Driver Anxiety – Seeking Answers

Use any Internet search engine and type in the search field, Road Phobia, Road Anxiety or Driver Panic Attack (just to give a few examples). When you trawl through the results you will see all sorts of promised cures and remedies. Some of what you will find will appear very attractive, especially if there is an offer of a short–term solution, or an answer to your situation by some painless and comfortable means.

Some will give their treatments for a driver panic attack, for example, an attractive sounding name, and it seems the less understandable the term, the more effective the process promises to be. To follow the obscure, it seems, is to find utopia – if you were to believe all that you read that is.

Driving Anxiety Makes You Vulnerable

It seems there are countless ways in which you can throw money away when looking to solve your road phobia, and by putting your trust in the wrong people. So what it may pay to remember is this. Make no mistake about it, if you have lost confidence in driving, perhaps because you experienced a driver panic attack, then you are vulnerable.

Don’t let your vulnerability cloud your judgement

You are vulnerable because you will be desperate to put an end to the misery and suffering the road phobia has caused you. By the very nature of the condition, the way you have lost confidence in driving has made you feel so wretched and inadequate. Therefore, you are likely to be drawn to anything that offers a tidy way out, especially if it promises to be a painless way out.

Fear of Driving on a Motorway

If you think about it, you were already chasing a painless route to get out of driving anxiety before searching the Internet, and that route has involved something called displacement activity. You remember? All that stuff you do, on small country lanes as opposed to facing your fear of driving on a motorway, or dual carriageway. Even making excuses not to drive at all.

The discomfort of driving anxiety

As you have lost confidence in driving you have been trying to satisfy your basic animal need to be comfortable, but your comfort has so far come from complying with the constraints the fear of experiencing a driver panic attack places upon you.

We know this, because it is only when you challenge your driving anxiety, perhaps defying your fear of driving on a motorway, does it hurt you. Otherwise, by keeping within what the road phobia will have you not do, can you remain comfortable with your driving anxiety, although you will hate the way you are.

Choose Your Driving Anxiety Treatment Carefully

It will be ridiculous to try and discredit others, who proclaim their ability to help you, just to make our services seem a better option. In fact, our message is to say, if you see something you think will stop your fear of driving on a motorway, and you feel it is for you, then it is a free world; you go ahead and try it.

However, just remember how vulnerable you are, and how desperate to resolve your issues, so bear that in mind. Investigate everything thoroughly and do not allow your judgement to be clouded by fantastic claims of success.

Speak to others who have
received treatment for driver panic attack

Ask to speak to previous clients and follow that up by getting details of personal experience from the horse’s mouth. If you meet with any resistance to your requests for information then be wary. Remember the old adage, if it looks too good to be true, then it probably is.

Just be advised that being prone to a driver panic attack cannot be cured without involving a car. It is not cured in one day, one week or one month, and in most cases, it can take several months. Many people report that medication makes you feel a whole lot worse, so you need to calibrate your expectations to what is achievable and what is realistic.

Do You Need Driving Lessons From a Driving School?

Many people who have lost confidence in driving, perhaps though a driver panic attack, will think the answer lies in taking refresher driving lessons. If you are asking yourself, will a Driving Instructor help me, just ask yourself one question.

"Just because you have lost confidence in driving on certain roads, causing you to develop driving anxiety, does that mean you have lost your memory of how to drive?"

If the answer to that is no, a driving school can’t help you?

The L–plate driving instructor is not equipped to deal with your problem, as he or she only knows how to develop a new driver to the point of the driving test.

Dealing with lost confidence in driving, caused through fear of driving on a motorway, for example, requires more specialised intervention. Therefore, the standard driving instructor has no chance – unless you happen to find one with specialist training in driving anxiety issues. No, the driving lessons route isn’t what you need and can even make the problem worse.

A lot of people have tried therapy to get over
their road phobia and with mixed results

Taking on the services of a psychologist or therapist can produce some surprises. Talking to the many people seeking our services we learn that an alarming number of them have been this route and found the experience frustrating, demeaning and a complete waste of time and money. That isn’t to say it doesn’t work for some, because after all, for those who have found it has worked wouldn’t be talking to us, would they?

Those who profess to be qualified in the area of helping people who suffer a driver panic attack, by and large just don’t get the driving anxiety thing. That is obvious by the way most will place the condition in the same category as phobia concerning mice, rats, spiders, crowds, open spaces etc.

Having a driver panic attack isn’t the same
as losing your head over a rat

As we have already said on this site, any treatment that is aimed at other phobia categories away from driving has a slim chance of working. If you are serious about beating your fear of driving on a motorway, or general driving anxiety, and you want to stop the driver panic attack situation, then at least talk to us.

You will read later on this site how you will not be allowed to book anything during your initial approach, and that is very true. That being the case, all it will cost you is a phone call of about 20–minutes and from that you could learn such a lot about why you have lost confidence in driving and now feel the way you do. The number is at the bottom of every page.

You Are Here » Home Page » Seeking Answers For Road Driving Anxiety

This page was last updated
Saturday, 29-Jan-2011

Lost Confidence Driving – Motorway Phobia