Fear of driving.
How to overcome fear of driving is one of the most common search criteria on Google. My patients commonly ask me how to overcome fear of driving.
Fear of driving is a very common form of phobia. Overcoming the fear of driving isn’t easy. Driving anxiety is one of the most common psychological disorders. There is no medical term to describe driving phobia, but the symptoms and struggles exist for many people, even those who have already obtained a driving license.
The causes of most driving phobias can lie in the aftermath of a trauma involving a car, for example, an accident, the failure of braking systems, or even being told some lousy news while in a car.
Driving can be an unpredictable experience because it involves other drivers on the roads around you; however, you must assume that those drivers have all revised the Highway Code to keep in practice the safe usage of a car. They studied and passed the same tests and procedures as you and understood the dangers and risks of performing outside those proposed guidelines. Also, for decades now, protection, such as seat belts, airbags, anti-lock brakes, and so on, has been installed inside all road vehicles to prevent harm to drivers and passengers. You will be safe if you are alert and aware of your surroundings when inside a car and trust that you can complete your journey without distractions. That is why you need to know how to overcome fear of driving.
Fear of driving Symptoms
Fear of driving is analogous to symptoms of other phobias: tachycardia, confusion, heartbeat, sweating palms, awkwardness, and light-headedness. On occasion, people experience fear of death or fear of losing their minds. This experience can be so impressive that many people will avoid operating a car to prevent this extreme emotional state.
This phobia can influence an individual’s daily routine, especially in states where driving is necessary to get somewhere.
Different events and/or factors can initiate the development of driving. In most cases, an individual has been involved in a motor vehicle incident or saw a fatal car accident from a side. The recollections of the event force the subconscious mind to be defensive.
Moreover, hypoglycemia during driving may scare a person and create in the subconscious mind a virtual connection between driving and physical discomfort in the form of trembling, vertigo, sweating, fainting, etc.
Forms of Fear of Driving
Motorway Fear of Driving: This is often associated with newly qualified drivers who have never experienced significant exposure to this type of driving when learning. The motorway can seem daunting because of the speed and traffic on the road.
Fear of driving in traffic: Some people may feel comfortable driving around back roads in quiet areas, but when they enter a town center, they feel overwhelmed by the number of cars on the road. This may mean they start avoiding dual carriageways, rush hour, and driving in the center of town.
Driving anxiety on bridges: Some clients fear driving over bridges because their real fear is heights and not the actual driving.
Fear of driving tests: We also work with people who feel anxious because of their driving test. Using positive visualization and relaxation techniques, we can help calm your nerves.
Total Avoidance of Driving: If you fear driving and cannot visualize yourself even getting into a car and starting lessons, we can help you overcome your fear of driving and take back control.
However, this may do little to alleviate the fear of people with a severe driving phobia. They might be afraid to perform a specific maneuver, such as not turning right, or may plan entire routes around avoiding particular roundabouts or roads. More generally, some people constantly shake with nervousness behind the wheel, develop headaches, or feel nauseous, making comfortable driving difficult.
Fear of driving, aka driving anxiety, may prevent you from attending social functions, make you late for work, or cause you to miss important meetings or appointments. It can create unnecessary detours, making you waste unnecessary time as you plan your next journey at length, which may make you nervous about traveling. A driving phobia instigates stress and creates mental pressure that affects your ability to drive safely. And that is why you have to overcome a fear of driving.
How to get over a fear of driving
Getting over a fear of driving is a very common question in today’s world. Unfortunately, driving phobia became common. The symptoms of this form of phobia may be different. In some cases, it is only an unwillingness to drive, especially on highways, because the fear that some collisions may happen accompanies driving. In other cases, individuals refuse to operate a car, and this kind of behavior is considered a real fear of driving or driving phobia. From a medical point of view, phobia is an irrational form of paralyzing fear. In this article, we will convey how to overcome the fear of driving and find a hypnotist near me to help you do this the easiest way.
Fear of driving is one of the various mental disorders combined under the general term “agoraphobia,” which means a phobia of open spaces. However, it is not the well-known panic of undefended places that often frightens people. On the contrary, this is the panic of a possible loss of control. Individuals who fear driving are usually scared to get stopped in traffic congestion and incapable of quitting. Some individuals fear passing out, losing control of the car, or switching lanes. In addition, many people do not feel comfortable driving next to large buses or construction vehicles.
How to overcome a fear of driving with hypnosis
It is well-known that anxiety may be accompanied by physical symptoms such as a sick stomach, nausea, perspiration, heart palpitations, etc. These physical symptoms, at some point, may become irresistible, preventing drivers from completing the particular drive. Even more, very often, drivers decide to stop driving forever. It happens because an individual’s internal organs receive the wrong signal from the brain (conscious mind) or incorrectly interpret it. Hypnosis for fear of driving blocks alters these incorrect signals and allows organs to deal with the information they receive. Fear of driving hypnosis also changes the individual’s mood, making a person calmer and more realistic. In those cases, clinical hypnosis and neuro-linguistic programming help discover the “whys and wherefores” for these expected dreads and react appropriately to destructive feelings.
Well-performed hypnotherapy identifies the core of nervousness and fixes the problem in the initial stages.
If an individual stops driving right after the first episode of fear of driving, the disorder develops faster, and the synopsis becomes more stable. The longer the individual avoids driving, the stronger and more profound the process becomes.
Hypnosis is the answer to how to overcome fear of driving
If you are suffering from a fear of driving, think about clinical hypnosis for fear of driving.
Fear of driving hypnosis works by changing the subconscious associations that cause the inconvenient and challenging phobia of driving. By addressing the psychological cause of your fear, our worldwide recognized hypnotherapist, Victor Tsan, MD, will help you confidently and successfully overcome fear of driving, giving you the mental tools to help you form new and positive attitudes. Once your negative associations with driving have been replaced with a more positive understanding, you can resume a happier life without the anxiety or panic previously caused by car travel.
How to overcome fear of driving if nothing helps…
Individuals with a fear of driving must make appropriate changes to their lifestyle that will help them get back to driving with a suitable level of self-confidence.
- Do not drive when hungry since the glucose level in your blood may be low, accompanying specific hypoglycemia symptoms. Alcohol consumption in the last 24 hours may also cause blood glucose deficiency.
- Do not consume products known as triggers for anxiety. Caffeine is usually at the top of the list of triggers.
- Consider carpooling. If you are driving a car with passengers, talk to them since it will distract you from thinking about your driving.
- Avoid stressful circumstances: Chronic stress usually results in an anxious reaction, and since the fear of driving is one of them, try to avoid stress if possible. It is impossible in our lives to avoid stress; however, using natural ways of stress relief will reduce the level and severity of anxiety. Those natural ways include physical exercise, healthy light food, meditation, swimming, socializing, reading, playing games, and many more.
- It is also essential that the individual suffering from anxiety understand that anxiety is not something physical that can cause illness or death. It is just a product of a human’s mind.
Also, fears and phobias are forms of anxiety. The use of hypnotherapy to treat these medical conditions is adequate and appropriate.
Doctor Tsan, director of the Philadelphia Hypnotherapy Clinic, delivers two primary treatment techniques for phobias that help you get the answer to the question of how to overcome fear of driving and get appropriate and professional treatment, which he developed based on specific NLP approaches:
- Hypnosis for Phobias Philadelphia
- Hypnosis for Fears Philadelphia
What does the word Philadelphia mean in the title of these treatments?
Think about hypnotherapy for fear of driving. The script that a hypnotist should read to a patient can be generic, “Imagine you are driving your car on a bridge,” or, much more specifically, “Imagine you are driving from Philadelphia across the river to New Jersey…” Your car enters Walt Wittman Bridge, and ahead on the right, you see the dome of the Camden Aquarium.” This is the technique that Dr. Tsan developed and named Hypnosis for Fears Philadelphia. As a result, the patient’s subconscious mind pulled out from archives of childhood memories when this patient, with their parents, crossed this bridge without any problems. The way the human mind works, these memories establish and stabilize a connection between driving over the Walt Wittman Bridge and happy times in childhood (candies, ice cream, etc.). As a result, fear stops.
Control your mind
Based on the research of psychotherapists from www.hypnosis.org, two significant forms of nervousness can sometimes result in phobia driving: situational and existential.
Situational anxiety initiates as a reaction to nerve-wracking circumstances. For example, you are driving and see that the road in front of you is icy, and you are not sure you will be able to drive safely in this weather condition, but you have no choice because the way back is even more dangerous. This can cause the development of situational anxiety. Next time you must drive, your subconscious may recall this situation and initiate a fear of driving, preventing you from driving even in good weather. Hypnosis for fear of driving may successfully heal situational anxiety and other psychological disorders that develop based on situational anxiety. The hypnotherapist has to categorize the form of the anxiety, the circumstances that triggered it, and the factors that are deteriorating symptoms. As a starting point, he may suggest alternative ways of reacting to these situations to his patient.
By making appropriate suggestions, a well-trained hypnotherapist can program a patient’s subconscious mind to increase control over anxiety symptoms by building self-assurance and decreasing uncertainty.
Existential anxiety, usually initiated by an individual’s thoughts about “life after death” or “spiritual sessions,” etc., does not usually cause the development of driving phobia and is off-topic in this article.
Hypnosis will show you How to get over a fear of driving
By transferring patients’ minds into a trance-like state, hypnotherapists can closely emphasize the foundation of anxiety. In a trance-like state (hypnotic trance), when the conscious mind is off, the subconscious mind is tuned to the hypnotherapist’s voice, and all the suggestions go directly into the patient’s memory archives.
The list of hypnotherapy techniques may also contain the so-called life regression method that, like a time machine, brings individuals back to the initial event that caused the development of fear of driving. While a patient is in a trance, a hypnotherapist can change the patient’s interpretation of that event. In this case, the development of the phobia will not start in the virtual past. That means the fear of driving no longer exists when an individual “wakes up” after the hypnotherapy session.
Hypnosis Near Me.
Suppose you live in Philadelphia, PA, or the nearest suburbs. In that case, you can Google How to Overcome Fear of Driving, Hypnosis near me, or Hypnotic Clinic near me and see the list of practitioners and clinics performing this complicated neuro-linguistic programming treatment.
When you are looking for how to overcome fear of driving and help treat medical conditions (depression, anxiety, insomnia, fears, etc.), you would like to find not just the best hypnotist but the best hypnosis facility in Philadelphia. Don’t forget that a good hypnotherapist is a medical doctor who understands the mechanisms of medical conditions and knows how to apply the hypnosis technique.
If you or someone you know suffers from a fear of driving and would like to find out how to overcome it, you are in the right place. At the Philadelphia Hypnotherapy Clinic, Dr. Tsan and associates successfully treat this condition using the techniques of hypnosis for fear of driving, along with acupuncture and homeopathic medicines. The effectiveness of the treatment is above 90%. The combination of different alternative methods makes the treatment efficient and pleasant.
Contact Philadelphia Hypnotherapy Clinic at 215-621-8434 to schedule your first appointment and meet Dr. Tsan. Ask him what your best treatment options are to overcome driving phobia.