Okay, I'm going to the doctor anyways, and I don't hold much to 'therapists' for certain things. But here's the situation:

I've been having panic attacks in cars. I'm okay if it's just running 2 miles down the road to the parents house, there's hardly any traffic, doesn't bother me. If we only pass one or two cars during the short trip. But coming into more traffic than that and I start freaking out.

I'm not driving because my vision started giving me issues earlier this year and I simply don't trust my eyes to operate a vehicle. But it also doesn't matter whose driving, mother, father, DH, SD, SIL.... I just can only just barely handle it, and last week I couldn't handle it at all. DH and I got stuck in stop and go traffic down in JAX and he had to stop. I was blanched white, cold sweat, and shaking terribly. Even though I had taken a Xanax.

Now we were in a terrible head on collision in '13. And afterwards at the intersection of where the accident occurred I would flinch and was a bit weary of Chevy trucks. But then last year I was in my first accident, someone pulled through a stop sign while my car was pretty much in front of them, it was a minor accident, sore neck from exasperated whip lash from the accident before. But was starting to increase my unease in a vehicle. A few months later my uncle was taken out by a drunk driver and my aunt is left with various issues as his passenger. Between that and the eyes getting worse, those little flinches and near misses have just heighten my fear of being inside a vehicle.

Now I have mostly overcome my aquaphobia, sure I got trapped underwater, needed to be resuscitated, it was traumatic, I can still remember the sensation of drowning, the burning of the lungs, coughing out the last of the air, the muffled shriek of my sister who discovered my distress... But hey, live and learn for the most part.

I've also done well with my fear of snakes, a rather silly trauma when I look back on it, but all the same, living in SE GA, they're everywhere. They're in the woods, in the yard and occasionally even in the house. Some are poisonous, some are poisonous and vicious, some are simply little garden snakes. Either way you have to learn to live with them and can't wreck your car because there was a snake in the road sunning itself.

If I need to deal with my fears to enjoy my life, I can and I do. Sometimes better than others, but I can do it. Though I won't hesitate to scream for my DH if he's home and there's a snake on the doorstep. If he's not home I might call animal control for a dangerous one, otherwise I do my best to shoo it away.

But cars.... I just can't seem to get over it. It's only getting progressively worse each time I'm in a vehicle. I can rationalize where the fear comes from, though that doesn't particularly help since it's not like people aren't seriously injured and killed in accidents nearly every second of the day.

Drowning I learned to swim. Snakes I learned to tell the difference. Cars.... I can't very well avoid the idiots. The risk is not simply imagined but very real and proven several times over.

However it's not like 'me'. A slight increase in heart rate because someone cut across the front bumper and slammed on their breaks is one thing, hyperventilating because there's another car on the road.... That's something else entirely.

So is it life's experiences catching up to me? Or is it MS interfering with my 'rational' self? I'm hopeful that once I know, then I can talk myself down, right now it's not working since I can't completely comprehend the reason behind my fear.