How do you overcome driving anxiety? Is it even possible?
The good news is that you can overcome driving anxiety. In fact, you can overcome it in as little as one hour even if you’ve had it for decades!
The key to overcoming driving anxiety is to find out what’s causing it. Let me give you an example of how that works.
How to overcome driving anxiety
Imagine that you’re asleep one night in bed when a voice from another room wakes you up. You live alone so your mind instantly thinks the worst, someone has broken into your home! You start to panic and your mind fills with images about what’s going to happen when this person comes into your room. They might attack you, they might rob you, they might do anything.
You then hear the voice start shouting out news about cut-price carpets on sale this weekend and realise that the noise is coming from a TV in another room. It was just a TV and not an intruder!
Now here’s the really important bit; what happened to your fear when you realised that the sound was coming from a TV and not an intruder?
Your fear went.
Your fear went because your mind understands that fear is not appropiate. There is nothing to be scared of from a TV playing adverts about carpet sales. The thought of that might even make you laugh and that shows how closely linked fear and excitement are.
Fear and excitement are the same emotion experienced in a different way.
Is driving frightening or fun?
Do you find roller coasters scary or fun? Some people like them and see them as scary (fear) while others love them (excitement). Everyone experiences the same thing on the same roller coaster, it’s merely a matter of how you interpret it. Your driving anxiety is just the same.
To overcome driving anxiety you must go back and find the event that caused your mind to fear driving. You then must show your mind how that fear is unnecessary in the same way we did with the TV example. There is more to it than that but finding the cause is the first step in a process that will release you from driving anxiety forever.
How to find the cause of your driving anxiety
Finding the cause of your anxiety can take some real digging and this isn’t something you’re going to find just by thinking about it. It’s more than just a memory and it’s almost always got nothing to do with driving at all. The cause of your driving anxiety could be a spider, an ice-cream or a tent.
Yes, I know that makes no sense at all but we are talking about the mind here. You know how you have dreams that make no sense? It’s the same kind of thing. Your mind does not think in words and logic, it just doesn’t work like that. This is why people sometimes find it so hard to get rid of driving anxiety – they’re not using the same language as their mind!
Once you have found the reason and released it then driving will be as scary as listening to a TV ad for carpets.
Read more about driving anxiety or if you want to see more videos then visit the 1stDrive YouTube channel.
