Adjusting to the prospect of stopping driving.

Stopping driving is a big decision and has consequences for how you go about your daily life. To start with, it can be hard to know what the requirements are for maintaining a license. Each state has specific requirements that need to be followed in order to maintain your driver’s license. The links provided on this website will provide the relevant information for you. And we recommend you have a look through this, so you’re aware of what is going to be required for you. When it comes to stopping driving, It can be hard to know when you’re ready. But there are some common signs that may signal that the time may be coming for you. You may notice these signs in yourself, or you may have family and friends that will notice them and let you know of them over time. There’s often some physical signs, which could include things like pain that impacts your ability to drive safely. It could influence your ability to maintain control over the car. Um, and it could be things like uh, reduce vision and hearing that impact your ability to drive safely. There’s often also cognitive signs, things like slower reaction times, difficulty making decisions, or even getting lost or confused when you’re on roads that you commonly encounter. There’s also a range of driving behaviors that can be good signs that you might be needing to stop driving soon. You might have an increase in close calls. Uh, you might have an increase in scrapes on your car, difficulty parking, or making regular errors that you wouldn’t normally make, things like stopping at green lights or failing to stop at an intersection. Having awareness of these signs can be really valuable to prompt you more to think about when it comes time to stop driving. There’s a lot to think about when you plan for considering stopping driving. Sometimes, stopping needing to stop driving will happen very suddenly, and sometimes you have a bit more time to plan. The problem is that if it happens suddenly, we don’t know it’s coming. So what we encourage anyone to do is to plan ahead and start planning for their need to stop driving, even if they don’t think it’s going to be coming soon. This Thriving Without Driving module is designed to help you with all of these decisions and this forward planning. And we hope that it will be very useful for you as you work through the modules to be able to plan ahead and deal with this transition in the best way that you can.

Those things, like my biggest fear was not knowing I should stop driving until I’ve had an accident. And to me, that was just horrifying to think that I might have an accident, hurt myself or worst case scenario, hurt somebody else. and not be aware that, well, knowing that my vision was going and I shouldn’t be driving and still persisting. I couldn’t live with myself. I will not hurt another person because of my ineptitude. My incompetence and my stupidity, arrogance to think I need to drive. That certainly helped me. The other thing I really couldn’t afford to keep a car. Yeah, there’s quite a large cost factor involved, in doing that. I couldn’t afford it on a pension. I couldn’t afford to have the car. The turn around for me was to be more positive about it and to figure out. I’m too young to stop life, so I have to figure out how I’m going to keep living. and how to plan for what I can do. Without my vision. So that kind of gave me more drive and something more positive and something to look forward to. One of the things I did before I stopped driving the car was to practice not driving. What I mean by that I used more public transport and I did that. So it was like a preparation for a season. You know, you do good training for the football season or sporting season, and that’s what I did. So the transition. From driving, to not driving wasn’t, As, you know, difficult. One thing I wanted to say was I found that I, am not as busy. As I was, when you say about still being able to do things. I’ve changed my, attitude. When I drove, I used to try to cram so much into the day, like I was doing this, I was doing that. You know, I was driving here, I had to be there by then. Now it’s a case of like, no, I can pretty much manage one big thing a day. And that’s how I would plan. And that’s how I plan.

Main one being independence. The ability to do what I needed to do or what I wanted to do quickly. and that would be, you know, from shopping to visiting friends, family, that sort of thing. and I valued, the ability to be able to do that. Okay, this is one of my big things. It’s the freedom. It’s the freedom that it allows. Allows us to do things in our own time, really. I think that’s very important. I think that’s all. Sums up everything. Really It didn’t mean much. Quite frankly. I drove because I had to. I didn’t see any other alternative, well there was public transport. But I played a lot of sport and I needed to get, you know, from home to sporting fields. It gave me a totally new adventure in a way. The car was really about adventure. So there was another way of connecting, with my daughters, as well. So, you know, that was good. It’s freedom. And that’s the most distressing thing about it. Is that you lose your freedom. You can’t just get up and go somewhere. You know you have to organize everything. Get used to public transport. Well, for me, driving gives you the opportunity to do things on the spur of the moment without having to plan too much ahead. And go to places that are a little bit unaccessible by public transport or other means. To still be able to do the things that are important to me, which is getting out and about. Out among nature, out with people and friends. Just getting on with life.

When we think about stopping from driving, we need to think about it as a role transition. A role transition is a change. Sometimes these changes involve having a lot of mixed emotions and also practical challenges. Some of those emotions come because we are thinking about how a role is going to be changing. If you think about it, you may have already gone through a lot of role transitions over your life. You’ve gone from being a single person into a married person that might have brought a lot of emotions and life decisions that you needed to change about how you were doing things. You know, it may also be when you started to have children. Now, as you are considering retiring from driving, that will probably bring a lot of emotions to you. Research has shown that people have a variety of positive and negative feelings and thoughts about driving retirement. The majority of the times people focuses on the negatives. Research commonly suggests that people experience a loss in independence, poor self-esteem, frustration, anger, sadness. You might be experiencing some of these feelings yourself, and it is important to reflect on those feelings and find ways to manage them. This toolkit is assigned to support you to do this. As you make the transition through driving retirement, there are lots of positive experiences and feelings that you may also be feeling. Research has shown that this can include a sense of safety because You were feeling anxious as you were driving and your driving ability. Maybe increasing that sense of connection that you may have with friends and with your family because now you can engage with them in your daily activities a lot more. Maybe even saving money because, as we all know, cars are expensive. What is important about identifying the negative and the positives is that sometimes you might feel you may be feeling both of them at the same time. So it’ll be important to maybe create a list of what are the negative emotions and feelings that you’re going through and the positive emotions and feelings that you may be going through.

Retiring from driving is a transition, and for some people, they experience this transition almost as a bereavement, or as a really significant loss. Counselors and psychologists sometimes think about loss as a dual process kind of phenomenon. What this means is that there are two different ways that we have to work with the change or the transition. On the one hand, there are stressors associated with the loss itself. So, looking back and thinking about what driving might have meant for you in your life. Thinking about what driving has given you. Thinking about what you’ll be letting go of and what might change as a result of stopping driving. These are the sorts of things that make up the loss oriented stresses, the thoughts and feelings and experiences related to the loss of driving. At the same time, you also need to think about the new ways to do things. What matters to you? What driving did for you that you’ll now need to find other ways to do? Looking at what’s next, a way of bringing this new change into the next stage of your life, building new routines, new ways of doing things. These are what psychologists and counselors might call the restoration oriented stressors. It’s really important, in this dual process model way of thinking, that we acknowledge both of them. It’s really important not just to rush into planning and finding solutions. because there are thoughts and feelings associated with the losses that need to be worked through as well. And at the same time, it’s important not to get stuck in those thoughts and feelings. There will be frustrations or maybe a sense of relief. All of those things can be there, but we also need to figure out new ways to do what matters to us, new routines. So we need to work with both the losses and the new routines that we need to create, and recognize that, at different times, both can be sources of stress.

So when we’re thinking about retiring from driving and managing some of those stresses associated with the loss or with figuring out new routines, It’s really important to acknowledge that this can be a time of stress. Transitions are stressful. Change is stressful. It’s really important to acknowledge that for many of us, when our stress is too high, for too long, we can be at risk of developing mental health problems. So it’s really important to pay attention to the warning signs that a problem might be developing so that we can take action. Warning signs can be physical warning signs, things like changes in appetite and sleep, for example. They can be psychological warning signs, changes in mood, um, difficult thoughts over and over again, feeling frustrated, anxious, sad, numb. These can be the kind of physical warning signs you might recognize. And the behavioral warning signs that a problem might be developing are also important to think about. And these can be things like stopping doing activities that you really enjoy, or that you find meaningful, disconnecting from other people. Physical, psychological, and behavioral warning signs. All of them are very important to pay attention to, as they are signs that a problem could be developing and that you need to take action.

Okay, brain fog. Shortness of breath. What else? *inaudible* Oh, the rush. I rush. Anxiety. Yes, true. I rush through things. Trying to get things done, quickly. I think for me, yeah, there was a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of worrying about it. A lot of concern from family and friends. And to the extreme, where family members would want to help more, than was required. And so then pulling back and saying, look, it’s okay. I can cope. Yeah, a little bit sleepless, a little bit anxious. It’s a gut thing. It’s a gut thing. Yeah. So, and also there’s a bit of chaos in the in the head as well, you know, you. I think there’s everything’s interconnected and linked as well. So you get, I get stressed out and I’m a bit confused. I don’t know what I’m doing, blah blah, blah. And of course, now it’s, There are other ramifications, you know, getting a bit older you know, other things that happen as well.

When we are considering retiring from driving, it is important that we identify the support that we have available to us. Research indicates that we are not very good at finding those supports for ourselves. And in fact, research indicates that we need to identify those supports to increase our well-being as we’re going through this progression. The 5 supports that research indicates that we need to have is look at your personal support, family, peer, medical, and community supports. Some of these supports could be, for example, going to your GP and identifying, how is it that they are able to help you go through this transition. Family, which members of your family maybe able to help you navigate the transition, might be about taking you from one spot to another spot, from your appointments to another appointment. Peer support is another element of identifying those supports. People that are around you that are your peers may be going through the same decisions. In their own processes, they might have thought about ideas that you may have not thought about, and it is important, it will be important that you shared those experiences. So it would be important that you take some time and consider what are these supports that you have available to you at a personal, family, peer, medical, and community level.

So, thinking about the challenging thoughts, feelings, experiences that are associated with any change or any loss, like retiring from driving. It’s really important, first of all, to acknowledge that difficult thoughts and feelings are here and are present. And then to move in the direction of self-compassion or self-kindness. To acknowledge the thoughts and feelings isn’t necessarily to say that you like them, or that you enjoy them, or that you want them to stick around together, but it’s just to accept that, yeah, this is frustrating. Or yes, this is a difficult time for me right now. And when we can notice that, when we can acknowledge that, that’s the first step in self-compassion. Psychologists who research self-compassion, talk about noticing the discomfort as being the first step. The second step of generating kindness towards ourselves is to recognize that, actually, we’re not alone in this. A lot of people find this experience difficult. A lot of people have been through it. A lot of people have had the same thought, the same feeling. I’m not alone. Difficult thoughts and feelings sometimes make us feel isolated when we’re exercising self-compassion. We remember that we’re not alone in this. It’s a human experience. Other people understand this as well. The final part of moving in the direction of self-compassion is to exercise self-kindness. For some people, this can be, you know, having a bubble bath and some chocolate or whatever. That’s fine, if that’s good for you. But really, self-kindness is fierce and it’s brave and it’s being able to give ourselves what we need in the moment. Often we’re not really good at it. So one of the ways that you can think about how to be kind to yourself is to think about what you would say to a friend. What you would offer to do to a friend? who is having the same thoughts and feelings that you were. What words of comfort? What actions would you take if you were with a friend who was sharing the same thoughts and concerns that you had? And then if you can think about what you would do for a friend, turn them inwards, see if you can find a way to give that for yourself, maybe asking someone in your family, a friend, for what you need. can be a form of self-kindness.