The first time you drive on the highway, your hands will grip the wheel too hard. You’ll still merge.

Gripping too hard is your body overpaying for a task it has not calibrated yet. It has no measurement for how much force merging requires, so it supplies everything, and that is uncomfortable rather than dangerous. Notice what it does not do: it does not stop you. Competence and comfort arrive on completely different schedules, and the first one shows up considerably earlier.

Go with somebody calm, at a quiet hour, on a road you know the shape of. Afterwards, note that you did the thing with white knuckles. That is the normal way it goes.