Steering Into the Skid: What a Driving Lesson Can Teach Us About Healing from Trauma
- dawn895
- Oct 7
- 3 min read
We’ve all heard it in driving school: if your car starts to fishtail on a slippery road, don’t jerk the wheel away from the slide. Instead, steer into the skid.
It’s counterintuitive. Our every instinct screams to fight against the loss of control. But by turning the steering wheel in the direction of the slide, we align our tires with the inertia, allowing the car to regain its traction and stability.
What does this have to do with trauma, anxiety, or the daily challenges of being human?
This vital driving lesson holds a profound key to emotional and psychological healing. So often, when we face emotional discomfort, triggers, or pain, our nervous system (especially one shaped by trauma) learns to “jerk the wheel.” We overcorrect. We avoid, we numb, we people-please, we react in ways that, while intended to protect us, often create more fallout and a greater sense of losing control.
What if, when appropriate, we learned to lean in?
What if we learned to steer into the emotional skid?
From Reactive to Responsive: The Power of Leaning In
“Steering into the skid” in an emotional context means consciously choosing to move toward discomfort instead of away from it. It’s not about forcing yourself into harmful situations, but about building the muscle to stay present with difficult feelings like anger, shame, fear, or grief to feel them, understand their message, and respond from a place of choice rather than react from a place of panic.
When we constantly overcorrect and avoid, we never learn that we can handle the discomfort. We reinforce the belief that the emotion itself is a threat that must be escaped. But when we lean in with curiosity and compassion, we send a new message to our nervous system: I can be with this. I can survive this feeling.
How to Practice "Steering Into the Skid" in Your Life
This isn’t about grand gestures. It’s about small, intentional moments of practice.
Notice the "Skid": The first step is awareness. When do you feel the urge to emotionally "jerk the wheel"? Is it when you feel criticized? When a memory surfaces? When you have to set a boundary? Acknowledge the impulse to react or flee.
Pause and Breathe: Before you overcorrect, create a moment of space. A single deep breath can be enough to interrupt the automatic reaction and create room for a choice.
Gently Turn Toward It: Ask yourself with kindness: What am I feeling right now? Where do I feel it in my body? What is this emotion trying to tell me or protect me from? This is the act of steering into it, meeting the feeling with curiosity instead of fear.
Regain Your Traction: By acknowledging the feeling and its purpose, you align yourself with the present moment. You move from being controlled by the emotion to being in a relationship with it. This is where you regain a sense of agency and flow.
The Destination is Flexibility (Not Control)
The goal of “steering into the skid” isn’t to eliminate life’s slippery roads or emotional challenges. They are inevitable. The goal is to build the flexibility and resilience to navigate them without spinning out.
When we practice this, we often find that what lies on the other side of leaning in isn't a catastrophe, but a deeper connection to ourselves, and often, a state of greater ease, joy, and authentic connection with others.
Our trauma-focused approach is built on these principles. We help our clients understand their protective mechanisms, not as enemies, but as parts that learned to skid to survive. Together, we practice turning toward those parts with compassion, building the capacity for response flexibility, and ultimately, finding a more sustainable path to healing.
If you feel stuck in cycles of reaction and are ready to build a more responsive, flexible life, we are here to help. Reach out to learn more about our trauma-focused programs.
