? Will you be able to get to work, meet with friends, and engage with your hobbies while relying on public transit, a bike, etc? If you can answer yes to all those questions, then giving up driving regularly might be feasible for you. If you can’t, then unfortunately you will have to either drive or rely on other people to drive you.

If it’s not practical to give up driving, I would really encourage you to take a defensive driving class. It will help you internalize the things you can be doing to avoid accidents before they happen. And if you do give up driving, keep your license renewed! It’s a total pain in the ass to get a license a second time, and there are times it’s practical to have one.

I’m not a psychologist so I can’t tell you anything definitive, but getting very upset over something unexpected happening could be anxiety related. Everyone naturally gets frustrated when things don’t work out, but a lot of mental illnesses are just ‘normal’ things dialed up to 10.

It could also be a lot of stuff other than anxiety! Mental health is super complicated, regardless of what it is (if anything).

Are you in therapy with someone you trust in addition to meds? Because meds helped me a lot, but the therapy was super necessary for me as well.

Meds helped me with this a lot. Not the first or even the second medication I tried, maybe the third or fourth? Really good therapy, too. That took maybe another four tries with different therapists for me.

The worst part is being incredibly overwhelmed with anxiety makes it really, really hard to deal with shitty experiences with any of the above. It’s demoralizing when it doesn’t work out and it’s not perfect when it does work out. Still miles better than I was before.

Not gonna lie, toast would work on me as long as it had butter on it.

This one fuckin got me. I was like ‘yeah, I believe that unquestioningly.’

Absolutely none of the therapy techniques were truly effective for me until I was on the right medication. I’m not saying this is the case for you, but if you have honestly been struggling with everything you’ve tried, that’s not you not being good enough or trying hard enough. It’s just a sign you might need meds on top of it.