CBT for driving anxiety won’t work and often leaves you feeling worse than when you started.
Let me show you why CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) fails to help with driving anxiety and what you need to do to really overcome a fear of driving.
See my online driving anxiety courses for help overcoming your fear.
Watch all of my videos on CBT for driving anxiety here.
CBT for driving anxiety – why it fails
CBT fails to fix a fear of driving for two main reasons:
- It focuses on driving, which has nothing to do with driving anxiety.
- It focuses on your conscious mind, which isn’t where the problem is.
You can already see what the problem is:
CBT works on the wrong thing in the wrong place.
Using CBT to fix a fear of driving is like trying to put out a fire by aiming water in the opposite direction. Play the video below to see that happening!
The man on this fire engine is like a CBT practitioner aiming in the wrong direction.
This is why people spend months, sometimes years, taking CBT and make no progress at all.
It’s often said that CBT was never designed to fix problems but to help you cope and deal with them. CBT has been said to stand for Coping and Bodging Techniques because it’s like putting a plaster over a problem and not really fixing it.
Let’s look at those two main reasons above in more detail to discover why it fails.
Driving anxiety is an unconscious problem
If you have a fear of driving, you’ve probably experienced how annoying it is when people tell you the following things:
- Just push through and ignore it. You’ll be fine.
- Follow this personalised plan I’ve made for you (nooo!)
- Statistics prove how safe driving is. Stop worrying.
- Go and stand by a fast road and watch cars passing.
- Walk a bit closer to the bridge that scares you each day.
All of those things are logical, and that’s why they fail. Your problem lives in your unconscious mind, which works with emotions and doesn’t understand logic.
Why did I say nooo! to the personalised plan? Because that means someone else is planning their idea of what they think you need to do when driving…to fix a problem you have created that has nothing to do with driving!
You created the problem, and only you know the solution.
The video below explains more about the difference between how the conscious and unconscious mind work, and why someone else giving you a solution proves they have no idea what they’re doing.
Learn how your subconscious mind thinks
Why CBT is so popular even though it doesn’t work
It’s easy to get CBT approved by bodies, governments and scientists because they love seeing statistics and logic that show things work.
That logic is the very thing that will stop you from getting a result because your problem isn’t logical!
Imagine someone you love. Now try to describe why you love them. It’s impossible! They may be attractive or whatever, but can you really explain why you love them? No, because love is an emotion, just like your driving anxiety is.
Whereas a hypnotherapist would work with your feelings and emotions, a CBT practitioner would sit there ticking boxes to try and explain them logically.
Another big reason for CBT being popular is that it’s cheap.
Now let’s look at how this logical approach blocks you from overcoming a fear of driving.
Driving anxiety has nothing to do with driving
CBT practitioners often make the mistake of fixing the symptom, not the real problem.
Driving anxiety is a symptom. It’s how another problem in your life is showing itself.
Imagine that you have the flu. You could fix the symptom of sneezing by taping your mouth shut, but is that going to get rid of the flu? Of course not! To do that, you need to target the real problem – the virus that causes the flu.
Driving instructors, CBT practitioners and all kinds of “experts” make the classic mistake of focusing on symptoms. It’s quite concerning that people working as therapists don’t understand this most basic principle of change work; the problem is never the problem!
These case studies prove that driving anxiety has nothing to do with driving
Why driving statistics won’t help
CBT practitioners often get frustrated with you when you say you can’t drive because they don’t understand why not.
To fix this, they’ll bombard you with more and more logical thoughts and statistics that won’t do anything because they have nothing to do with the problem.
They often get you to go and stand by a road to make you feel better about it. They’ll tell you how if driving was that dangerous, then nobody would do it. They mean well, but they just don’t know what they’re doing.
The difference between your typical therapist and me is that I have spent over 20 years of my life as a driving instructor. I have been right there in the car seeing panic attacks happen so I understand it in a way other therapists don’t.
I’ve been a professional therapist for years too, and I’m not just trained to a basic level like most. I don’t tell people to imagine unicorns and waterfalls as I whisper how easy driving is. That stuff is all nonsense.
Combining my driving instructor and advanced therapy skills together makes me the go-to person for driving anxiety.
What I understand that others don’t is this:
You can’t fix an unconscious problem with a conscious solution.
This video shows how CBT techniques will fail to fix your fear of driving
What causes driving anxiety?
A fear of driving is caused by a trapped emotion from your past, which could be caused by anything. I’ve known the cause of driving anxiety to be a lost toy, work stress, relationship issues and many other things.
The one thing I’ve never known driving anxiety to be caused by is driving.
That old emotion is being triggered (replayed) when you drive. At one point in your life, that feeling served a purpose. It protected you from something or helped you in some way.
The problem is that your mind has no concept of time. The event that’s causing all this stress might have happened when you were 5 years old, but your mind doesn’t know that years have passed, and it’s still faithfully carrying out its duty of keeping you safe.
To overcome a fear of driving, you must find that emotion and release it.
The great thing about the way I do this is that it all happens automatically and you don’t have to actually “do” anything in a session. Your mind does it for you!
Here’s one way that you certainly won’t do it…
CBT, exposure therapy and fear ladders
One of CBT’s favourite tricks to overcome driving anxiety is exposure therapy, otherwise known as a fear ladder.
The idea is that you gradually build up bit by bit, driving a little further each time so that you gradually get back to normal, climbing the ladder of fear, so to speak.
There is just one problem with this:
Exposure therapy doesn’t work.
Having taught over 1,000 people to drive as one of the UK’s top driving instructors for over 20 years, I have to cringe when I hear doctors and all kinds of therapists telling people to go out driving no matter how anxious they feel. Just ignore the panic, ignore the feeling, push through and keep going! You’ll be fine! Probably. I hope.
Those people don’t understand what driving anxiety is. They think you feel a bit annoyed by traffic or that you get a bit nervous. They don’t understand the sheer panic and overwhelming feelings you’re experiencing. They’re hoping the problem will go away because they don’t know what to do.
Forcing yourself into driving will only make it worse, as the thing in your mind causing your anxiety redoubles its efforts to stop you from driving.
Exposure therapy for driving anxiety can be dangerous
Exposure therapy can work for some things like a fear of spiders. Having a non-deadly spider walk over your hand can get you more used to it, but even that is a horrific experience.
Yes, you do have to go out driving at some point, but the difference with my therapy is that you’ll have worked on the problem from the safety of home first. You’re not just brutally forcing yourself into swerving all over the road and causing mayhem to everyone around you because someone told you that would fix your fear of driving.
We already know that driving anxiety has nothing to do with driving, so just driving a bit more each time is not going to fix anything.
See my page on why exposure therapy fails for more info.
How to overcome a fear of driving properly
The only way to truly fix your driving anxiety is to access your unconscious mind and make the change there. This is done by using hypnosis.
Now, before you go thinking of stage shows using hypnosis where people are made to bark like dogs and forget their name, that’s not what I’m talking about. What I mean is hypnotherapy which uses hypnosis more subtly for the purpose of healing, not entertainment.
There is such a thing as CBH (Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy), which is like fixing everything wrong with CBT and tying a rocket to it to make it 100 times faster.
Does CBT work for driving anxiety?
When it does work, it’s because you’ve accidentally used hypnosis by mistake.
It’s funny when I watch CBT sessions and the CBT practitioner has no idea that their client is in hypnosis. This is because many people falsely believe the following:
- You must have your eyes closed to be in hypnosis
- You have to be in a quiet room with soft music playing
- It only happens if you mean to use it and have studied it
All of those things are nonsense.
What is hypnosis then?
Hypnosis is a state of focus.
It isn’t magic; it isn’t evil. You don’t need to swing a pocket watch in front of someone for it to work.
Hypnosis happens to us all, many times each day. Driving somewhere and not being able to remember anything about your journey, getting so lost in a movie that you lose track of time, or getting sad when you listen to a song that reminds you of something are all common examples of hypnosis.
When people have success fixing driving anxiety with CBT, it’s because they’ve used hypnosis without knowing it!
This is far too big to explain here. You can learn more by reading other pages of my site, such as why can’t I be hypnotised. You can also watch my videos on my YouTube channel.
Is CBT good for anything?
Yes.
CBT has its uses, and it can help with a variety of issues, but driving anxiety isn’t one of them.
In the same way that I wouldn’t recommend CBT alone for driving anxiety, I wouldn’t recommend hypnotherapy alone for some other things such as dealing with alcoholism.
I’ve had several clients who were CBT practitioners, and I have nothing against anyone using CBT. I just find that it doesn’t help with driving issues.
There are people who have had huge results with CBT and changed their lives.
Successful therapy is about choosing the right approach for you and your problem.
Contact me for help overcoming driving anxiety
My online driving anxiety course helps you overcome your fear of driving without even having to take therapy sessions with me.
If you prefer to work with me 1-2-1, contact me to work with me online from anywhere in the world.
If you want to learn more first, then see my page on how to overcome driving anxiety.