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.

Driving Anxiety, Fear and Worry

Some people get so anxious even thinking about driving that they can’t even get in the car. There are those who are also anxious just being a passenger in a car.

Whether some driving is ok for you, or all driving is out, there will be all the usual anxious feelings and sensations with anything to do about being in the car. You feel agitated, tense and restless. Your breathing rate increases, your heart can race and you feel hot and uncomfortable. You may struggle to think clearly and you can have stomach issues. These are all the typical responses that you are designed to experience when faced with a threat. However, when you know you should be able to drive successfully, it all becomes frustrating and overwhelming.

Your mind races with negative scenarios about driving. You can imagine a whole variety of things that could go wrong based upon what you fear most. That could be worries about particular roads, other people on the road, dealing with any route changes or any other aspects of a journey in the car. When calm you may know you can handle these things and that they may not even happen, yet in your anxious state they become real and vivid as they dominate your mind.

In the same was as your specific fears can vary, how your driving anxiety arose can vary by person. For some people there may have been a traumatic or negative experience whilst driving that led to your anxiety about driving becoming problematic. Others have no history of negative experiences yet a general tendency to anxiety, worry and overthinking starts to lead to the fear and that then grows and grows. And others, despite being able to drive, can see, hear or learn about driving related incidents that starts the negative train of thought. In all these cases, the anxious thoughts and feelings start to become more and more habitually associated with driving until you notice you are stuck in the same repeating pattern that you struggle to break away from.

If you struggle with anxiety around driving then you’ll have noticed that when you are driving, there seems to be a lot of time and mental space for thinking. Those anxious thoughts can easily start to take over your focus and you feel worse and worse. You grip the wheel, feel tense and your heart pounds. You just want the journey over.

Although it is one of the most common anxieties and fears I help people with, it seems I haven’t written about it for a while! So here are some earlier articles if you want to learn more about overcoming anxiety about driving:

Overcoming Driving Anxiety – My Latest Video Hypnotherapy Testimonial

Fear of Driving Ended – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

Driving Anxiety Eliminated – Fear of Travelling Conquered

How To Abolish Driving Fear – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

Abolish Driving Anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

Sarah overcomes her driving anxiety – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

How Matt ended his driving fear and panic – Hypnotherapy in Ely and Newmarket

Overcome Driving Fear – Hypnotherapy in Ely & Newmarket

Many of the other articles I’ve shared on my website about dealing with anxious thoughts and feelings can also be applied to driving situations too.

Rather than avoidance or just hoping that you’ll somehow be ok behind the wheel, you want to learn how to feel calmer about driving. You know how to drive yet something psychologically just gets in the way and holds you back. Hypnotherapy can help you to change your thinking and feeling processes about driving so that it becomes something that is associated with being calm, confident and in control. You start to think, feel, trust and know that you can calmly and capably handle whatever may come your way when out on the road.

There are also specific things you can do to reign your unwanted thoughts back in and to calm your feelings before you drive and when behind the wheel. Rather than being at the mercy of your anxiety, you learn how to manage and orchestrate your own thoughts and feelings in more beneficial and helpful ways. Instead of being overly consumed with thinking about the journey, you start to be more focused upon the destination. You can calmly handle, deal and cope with your own thoughts and feelings, as well as whatever comes your way when out driving.

Perhaps most importantly, you get the freedom to go places and do things back into your life. Driving becomes a means to an end and you find yourself calm, confident and in control when driving.

To your health and happiness, 

Dan Regan

Award Winning Hypnotherapy for Anxiety Ely & Newmarket

Struggling with stress, worry, fear and anxiety about driving. Need some help? Find out how I can help with a Complimentary Hypnotherapy Strategy Session. Learn more here: Appointments

Find out what dozens of other people have said after their anxiety hypnotherapy sessions with Dan: Hypnotherapy Testimonials

And check out these powerful hypnosis downloads that can start helping you right away to tackle anxiety, boost confidence and more: Hypnosis Downloads