I started the ignition, and my bow-tie-wearing copilot lifted binoculars up to his eyes, peering out his window. I needed a new therapist for thinking it was a good idea to go on this trip with my current therapist.

“You ready, Doc?”

He nodded and didn’t lower his binoculars. “Never been to the Big Apple. Can’t wait to see what birds we’ll encounter.”

I shook my head. “Pigeons, Doc. Rats with wings. That’s what we’ll encounter.”

We set off on our seven-hour trip from Vermont to Manhattan. The first few hours were uneventful until we hit a traffic jam. I started to sweat—literally—and my fingers began to tingle at the tips. Oh no. Not while I’m driving. The fear of the looming panic attack was sometimes almost as bad as the actual attack. My heart started to race and my head felt light. I sometimes vomited during a severe episode and did not want that to happen while on the highway. I made the rash decision to drive up the shoulder so I could escape the feeling of being boxed in between immovable cars. The rumble strip on the road jarred Dr. Maxwell from his nap. He woke and grabbed on to the oh shit bar above his door. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

“Nothing. We just hit some traffic. My heart started to race, and I needed to take a detour.”

Only Doc would look relieved by what I’d just said. He released his death grip on the car and spoke in a calming voice. “Relax your grip on the wheel, Luca.”

I looked down. My knuckles were white, and the surrounding lengths of my fingers were bright red. I did as instructed, because while I might not trust the nutty doc to drive a car, he knew how to steer me away from panic attacks. Nodding, I said, “I tried a breathing technique. It obviously didn’t work.”

“Tell me what you’re doing right now.”

My eyes flashed to him and back to the road as I continued on the service road. “What I’m doing? I’m driving.”

“No. Tell me what you were just able to do when you felt the feeling of panic set in.”

“I got off at the exit?” I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.

“That’s right. You steered the car from one road to another road, which made you feel safer. You can do that. And you can also pull over at any time and get out of the car if you feel like it.”

I nodded. Of course, he was right. But he wasn’t merely stating the obvious. He was reminding me that I was in control of the situation and had exerted that control when I felt I needed to. The biggest part of my anxiety disorder was the overwhelming fear of being trapped. It was why I didn’t do crowds, traffic, public transportation, or small spaces—yet I could be okay walking outside in a busy city. Exercising control to remove myself from the situation helped alleviate the anxiety.

“Take a nice deep breath, Luca.”

I inhaled through my nose and blew out a deep breath through my mouth. A chill hit my skin, which actually comforted me. My body became clammy when it headed into a panic attack; a coating of sweat often permeated my entire face with the rise of my body temperature. A chill meant my body was cooling back off.

“Tell me about that date you had Saturday night.”

I knew he was trying to distract me, to keep my mind focused on something other than the panic attack brewing, but I was okay with that. “He brought . . . his mother.”

Doc’s brows drew together. “His mother?”

“Yup. To a picnic lunch I’d made.” Picnic lunches at the park were my go-to first date regardless of the weather. They allowed me to avoid crowded restaurants, yet keep it casual. It was that or my place, and the last guy I’d invited over to my house for dinner assumed that meant I’d invited him for first-date sex.

“Why on earth would he bring his mother?”

I shrugged. “He said he’d mentioned our plans to her, and she had said she’d never been to that park.” This is what I got for being up front with men about my issues before we met—I got weirdos. But it wasn’t fair to hide the fact that I couldn’t go out on dates like a normal twenty-five-year-old woman. Not so shockingly, men tended to disappear fast when telling them about yourself and using words like agoraphobic and anxiety. Which in turn meant the remaining dating pool needed a bucket of chlorine.

Realizing our conversation had distracted me and helped quell the looming full-fledged panic attack I’d felt coming on, I said, “Thank you for that, by the way. I feel a lot better already. I’m just going to pull over in that empty parking lot up ahead and get out and do some stretches.”