Car Journeys, Stress Spirals, and the Beauty of Repair

On a 400-mile car journey today, all four of us were in the car. Things were going well—music, singing, chat and laughter. Lots of oxytocin flowing. Happy families.

Until we stopped at the services and were hit by a wave of overstimulation: locked toilets, confusion, and crowds. Cue my 22-year-old expressing her stress—rather publicly—in my direction. I became extremely triggered and instantly felt shamed, embarrassed, disrespected, stupid, and under attack. All within a split second.

I did manage not to respond in the moment. Instead, I went deep into shut down, mumbling something short to my husband.

We all got back in the car. The tension was palpable. My brain was spiralling:

“She’s an adult—she can’t talk to me like that.”

“How do I teach her? I need to fix this.”

We drove in silence. Rage and disconnect was palpable. My husband occasionally tried to lighten the mood with jolly comments, driven by his own need to fix the situation. That just triggered me more, which—thankfully—he sensed and stopped doing.

“Breathe, Suzanne. Breathe.”

So I breathed. I placed my thumb on my wrist and pumped ten times. Then did the same on the other side. I reminded myself: she’s stressed—it’s not an attack.

I listed all the things I was feeling and wondered where they were coming from in my past. I recognised the pattern—my mum often spoke to me this way as a child. The shame. The helplessness. It wasn’t just today’s moment I was feeling—it was layered .

More breathing.

Unsure how to start a conversation, I took out my phone to text her—even though she was sitting right behind me.

Before I could even type a word, my autistic, eagle-eyed daughter beside her piped up from the back seat:

“Mum, you don’t need to text her—she’s sitting behind you, you numpty.”

Busted.

But it was the perfect icebreaker. We all laughed.

That laugh opened the door to a real conversation. We talked about the nonsense of it all, about how stress bounces from one person to another. That she had become stressed and passed it to me. And that’s okay—I’m her mum. But maybe there are better ways to offload.

Even though my autistic daughter had been the most regulated through it all, it was clear she’d been massively affected by it, on high alert—watching every move.

The journey continued, and calm was restored.

Moments like these remind me that rupture and repair are part of family life. We don’t always get it right in the moment—but regulation, reflection, and a little laughter can take us a long way back to connection