the biggest thing that helped me out was driving with multiple "copilots". My driver's ed instructor was old, but he was cool with me at least. Turned out he knew my granddad ( a man I was never fortunate enough to meet), so we just always talked about him. Depending on how things worked, there were two different girls I always got paired with. One was uber nervous, the other was a speed demon. It calmed me down quite a bit just knowing I couldn't do any worse than them.
As for my other driving, my dad was cool when I first got my permit and started driving, but then flipped out when I got closer to 16. My mom flipped out no matter what I did, but one of my dad's coworkers took me driving a couple of times and told my parents they were crazy and that I was a good driver. Just practice man. I learned on a stick shift and I think that made all the difference in the world.