Weird feeling while driving, is this normal?

i had to ride across a couple states with my mom today to get my sister and bring her home;its a 24 hour round trip in the car. on the way back my sister was driving and she missed a turn and had to quickly pull across a couple lanes to get back on track. this really freaked me out (i have bad car anxiety because of an accident i was in like 5 years ago). i didnt have a panic attack like i normally would but it was weird. my face got all hot, it got really hard to talk or think, and it almost felt like i didnt have control of my body. this has happened a couple times before and i have no idea what it is. it lasted like 30 minutes. normally i would have been freaking out or crying but it felt like i was disconnected from my thoughts and everything felt fuzzy. is this normal? what is this?

Your answer

jay_

2y ago

this happens to me a lot too. my therapist said this is the additional fight/flight response, and it’s the freeze. it’s dissociating, essentially, but you just feel like you can’t do anything because you’re in that “frozen” state and don’t know how to snap out of it because your limbic system (part of your brain that detects danger) thinks that there’s a threat still

yugen611

2y ago

This has happened to me before when I got into an accident a few years ago. Instead of panicking, my face also flushed and I got that disconnected feeling as well. All I can really attribute it to is a form of protection. Instead of going through a shock your body's reaction is to sort of disconnect itself from the situation. I notice that for me particularly this happens more if I've been under a lot of stress or have had many anxiety attacks prior, it's like the mind shuts itself down instead of going into a really bad panic that could potentially result in a hospital visit etc

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