How To Not Be Afraid Of Driving

How To Not Be Afraid Of Driving – Situations that are difficult to escape from are a breeding ground for fear and panic. Not surprisingly, driving is one of the most common situations that trigger panic. Bridges and tunnels in particular can be difficult as they present the potential for getting stuck and do not provide an easy or safe escape route.

Many people with severe driving anxiety end up avoiding certain driving situations or stop driving altogether. One of the most effective ways to treat panic related to driving and avoidance is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which involves confronting situations that make the person afraid of panicking.

How To Not Be Afraid Of Driving

I’ve treated many people for driving panic, which usually means riding as a passenger while they face their fears. These six principles emerged from this work.

We Think We’re In Control On The Road. We’re Not.

Anxiety related to driving often causes you to think about the entire journey. You could mark the route in advance and look for bridges along the way. As you drive, you may keep imagining the scariest parts. In the end, it’s a lot to deal with – not just the road ahead, but your entire journey.

None of us can complete an entire journey alone – we must take the path as it comes. This is true in life and when driving. But we can handle the pieces of road we’re actually on, that’s all we ever have to do.

– You just have to cross the short piece of bridge you are on now and then until the bridge becomes a normal road again.

It takes practice, of course, because the mind wants to leap forward and make sure everything turns out fine. Focusing on sensory experiences can help you focus on the present, e.g. B. Seeing the road ahead and feeling your hands on the wheel.

Three In Four Americans Afraid Of Fully Self Driving Vehicles

Panic can lead you to believe that disaster awaits you down the road, even if it has never happened in all your previous trips. Our fear is good for threatening ourselves with, “next time will be like this

Bad” – that you panic and “go crazy” or “lose control”. But so far, your worst fears have not come true.

That doesn’t mean that nothing you fear will happen. If you ride enough elevators, someone could get stuck between floors. If you drive on a bridge, one day there will be a traffic jam on the bridge. Traffic can come to a standstill in the middle of a long tunnel.

But none of these events are the real fear behind the panic – it’s about what happens next. Our fear tells us that in such situations, panic will lead to something undeniably terrible happening. In fact, when the panic gets really intense, the most likely thing you will experience is fear and panic.

Phobias And Irrational Fears

When we see the “fake news” our minds are telling us, we can stop letting them control our behavior. For more information on this topic, see this previous post: “The Mystery Behind Panic (And How To Escape It).”

Sometimes our fear gives us valuable information that helps us avoid danger. However, our fears may also be unfounded. A common misconception when our anxiety is high is this

That I’m in danger The problem with this belief is that our minds and bodies are hardwired to give us a false sense of danger.

For example, as I was getting on a plane, I heard a J.S. Bach violin piece and asked my wife to play it at my funeral.

Fear Of Driving (amaxophobia): Symptoms And Treatment

. I got on the plane anyway and we landed without incident (as you can imagine). My fear was just that – unfounded fear.

For many people, “feeling is believing,” says psychotherapist and former airline pilot, Captain Tom Bunn, who recently guest-starred on the Think Act Be podcast. “If I feel it, it must be true.” He noted that panic-prone people tend to interpret the physiological symptoms of anxiety as danger, while “some people enjoy the physiological stimulation, like a roller coaster ride.”

When you recognize emotional thinking within yourself, you begin to question your assumptions about what fear means. It could simply mean that you are afraid.

Most of the time we can tell the difference between what is real and what we imagine. But when we are very anxious, this distinction can dissolve – a process known as “psychic equivalence”.

How To Get Over Fear Of Driving?

“Under stress, you may not believe that your mental experience represents perception,” Bunn said. “When people worry about having a panic attack, it can cause enough stress that they are

Intense fear can lead to a strong form of emotional thinking, where disasters related to your feared driving are perceived as reality, not fear. When you’re relaxed, you might know for a fact that panic won’t make you pass out, for example, but you might think that if you panic, you’re about to faint. In his treatment program, Bunn offers ways to calm the nervous system (based on Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory) so that it is less likely to trigger a psychic equivalency.

Every time we avoid what we’re afraid of, our brain learns that what we’re avoiding must be dangerous, otherwise why would we avoid it? You can try to calm yourself and reason with your fears, but nothing rewires the brain like direct experience. Facing situations that trigger fear is the most effective way to teach your nervous system not to trigger a panic alarm. In CBT we call this approach “exposure”.

Sometimes avoidance can seem like exposure, like always taking the “safer” bridge. But for many people, choosing a safer route increases their fear because they know they are not exposed to any known danger. As described in the next section, it makes sense to address these more subtle forms of avoidance.

Be Confident Behind The Steering Wheel: How To Overcome The Fear Of Driving

The final step for most people in dealing with panic is to abandon behaviors designed to prevent panic or avoid disaster when panic strikes. Common examples when driving are things like:

The problem with safety behaviors is that they give your brain the wrong impression that you wouldn’t be safe without them. “It’s good that you checked the traffic,” your brain tells you, “otherwise things could have gone wrong.” As a result, you continue to feel that driving is very dangerous and needs to be managed properly so nothing terrible happens.

Beware of subtle safety behaviors like taking the long detour to avoid the route you find uncomfortable while telling yourself you simply prefer that alternate route. Our fear often likes to remain hidden because it guides our behavior.

When given the choice of avoiding a ride altogether or driving with safe behavior, I generally recommend the latter. Exposure therapy progressively moves from easier to more difficult situations, and mastering difficult roads and safety behaviors can be a necessary step toward greater driving freedom.

How To Tell If You’re Too Tired To Drive — And What To Do If You Are

CBT for panic disorder includes additional techniques such as focusing on the breath and challenging your own mind. If you’re struggling with intense anxiety or panic attacks while driving, talk to your doctor or a mental health professional about effective ways to reduce your anxiety.

For more ways to manage anxiety, check out my free e-guide, 10 Ways to Manage Stress and Anxiety in Everyday Life. This week, at the request of Marilyn in Massachusetts, we’ll be covering fear of driving. As other Bay Staters, Marilyn and I know that Massachusetts drivers aren’t called massholes for nothing. In fact, in cities that have a dubious reputation for having the worst drivers in the nation, 3 of the top 5 are in Massachusetts.

But no matter where you live, fear of driving can really get in your way; In fact, when life is a freeway, it’s easy for a phobia to push you to the breakdown line. Unless we are lucky enough to live in a city with good public transport, driving is necessary for basic freedom and independence.

But fear of driving is not the same as fear of driving: There are generally four reasons why people are afraid of driving.

Driving Tips For New Drivers

The first is a traumatic experience. Take Nora, for example: When Nora was twenty-five, she was driving home after a long night and was hit by a text message driver. Luckily, even though her car was totaled, Nora was relatively unharmed and only needed a few stitches. But three years later, he hasn’t driven since.

If your story is like Nora’s, it makes sense that you wouldn’t feel safe in a car. For you, the possibility of an accident is all too real and all too important. If you have nightmares or flashbacks (aka

) constitute the trifecta of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. In fact, up to a third of people who have a major accident will have PTSD 30 days or more after the accident.

A second theme of fear driving is Erik. Erik sometimes has panic attacks, and while he’s never had one while driving, he’s convinced he’s losing control of the car and inadvertently changing the scene of the big crash in Talladega Nights (“Rickyyyy !”).

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The problem is that his fear creates a cycle: Erik’s fear that he is a split second away from a terrible accident is stress, and stress (palpitations, dizziness and more)

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