Bonus Short from Episode 116: Building Confidence Behind the Wheel: Amy's Experience

You're listening to the Driving Confidence Podcast for drivers who want to become and

confident on the road. We will be sharing tips, stories and advice to beat driving nerves

and anxiety and build your driving confidence, whether you are just starting out as a learner

or have had your driving licence for years. If you want to transform how you feel about

driving, this podcast is for you.

In today's episode, we have delighted to welcome on Amy, who Kev worked with earlier on

last year and she's come on to tell you all her stories. So welcome, Amy.

Hi. Welcome, Amy. Nice to see you again. Nice to see you too. Thanks for having me.

So I suppose I better start really. Amy, tell me a little bit about your story before

you got in touch with us. What was happening? That sort of thing, really.

Yeah. So, well, in terms of the driving, I essentially have lived in London for quite a long time,

say like, gosh, 12 years. So just haven't really needed to drive that much and my partner does drive

and we were getting a car and it was just like, we'd gotten to that point where I was having to think about

driving again after passing when I was like 17, which I think happens quite a lot of people.

They like passed straight after school and then we go to uni and then we move to a city

and then yeah, just don't drive for a very long time. So yeah, it sort of just came around

as something I had to do even though I've been bitten off for years because it's just something

that it's not really been that important to me. It's more been like something other people

have wanted me to do. So yeah, so I was just like, if I'm going to do this properly,

I'm going to have to have some kind of like kick start, which is why I got in touch with you guys

because I just thought like I can't do this on my own and I just needed like a little bit of support

to get me back on the road. And we and we done some training.

We had like a get it done in a day training day. How did you find that?

Yeah, no, it was great. I think beforehand I was really really nervous about it actually

because I think personally when I've got to do something that I'm sort of like a bit nervous

about, if it's like half an hour an hour, like a presentation or something,

you know, you get it over with and you could be like, it's only an hour, but it was a full day.

So even that was like quite daunting, especially obviously never like really meeting in person.

But obviously we had our like chat beforehand. And that just like sort of really helped

because we met and then obviously we met on the day. So yeah, I didn't feel like awkward.

And yeah, the day actually went really quickly if I'm right. And we just drove around my local town

for about five hours or so, didn't we? So yeah, no, it was brilliant.

And it really helped because I'm still driving today. And yeah, so it did definitely do the job.

So how much have you been driving before? How long since you've driven?

It had been so basically during COVID, I went and did some traditional refresher driving lessons.

I did like four or five, but I just didn't get on with it because it just maybe it was the person who I was with

but was very much trying to teach me how to drive again rather than giving me confidence in what I already knew.

So it didn't really work out. So I stopped that. And I was just driving our sort of we had quite an old car then.

And then we got into a minor accident and the car got written off. So we didn't have a car for a few years,

which is why I stopped. And then like I said, we decided to invest in a light proper nice car automatic,

which is also key because I learned in a manual. And I think automatic is so much easier.

And I think that's definitely helped with some of my sort of issues.

And when you think back, can you remember what your worries were about driving?

Because you mentioned that it wasn't really about the driving skills.

You didn't really need to learn how to drive. It was more about your confidence.

So can you remember what were your worries? What were your concerns about driving before you found us?

Yeah, I think it was partly remembering how to drive in terms of like like things like going on certain lanes around outside, all that I would remember.

But for me, it was more like trusting myself to remember how I, you know, how to drive.

So there is aspects of the actual driving that I wanted to improve on.

But yeah, it was more just like even not knowing, not feeling comfortable in the car.

Yeah, and just not trusting myself or other people on the road.

And then the other thing was like the nerves before getting into the car.

That was like something I wanted to try and tackle as well. So yeah, I think they were the main things really.

And like just going, playing out snares in my head, I thought would happen before getting in the car that never happened.

And then actually things do happen and you handle them anyway.

So yeah, it wasn't like specific things. It was more like an overarching fear.

And yeah, I just, I don't really love being in the car as a passenger either.

So it was all like interconnected. And so yeah, I just said, no, I need to do something about this and just sort of like rip the plaster off.

Thank you for listening. Find out about the different ways that you can work with us on our website.

www.confidentdrivers.co.uk and begin to transform the way you feel about driving.