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The Fear of Driving Panic Attack
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For someone with driving phobia, perhaps the most feared aspect of this psychological condition is having a panic attack when driving. This will often be brought on by a fear of driving on motorways, driving in tunnels or even the fear of driving on hills.

The driving panic attack mainly consists of hyperventilating when driving and can make you feel as if you will lose control of the car. It is brought on by your brain recognising what your subconscious mind believes to be a life–threatening environment.

Fear of Driving Through Tunnels

If you do not feel in control of a car in particular road environments, due to hyperventilating when driving, can strike terror into the subject.

Some refer to their fear of driving through tunnels, or other enclosed spaces, as a form of claustrophobia in the car. Really, this has a lot more to do with a sense of not being able to stop the car. This is also a factor in motorway anxiety.

Being scared driving down hills is activated by the feel of gravity, as it is the pull of gravity on the car that can make those who suffer with driving phobia experience a driving panic attack.


Fear of Driving on Motorways

Being frightened of driving on motorways often centres around the perception that stopping on that road is forbidden and not being able to turn off.

The fear of driving on motorways will often cause you to avoid this type of road as the condition hold. If a further attempt is then made to confront the fear of driving on motorways, a situation of hyperventilating when driving will often be the result.

It is the openness of the road that makes you feel so insecure, as you would so much prefer to be driving on a lane with high hedges at the side.

Feeling disorientated brings on insecurities and you seem to lose your relationship with the outside world. Even if you are coping with your fear of driving on motorways, as you begin to pass the bottom of the exit sip road your fear of driving, in progressive terms, increases and can induce the panic attack.

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When it comes to the point of driving passed the joining slip road, now your fear of driving just goes through the roof. Oh how you just so want to stamp on that brake pedal.


Car Phobia

If fear of driving on motorways causes the subject to experience a driving panic attack this will further deepen the driving phobia condition, making the risk of hyperventilating when driving a probability.

This form of car phobia will not just be confined to a fear of driving on motorways, but often spread to other roads, so that a panic attack when driving may occur on a dual carriageway or other roads.

Roads with an open aspect can be particularly difficult to the driving phobia case and is one of the environments that can trigger a driving panic attack. The fear of driving through tunnels can have the same effect.


Car Phobia Can be More Serious Than No Confidence in Driving

In many cases the issue begins with a fear of motorways whereupon the subject will easily dismiss their growing fear of driving on motorways as a simple case of having no confidence in driving. It is not until they begin hyperventilating when driving does the realisation occur this may be more than motorway fear, but the onset of car phobia.


The Treatment of Driving Phobia
is Often Mistreated

Driving phobia treatment can be a bit of a hit or miss affair, depending upon what route is taken. People with the condition will feel foolish and fear being ridiculed. Sometimes doctors will dismiss it as someone who has no confidence in driving, even suggesting learner lessons.

Many in the medical profession, for example, will approach the treatment of driving phobia in the same way as an aversion to being in a lift, for example.

Really, the only effective driving phobia treatment is that of confronting the fear of driving on motorways, or driving in tunnels, on hills or over bridges by facing up to it whilst trying to control the panic attack when driving. Car phobia does, however, require very careful handling.

Being frightened of driving on motorways isn’t the same as being scared of the dark, as the fear of driving on motorways is made stronger by the knowledge of what can happen when a driver loses control of a car. Of course, hyperventilating when driving induced by the fear of driving isn’t conducive to being in full control of the car, and that is what makes things even more scary.


Not Just a Case of No Confidence in Driving

If driving phobia treatment were really as easy as helping someone who has no confidence in driving there wouldn’t be a problem. However, driving phobia treatment isn’t that easy, and when in the hands of the ignorant, greater damage can easily be done.

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This page was last updated
Monday, 10-May-2010


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