Understanding And Dealing With Driving Phobia

Understanding And Dealing With Driving Phobia

Driving Anxiety Disorder is a common form of anxiety. Driving Anxiety can occur due to a bad experience while driving such as coming close to having an accident or actually having an accident. It can also occur from other things such as a loved one getting in an accident.

Whatever the case is that caused this anxiety, your mind is falsely associating driving with fear.Someone with Driving Anxiety Disorder may experience,Anxious or scary thoughts while driving,Uncomfortable driving on bridges,Dread driving in traffic,Do not like driving alone,Having panic attacks while driving with symptoms such as sweating, trembling, thoughts of losing control.

Psychologists describe anxiety as irrational fear. While it is common for most people to feel nervous or stressed when driving in heavy traffic, this is not the same as having anxiety. In some driving situations, some degree of fear or anxiety may even be justified.

With driving anxiety, the physical and emotional symptoms are severe and go beyond nervousness. Those who experience the fear get physical as well as an emotional reaction, and the tension is often very high. This condition has left a number of people too scared to drive.

A number of people who get the driving anxiety often find that getting off the road and stopping, will often help to calm them down. The minute they feel an attack coming on, they can pull over and calm down which often takes a few minutes.

Once they are off the road, the obsessive thinking that comes with the anxiety attacks is diminished. It is, however, important to get back on the road after the attack has passed. Like with most fears, the best way to deal with it is by not giving in to the fear. The more you build up a negative experience, the worse it becomes.

Most people who have given up driving all together, are those who chose to give in to the fear. What started off as anxiety has been magnified to larger proportions and they are too scared to drive? In order to deal with the panic attacks, it is important to reduce the level by giving yourself permission to fail, without remaining in that position for too long. You should never feel guilty about the need to pull over until you are relaxed. As long as you do not attach much significance to the act, then you will find that you will need to do it less.

Be in the Moment.Learning about mindfulness meditation and being in the moment will help you from having negative or irrational thoughts while driving. If you are in the present moment it is impossible to have irrational and negative thoughts while driving. It also helps to not have music while driving. Music tends to bring up past memories which will keep you from being in the moment.

If you need to listen to music while driving it would be preferable to listen to positive instrumental music.If you begin to implement the NLP, Affirmations and mindfulness meditation techniques. It will make overcoming driving phobia much easier. The techniques that I have provided will help you tremendously with your driving phobia, but the best program for overcoming driving phobia is the driving fear program.

Anxiety while driving is a mental disorder affecting both males and females. This involves feelings of immense dread, anxiety and or apprehension towards driving with no justifiable reason. Experts have shown that this condition affects about one in ten people at some point in life.

Anxiety while driving falls under mental disorders known as neuroses. Neuroses are phobias that affect individuals behaviour but not their rational thinking. They may exhibit anxiety every time they sit in a car driving or not. Though it affects both men and women, women are more affected by this condition regardless of their age.

This condition may be triggered by a traumatic experience in the past that affected the motorist like a collision, car accident or any other event. This may cause a motorist to be more apprehensive, unsafe and insecure while driving.

The condition may also be triggered by driving under stressful conditions like speeding vehicles on a motorway, or traffic congestion regardless of previous driving experience or accidents encountered. The signs that show a motorist experiencing an anxiety attack are dizziness, trembling or shivering, nausea, headaches, flushing and stomach upset.

As these anxiety signs progress, the motorist develops driving phobia. Phobias tend to protect the body against potential dangers. This is when the mind conditions the body into believing that driving is dangerous, so the person may be apprehensive and he may experience panic attacks while on the road.

The treatments for driving phobia/anxiety must come in the form of behavioral and mental conditioning. Drugs and medication have limited application in driving phobia/anxiety as they can only suppress your physical symptoms - they can never help you overcome your phobia/anxiety.

Behavioral and mental conditioning works by slowly subjecting yourself to your phobias or situation that triggers your anxiety. During the process, you would need to experience the fear without running away and thus, becoming less sensitive to the situation. 

This idea is simple and it does not necessitate the help of professional (although you may choose to do so if you are really uncomfortable about it). Nevertheless, professional help or not, certain level of courage and determination is required as you would need to confront your fears and overcome them.