Anxiety About Driving – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket
Anxiety about driving is a pretty common thing. With so many cars on the road, it may seem to you like everyone else just gets in the car and goes. Yet anxiety about driving can impact in all sorts of frustrating and limiting ways.
We all rely on cars so much these days that if you struggle with getting in the car and going places, it’s going to have an adverse impact upon your life. Rather than having the freedom to go places and do the things you want to do, you either miss out, battle with anxiety or have to rely on others to take you. It seems so easy for others yet you struggle with the anxious thoughts and feelings about driving that make it an ordeal, a threat and something to try and avoid.
Now, of course, anxiety about driving can impact in different ways. For some it means totally avoiding driving altogether because of the anxiety, stress, worry and fear. You may have certain routes that are more comfortable for you, such as local and slower roads, but anything beyond that is out of limits. And for others, it is only the quicker roads that seem safer and manageable. There can also be anxiety about specific aspects of driving, such as busy traffic, coping with glaring lights at night, new routes or dealing with finding a space and parking.
However, your driving anxiety impacts, you can feel tense just thinking about it and you can dread any upcoming journey. You find yourself vividly imagining all sorts of feared driving situations. You might worry about messing up, going the wrong way or being unable to park at your destination. You may worry about other road users driving dangerously. Or maybe you feel anxious as you think about the risk that you may cause an accident and harm someone else. If you feel anxious about it, your mind will find some negative worst case scenario that may happen.
You may have been told before that you are a capable driver, you may even know logically that the likelihood of that feared worst case happening is remote. Yet in the grip of anxiety the thoughts and feelings can be overwhelming. You feel relief if you can get out of driving and that relief fuels your desire to avoid any other driving situations that could occur in the future.
Yet it is very possible to change this pattern of anxiety. Rather than being filled with dread and anxiety, you can start to feel calm, comfortable and confident both before you drive and when you are behind the wheel. Rather than your thoughts being dominated with how you’ll get somewhere, you can start to become more focused on where you are going and why you are going there.