The Curse of Special: Driving Anxiety and the Problem of the Extraordinary
*last updated on May 13, 2026
In a previous essay "The Lure of Special," I reflected on our attraction to places, experiences, and moments that feel extraordinary. I wrote about the emotional pull of novelty and specialness—the way we often imagine certain places, trips, or experiences as somehow more alive, more meaningful, more real than ordinary life. But recently, while working on my driving anxiety, I began thinking about specialness differently. Sometimes the problem is not that we crave specialness. Sometimes the problem is that our minds turn some things into special occasions when we would really like these occasions to feel plain and ordinary.
For a long time, I thought of “special” as an almost entirely positive category. A special trip. A special person. A special occasion. Even phrases like “special education,” despite their complicated history and the objections many disability advocates have raised to terms such as “special needs,” reflect at least in part an attempt to frame difference in a more positive or compassionate way rather than purely in terms of deficit. Specialness is generally associated with value. It sounds better than ordinary, routine, or average. But anxiety made me realize that there is another side to specialness.
Recently, as I have been trying to work on my fear of driving, I noticed something about the way I anticipate driving practice. Long before I even get into the car, my body already begins reacting. I think about the upcoming drive ahead of time. I monitor sensations in my body. I feel tension, anticipation, resistance. The driving session starts expanding in my mind before it even happens. And at some point, I realized: my body treats driving as something special!
Not special in the positive sense. Not exciting or glamorous. But special in the sense of being outside the ordinary. Heightened. Marked. Different from regular life. And then I also realized that I really wanted driving not to be something special for me.
That realization helped me understand something important about anxiety. Many anxiety-provoking situations, especially when they are not objectively dangerous, are not just situations we dislike. They are situations our mind and body categorize as exceptional. They become psychologically highlighted. They occupy too much mental space. We prepare for them differently. We anticipate them differently. We surround them with meanings connected to danger, discomfort, embarrassment, or loss of control. And the more special something feels, the harder it often becomes.
This made me think about how many experiences exist in this strange category of unwanted specialness. Flying, public speaking, going to the dentist, making a difficult phone call, attending a social event, driving on the highway. These are not usually inherently dangerous situations for most people. In many cases, they are ordinary parts of life. Yet for some people, they acquire an aura of extraordinariness that transforms them into emotional events rather than simple activities.
A dental cleaning is a good example. It is routine in one sense. Millions of people do it regularly. But it is also outside ordinary daily experience. Most days, nobody pokes around inside our mouth with sharp instruments. So even if we rationally understand that a routine dental visit is safe, the body may still register it as something heightened and unusual. As the appointment approaches, some people begin anticipating it emotionally long before it happens.
The same thing happens with public speaking for many people. I experience this myself. Even though I know I can speak publicly reasonably well, public speaking still feels different from ordinary life. As the event approaches, my mind starts orienting toward it. My body reacts. It becomes psychologically enlarged.
In this sense, anxiety can be connected not only to fear, but also to specialness. The body reacts to significance, novelty, uncertainty, and heightened attention. Sometimes what we call anxiety is partly the experience of the body preparing for something it has categorized as important and outside the ordinary. The problem is that this process can become self-reinforcing. The more special the situation feels, the more attention we give it. The more attention we give it, the more emotionally charged it becomes.
And this is why one of the most effective ways to work with many forms of anxiety is carefully structured repetition or exposure. Exposure therapy, in its simplest form, is partly about helping the body stop treating a situation as extraordinary. Contemporary models do not describe this only as “getting used to” fear; they also emphasize learning new associations (meanings!). Instead of “this is dangerous,” “this is unbearable,” or “something terrible will happen,” the body can gradually learn: this is safe enough, this is tolerable, this is something I can do, and eventually, this is ordinary. Of course, this applies to situations that are objectively safe, even if they feel frightening. The goal is not to force ourselves into genuine danger, but to help the nervous system recalibrate situations it incorrectly interprets as threats. In other words, the goal is often not to make ourselves love the activity. The goal is to make it not special.
That is what I am trying to do with driving. I am trying to teach my body that driving does not deserve this aura of specialness. It does not need dramatic anticipation. It does not need emotional buildup. It is simply one of the many routine things human beings do every day. Like washing dishes. Like brushing teeth. Like going to the grocery store.
Of course, knowing this rationally does not instantly change the body’s reaction. Anxiety rarely disappears because somebody tells themselves to “be logical.” But noticing the process still matters. It helps me step back and observe what is happening instead of becoming fully absorbed in it.
Sometimes, before driving, I now try to tell myself: my body is preparing for this as if it were something extraordinary. But it does not have to be extraordinary. It can become ordinary through repetition, familiarity, and practice. And I think this connects back to the idea I explored in "The Lure of Special."
In that essay, I reflected on how easily we become attached to the emotional intensity of special experiences—travel, novelty, beautiful places, moments that seem elevated above ordinary life. But there is also a cost to organizing too much of our emotional life around specialness. We may start feeling disappointed by ordinary life once the heightened experience ends. We may begin chasing intensity instead of learning how to inhabit the everyday.
Anxiety creates a different version of the same problem. Instead of idealizing certain experiences, the anxious mind exaggerates them. It transforms ordinary situations into emotionally charged events. And just as some forms of happiness may require learning to appreciate ordinary life again, some forms of healing may require learning to experience certain situations as ordinary again.
Perhaps that is part of what recovery means in many areas of life: not eliminating difficulty completely, but removing the burden of specialness from it.
About this project: Start page
In a previous essay "The Lure of Special," I reflected on our attraction to places, experiences, and moments that feel extraordinary. I wrote about the emotional pull of novelty and specialness—the way we often imagine certain places, trips, or experiences as somehow more alive, more meaningful, more real than ordinary life. But recently, while working on my driving anxiety, I began thinking about specialness differently. Sometimes the problem is not that we crave specialness. Sometimes the problem is that our minds turn some things into special occasions when we would really like these occasions to feel plain and ordinary.
For a long time, I thought of “special” as an almost entirely positive category. A special trip. A special person. A special occasion. Even phrases like “special education,” despite their complicated history and the objections many disability advocates have raised to terms such as “special needs,” reflect at least in part an attempt to frame difference in a more positive or compassionate way rather than purely in terms of deficit. Specialness is generally associated with value. It sounds better than ordinary, routine, or average. But anxiety made me realize that there is another side to specialness.
Recently, as I have been trying to work on my fear of driving, I noticed something about the way I anticipate driving practice. Long before I even get into the car, my body already begins reacting. I think about the upcoming drive ahead of time. I monitor sensations in my body. I feel tension, anticipation, resistance. The driving session starts expanding in my mind before it even happens. And at some point, I realized: my body treats driving as something special!
Not special in the positive sense. Not exciting or glamorous. But special in the sense of being outside the ordinary. Heightened. Marked. Different from regular life. And then I also realized that I really wanted driving not to be something special for me.
That realization helped me understand something important about anxiety. Many anxiety-provoking situations, especially when they are not objectively dangerous, are not just situations we dislike. They are situations our mind and body categorize as exceptional. They become psychologically highlighted. They occupy too much mental space. We prepare for them differently. We anticipate them differently. We surround them with meanings connected to danger, discomfort, embarrassment, or loss of control. And the more special something feels, the harder it often becomes.
This made me think about how many experiences exist in this strange category of unwanted specialness. Flying, public speaking, going to the dentist, making a difficult phone call, attending a social event, driving on the highway. These are not usually inherently dangerous situations for most people. In many cases, they are ordinary parts of life. Yet for some people, they acquire an aura of extraordinariness that transforms them into emotional events rather than simple activities.
A dental cleaning is a good example. It is routine in one sense. Millions of people do it regularly. But it is also outside ordinary daily experience. Most days, nobody pokes around inside our mouth with sharp instruments. So even if we rationally understand that a routine dental visit is safe, the body may still register it as something heightened and unusual. As the appointment approaches, some people begin anticipating it emotionally long before it happens.
The same thing happens with public speaking for many people. I experience this myself. Even though I know I can speak publicly reasonably well, public speaking still feels different from ordinary life. As the event approaches, my mind starts orienting toward it. My body reacts. It becomes psychologically enlarged.
In this sense, anxiety can be connected not only to fear, but also to specialness. The body reacts to significance, novelty, uncertainty, and heightened attention. Sometimes what we call anxiety is partly the experience of the body preparing for something it has categorized as important and outside the ordinary. The problem is that this process can become self-reinforcing. The more special the situation feels, the more attention we give it. The more attention we give it, the more emotionally charged it becomes.
And this is why one of the most effective ways to work with many forms of anxiety is carefully structured repetition or exposure. Exposure therapy, in its simplest form, is partly about helping the body stop treating a situation as extraordinary. Contemporary models do not describe this only as “getting used to” fear; they also emphasize learning new associations (meanings!). Instead of “this is dangerous,” “this is unbearable,” or “something terrible will happen,” the body can gradually learn: this is safe enough, this is tolerable, this is something I can do, and eventually, this is ordinary. Of course, this applies to situations that are objectively safe, even if they feel frightening. The goal is not to force ourselves into genuine danger, but to help the nervous system recalibrate situations it incorrectly interprets as threats. In other words, the goal is often not to make ourselves love the activity. The goal is to make it not special.
That is what I am trying to do with driving. I am trying to teach my body that driving does not deserve this aura of specialness. It does not need dramatic anticipation. It does not need emotional buildup. It is simply one of the many routine things human beings do every day. Like washing dishes. Like brushing teeth. Like going to the grocery store.
Of course, knowing this rationally does not instantly change the body’s reaction. Anxiety rarely disappears because somebody tells themselves to “be logical.” But noticing the process still matters. It helps me step back and observe what is happening instead of becoming fully absorbed in it.
Sometimes, before driving, I now try to tell myself: my body is preparing for this as if it were something extraordinary. But it does not have to be extraordinary. It can become ordinary through repetition, familiarity, and practice. And I think this connects back to the idea I explored in "The Lure of Special."
In that essay, I reflected on how easily we become attached to the emotional intensity of special experiences—travel, novelty, beautiful places, moments that seem elevated above ordinary life. But there is also a cost to organizing too much of our emotional life around specialness. We may start feeling disappointed by ordinary life once the heightened experience ends. We may begin chasing intensity instead of learning how to inhabit the everyday.
Anxiety creates a different version of the same problem. Instead of idealizing certain experiences, the anxious mind exaggerates them. It transforms ordinary situations into emotionally charged events. And just as some forms of happiness may require learning to appreciate ordinary life again, some forms of healing may require learning to experience certain situations as ordinary again.
Perhaps that is part of what recovery means in many areas of life: not eliminating difficulty completely, but removing the burden of specialness from it.
About this project: Start page
