Upsetting Event: Now I Can’t Ride in a Car

Reader’s Question

OK, here is my situation. One day when I was riding with a friend, we went through a drive thru to get some food and my stomach was hurting. It must have been something I had eaten earlier and just caught up with me because by the time we got up to the window to get the order, my stomach was even worse and I really really had to go to the bathroom. So after we got the food she rushed to get home and I just made it. NOW everytime I have to ride with someone in a car my stomach knots up and starts hurting and I feel like I have to go to the bathroom. Is this anxiety or what? And how can I get over this? I don’t want to have to take a seperate car every time I want to go somewhere or hang out with friends.

Our Consulting Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

Welcome to the world of traumatic recollection! Anytime we have an emotional experience, good or bad, the brain memorizes both the situation (the where, who, what, etc.) and the mood at that time. This process is called Emotional Memory (see article on this website). In a very upsetting experience, such as yours, we become emotionally traumatized to the point that the brain memorizes everything about what happened — you were in a car, a drive-thru, food related, stomach distress, your emotions at the time, etc. Once we are traumatized, the brain goes on alert to protect us — looking for anything that might remind us of that situation. If we breakup with a sweetheart, the brain is constantly on alert for his/her presence at the mall, school, etc.

Traumatic Recollection is a recalling and reliving of the traumatic event that’s created by a situation that is similar to the original event. You were traumatized by a stomach problem driving through a drive-thru. Now you relive the event when riding in a car (you remember the feeling that you were helpless), going through a drive-thru, or when your stomach is upset. This is a form of anxiety reaction that’s directly related to your upset-stomach experience.

Your brain thinks it’s protecting you. Emotional memory works positively as well. When we see the best friend of a sweetheart we feel warm and fuzzy — because the best friend reminds us of our sweetheart.

I’d recommend reading my article on emotional memory on this website. It has techniques for getting rid of these reactions. In one method, you can “water down” the emotional part of the memory by taking small rides with friends, listening to favorite music, then making the rides longer. After a while the brain forgets the emotional part of the memory. It takes times. This is how people can calmly talk about bad experiences but only after many months — not just after it happened.

This is a normal reaction to a horrible and upsetting experience. I ate a pizza just before experiencing the flu and like you, became very sick with the pizza fresh on my mind. As a result, the smell of pizza made me sick for many weeks after I got over the flu. It’s just the way the brain works…for better or worse.