After my second son was born 8 years ago, anxiety made me stop driving. I want to be able to drive again without fear.

• Before becoming a parent, driving wasn't a big deal to me.
• But since the birth of my first child, getting behind the wheel has given me anxiety.

My teen is now legally of age to get a driver's permit. While most teens would be eager to sign up for one as soon as possible, he doesn't seem to care too much. This might have something to do with the fact that we're in New York City and that most kids his age here don't drive.

I'm also not too eager for my teen to get a license, honestly, and it's partially because I don't have one myself. After all, how can I help my teen get a driver's license if I don't even have one?

My anxiety around driving isn't something I talk about often. However, when my younger son laughingly told a classmate how his mom doesn't know how to drive, I knew we had to have a conversation when we got home. It was harder than I thought it would be. "I do know how to drive, but I get really nervous when I do it," I told my eight-year-old.

My own history with driving

When I was a teen in New York, I was in no rush to get a driver's license. But I did an optional free driver-education class through my high school and took a handful of lessons. After going to college in Chicago, I got a job that took me to Michigan, where I ended up staying for a year. It was impossible to live there without a car, and after many driving lessons, I finally got a driver's license.

After that year was over, I drove my beloved silver Ford Focus back to New York. The monthly payments were adding up, and it wasn't exactly practical to own a car in the city, so I reluctantly gave the car back to the leasing company.

Then, when I was at the DMV taking care of paperwork relating to my car shortly after, the employee asked me if I wanted to pay a small fee to transfer my license to the state of New York. "I don't think I'll need a driver's license anymore," I replied. She shot me a look that signaled she thought I was making the wrong choice; it turned out later that she was correct.

Some years later, after I became a parent, I realized having a driver's license — even in New York City, without a car — would have been useful. Still, I kept putting it off since starting driving lessons from scratch wasn't an immediate priority.

Eventually, I figured taking some driving lessons might be useful to deal with my nervousness. But shortly before I had my second child, I started feeling very uncomfortable and freezing up during the rare times I was in the driver's seat. Being a passenger was never a problem for me, but driving was. I started to dread my lessons and decided to cancel my scheduled road test, losing all of the money I had paid in advance.

Before having kids, I would never have described myself as anxious, including feeling nervous about driving. I slowly realized that I was not going to be able to take driving lessons or take the road test until I figured out what was going on with my driving-related anxiety.

Looking into the root of my anxiety

I may never be able to pinpoint the hows or the whys of my driving-related anxiety and why it surfaced when it did. After all, I grew up watching my immigrant mother and all of my older siblings drive. Yes, there were a handful of childhood car accidents where I was a passenger, and I was a witness to some horrendous adjacent car accidents — like the time a car close to the one I was in exploded — when I was in college.

One traumatic experience stands out to me as being significant. In my 20s, about a year before I got pregnant with my first child, I was traveling in India. I saw a preschool-age child on the road who had died in a hit-and-run accident. Now, I have absolutely no plans on driving in India in my lifetime — I know my emotional limits. But, in the United States, at least, I still need to work on not catastrophizing every driving experience when I'm behind the wheel.

I do have fond memories of driving, and I hope to make more

Believe it or not, in my younger years, I did make some fond memories by taking relaxing drives on wide Michigan country roads. Back then, I considered myself to be a cautious driver. I always drove slowly and responsibly, especially in snowy and icy conditions.

I also remember frequently driving around kids who were part of a volunteering program I was involved with at the time. But it's been a long time since I've been able to drive without anxiety, let alone enjoy driving, and I just want to figure out how to get back to being a person — and a parent — who is able to casually drive like almost everyone else.

Sometimes, I try positive-visual mental exercises where I envision a successful driving trip on a weekend getaway with my children. Deep breathing exercises help, too, but I have to try to find more long-lasting and effective ways to ease my anxiety. I know I definitely don't want to own a car in NYC, nor do I expect to drive frequently. But I do want to start the process of getting to the root of my driving phobia. My kids — and I — deserve it.