yes, tried that for 4 years, commuting on the baltimore washington parkway between bowie maryland and baltimore. i did go just after rush hour so i wouldn't surely die, but still it was a lot of traffic, and me in my little old mazda 323 was no match for a semi. still, i did it, tried to calm myself as much as i could. you'd think after 4 years of driving like that almost every day, it would get better. but really the only thing that calmed my stomach and then oddly me was to take mylanta before the drive. not having my stomach get all acidic helped me feel calmer. i did try, just not too successfully, other than allowing the mylanta to help me along. and i did heal my stomach greatly during this time, but still, a little red sports car right on my tail at 65 mph or a semi trying to merge with no room to do so, just the thought......
on the other hand, if i can go through the situation but in a much lower stress way, that is the way i learn to be less stressed, even when the situation becomes more potentially stressful. let me use two examples here:
1. its only been these last 7 years of being up here in upstate ny, driving on the highways in traffic, but manageable traffic that when the traffic is worse, i'm not nearly as stressed as i would have been in the past. a little, yes, but not like before.
2. i am truly phobic of snakes. even though we have one in our house, our little princess corn snake in her terrarium, if i encounter one in nature, i totally panic. this past summer, i almost ran over one on my bike at dusk. i was very stressed walking past that spot for weeks, but i still did it every day. if i had encountered a snake every day, the stress would have only gotten worse, trust me, i know myself and past experience. however, since i traveled that route every day and learned that the route was no longer threatening, after a few weeks, walking past that spot did not phase me any longer. and now, the memory of me being afraid to walk past there is gone. if i see another snake though, it will come back, and i will have to once again not encounter a snake there to relearn that it is ok.
back in my 20s, i went through some sessions to try to undo my snake phobia, as i love the out of doors. i learned that one can not be stressed if one's muscles are not tight, so learned how to consciously relax my muscles. the way to do this is to tighten them as tight as one can, then release that extreme tightness, and that makes them very relaxed. learned this again to achieve deep relaxation, in yoga class. so i've done this on occasion and it does work very well. maybe should do it more often.
though it would be nice if i could try to change things at the mental level, i seem to have more success when i try to change things at the physical level. by making these physical changes, i often can change the mental aspect as well.
however,sometimes if we have a nail in our foot (or a rib under the shoulder blade pressing on a nerve), we have to remove the nail (or the rib) to achieve pain relief. if we still have pain after the nail (or the rib is removed) then i think we have the sort of pain you have been describing, and i think i had that after my rhomboid healed but i was left with all those triggerpoints and muscle spasms back in the late 90s, early 2000s. so i kind of just assumed that was what was going on this time, but turns out, it was a nerve being compressed by bones, no wonder nothing seemed to help until the nerve was finally "released".
at least that's where i am currently on this journey. but every day is a new opportunity to learn. slowly discovering new ways of doing things.
