Hey yall,
These past few weeks have been quite an important transition for me. But first of all, thank you Valerie for organizing an awesome co-writing meet-up at my fav space in Austin - Casa de Luz!
The Car Accident 15 Years Ago
When I was 19 years old, I was hit by a car while riding a scooter (or, should I say, I hit the car with my scooter lol). I still vividly remember what happened before I got hit. I was waiting for the red light to turn green at a busy intersection with ten different traffic lanes. I was focusing on everything but the traffic:
“I need to get in early to my cram school to prepare for my English test.”
“What should I wear when I visit my boyfriend’s family this weekend?”
I saw the car to my left getting closer and closer while an endless train of thoughts ran through my head. I thought I could out beat it by driving faster forward so I hit my gas pedal haaaaaaaard, and then…
BOOM!
The next thing I knew, I woke up lying on the roadside with an ambulance next to me.
Replaying the Movie
Fortunately, even though my lips were so swollen that my upper lip touched my nostrils and I still have a few scars here and there, I was more or less “normal” again in just a few months.
I physically recovered, but my body has been carrying out the experience since the accident. It remembers the tension and rise of adrenaline right before the crash. When I sat in a car as a passenger, I would be holding onto my seat belt super tight. Whenever a car I was in got a bit closer to another car, I would start imagining the car crashing into the other car, even though there was plenty of space.
Although I kept driving scooters, I became terrified of driving in a car. It was fine to live without a car when we were still living in Taiwan, where public transportation is very convenient. But after we moved to the U.S., especially Texas (aka the land of trucks), it was inconvenient not to drive. But still, I would do whatever I could to procrastinate learning how to drive.
I would bike for hours to get to a coffee shop. I had to give up opportunities to visit the beautiful countryside. I couldn’t apply to jobs that required a car, and I felt so bad that Pauli had to drive my ass around whenever I needed to go somewhere with a car.
This inability gradually grew into self-resentment. In the U.S. where teenagers know how to drive, I felt like an immature adult who’s incapable of handling her own life. I had so much shame whenever my girlfriends had to pick me up for our hangouts.
When I was a sociology graduate student, one of my main projects was studying the acculturation of first-generation Chinese immigrants in the U.S. Lack of autonomy derived from not being able to drive was one of the major causes of depression among immigrants. Whenever I felt frustrated not being able to drive, I would think to myself, “Oh fuck, that’s me.”
Finally and fortunately, I decided that things had to change because we have a newborn. I can’t avoid the questions like how will we take her to daycare? What if we want to go to a restaurant that is 20 mins away? What if she has an emergency and Pauli is not home?
I have someone else to care for, not just myself. And I knew it was time to face my fear of driving.
The Unexpected Coaching Session
I wrote about my experiences in NLP (Neurolinguistic programming) before. After talking to a friend who got over his fear of flying with timeline therapy, I reached out to my NLP coach Katie Raver because I knew NLP has similar tools. We scheduled a coaching session to work on my fear of driving, and I used it as a forcing mechanism to push me to sign up for driving lessons (starting next week!).
In the first session, Katie suggested we work on my fear as a passenger before we tackle the fear of driving. We started with using different sensations to build an anchor of energizing calm that I can refer to if my body was hijacked by fear again during the coaching session.
Then, she used a specific technique, where I imagined viewing what happened in the car accident on a movie screen from different three different perspectives:
The I in the “movie” where the car accident was happening
The “I” watching the movie of me in the car accident
The “I” playing the movie in a screening room from afar where I felt safe and protected, and watching myself watching my own movie.
We also played with changing the sizes, speed, and sequence of the movie.
At first, I felt my stomach tumbling when the “audience I” was about to watch the accident playing on the screen. But every time we changed one factor, some part of me got to know myself and how the accident played a role in my life a bit more. Then all of a sudden, I teared up. I realized it was never about that particular accident, but what happened that year.
Bringing light to the dark year of my life
It was one of the darkest years of my life. I dropped out of my first university after being depressed for a year. I packed my luggage and moved back to my hometown. For the next year, I did nothing but study in order to get into another university.
I squeezed into a privately-run classroom of less than 1000 square feet with fifty other students. We studied fourteen hours a day, every day, not knowing if we could get into an ideal university in the end. Students like us are called ChongKao Sheng (重考生, which literally means students who need to take the college entrance exam again). We were considered the failures of society. Despite my parents’ support, they still verbally told me this brought my family much shame.
That year, I cut my hair super short to look less feminine so I could focus on studying (now you know how important academic performances are for Taiwanese culture). Then I had that car accident. Soon after, my then-boyfriend broke up with me when I was still sitting in a wheelchair. I also had so much guilt about how much my mom had to take care of me, bathing me every day after the accident.
It was these memories that I was afraid of. It was these memories that I didn’t want to face that were masked under the fear of driving. It was like a part of me that was forgotten by my consciousness, but still deeply grasping me every moment whenever I was on the road.
This part of me never got updated on what happened later in my life - that I eventually got into my dream university, that I had traveled to exotic lands and achieved success (on the default path) as a powerful, independent female, and that I built a beautiful family with a loving husband and my precious daughter.
In the later part of the session, I worked on integrating that part of me into the whole of me. I was no longer watching the movie by myself. My beautiful daughter Mimi also sat by the pool with me, eating popcorn and watching the movie with a sense of ease, as if it was someone else’s story.
After the coaching session, I forgot to be scared as a passenger. The scenes that used to scare me no longer had an impact on me. I only had a faded feeling of being scared when I remembered Katie telling me to observe how I felt after the coaching. It’s an interesting state. It’s like my brain is freaking out and poking me “Hey why are you not scared now!?”, and my body is like “Dude, I know I should be scared, but I don’t know how to anymore.”
What’s Next
I’ve scheduled driving lessons with a Texas driving school. Even though I cured my fear of being a passenger, driving on the road is still not easy for me. But I’m grateful for the progress I’ve made. I learned that If I never tried to face my fear of driving, I would never uncover what was really under the fear. It seems many things are like this in life.
I thank myself for taking the action to book the coaching call, and that I have Katie as my coach to help me navigate through my fear. Most importantly, I’m grateful for the angel of my life, Mimi, for continuing to be the source of my courage, helping me face my fears, gain my own power, and be more of who I should be.
I will keep y’all updated on what’s next for my driving journey!
Until next time!
Angie