Do you find that getting into a car and even thinking of pulling out onto the road and driving has you quaking in fear? Do you find that you are very nervous when sitting behind the wheel, even when your car is parked? What has caused this fear? Were you involved in an accident, or did you lose someone close to you as a result of a car accident?

A surprising number of people around the world suffer from fear of driving, and the visible effects of this fear include sweating, nausea, shortness of breath, and feeling like you are going to crash or lose control of the vehicle. More and more people around the world find that fear is holding them back from driving, and their lives are much more complicated and difficult as a result of their inability to drive.

The Vicious Cycle

When the fear of driving attacks you, you will find that it will progress through different stages until it has won:

Stage 1: Beginnings of Fear

The first stage is when you first feel the fear of driving, and you begin to feel worried, nervous, and afraid. The symptoms are just setting in, but you will find that they will get worse if you don’t deal with them.

Stage 2: Fear is Strengthened

If you don’t take steps to nip your fear of driving in the bud, your fear will grow stronger. It will stop you from even getting in the car to sit behind the wheel, and you fear the fear itself. If you don’t conquer your fear at this point, you will progress to the next stage.

Stage 3: Sheer Terror

In this stage, your fear has progressed to such a point that you are absolutely terrified at the thought of driving, as you know that your fear will overcome you. You decide that the best thing to do is avoid driving altogether, as there is no way you will be able to overcome the fear.

Stage 4: Fear Triumphs

In the final stage, you simply give in to your fear of driving and avoid driving permanently. You feel that it is easier for you to simply avoid driving rather than to overcome it, as there is nothing that you will be able to do that will ever make you comfortable behind the wheel of a car.

If you have experienced fear of driving, you will know that it is important to stop it as soon as possible to avoid progressing through the different stages of fear. If you want to be able to get back in your car and be able to drive one day, you can’t give in to the fear and the symptoms that accompany it. You have nothing to fear but fear itself, as it is only your phobia that is causing the symptoms and not your body’s natural reaction to driving. If you want to overcome your fear, you must find ways to fight it effectively.

The Causes of Driving Phobia

It’s a little bit different for everyone, but most often the fear of driving develops after you have an anxiety producing experience while in the car.

Maybe you were in an accident or came close to one, maybe you were on the highway or at a red light and felt trapped, or maybe it just seemed to come out of nowhere and you got incredibly frightened for seemingly no good reason at all.

Maybe you even had a panic attack, which is a sudden and intense feeling of overwhelming terror with symptoms such as a racing heart, lightheaded, sweating, trembling, dizziness, nauseousness, an out of body feeling, thoughts of losing control or going insane, numbness, tingling, sensations of choking and more.

Now, every time you get in the car, you remember how scary and awful that feeling was and want to avoid it at all costs.

As much as you try to force it from your mind, it just comes back stronger. You either avoid the situation that makes you feel that anxiety or you grit your teeth and suffer through it, hoping that the next time it doesn’t get the better of you…wondering if you’re strong enough to keep it contained.

The good news is, it doesn’t really matter what caused your fear. Your suffering is needless, serves no purpose, and CAN be eliminated.

With proper treatment you often won’t be the same as before you had your fear, let’s be honest, how you were before is what got you into this problem…your goal is to be much better than you ever were so this never happens again.
That’s the good news, but here’s the bad news…

Every time you drive and try to cope with your anxiety the WRONG way, you may be teaching yourself to be MORE afraid! You can actually making yourself worse the harder you try.

Why You Never Seem to Get Better

Your brain is making a huge mistake and thinks that you need to be fearful when you drive (based upon that old memory we talked about). It’s wrong, and you probably know on a logical level that you’re not in any real danger when you drive on the freeway, cross a bridge, or whatever else it is you’re anxious about. But on a deeper emotional level, it doesn’t matter what you know logically,your fear is still real.

The problem is, every time you react in the same manner you have been, you reinforce to your brain that there IS something to be afraid of that has to be avoided.

You teach it that it’s right to be afraid and you make your fear response that much stronger!

What’s worse, your fear doesn’t only get stronger, but the more often you “practice” being afraid, the more automatic the reaction becomes and the harder it is to stop it. That’s why it seems so beyond your control and how it appears to come out of nowhere.

Let’s look at an example, it works the same way you learn anything, just like riding a bike.

When you first start, your brain hasn’t learned what to do and you have to think and try very hard to stay upright. But once you’ve ridden for awhile and practiced enough, your brain takes over and does it all automatically (you don’t THINK about riding your bike, you just do it and rely on your stored learning), that’s why you feel like your fear comes on out of nowhere and is so unstoppable. It’s why your logic makes no difference, you’re logical mind isn’t what’s causing your fear – it’s caused by your stored memories you can’t directly control!

The hard part is psychologically “erasing” those old memories of fear and anxiety and replacing them with new, more productive thoughts of confidence and calm.

It’s something that’s VERY difficult and often impossible for people to do on their own, just like it would be incredibly hard to “unlearn” how to ride a bike.

By design, our minds want to hold onto learned behavior. Your brain is so powerful that you could not ride a bike for 20 years or more and then jump back on and not have forgotten how to do it.

Our brain is a wonderful tool, but sometimes the same things that make it so powerful can cause us great problems.

With the Driving Fear Program you’ll learn EXACTLY how you can scrub away all those worthless memories and behaviors that cause you so much trouble while driving and replace them with new empowering thoughts that will make you feel like a new person!

How to Treat Driving Phobia

So now you understand why you have this fear, you’ve accidentally taught your brain to “ride the fear bike”, and you understand that you need to learn how to teach it something new.

Many times, people who are afraid of driving have very scary, irrational thoughts while they’re in the car, or even think about driving. They’re caused by the anxiety they feel and make people think that they may be going crazy, having a breakdown, or will lose control.

Well I’m here to tell you that you won’t lose control because of your anxiety, and it won’t make you go “crazy”. It will make you feel miserable, depressed, and limit your life needlessly if you let it and choose not to treat it, but all those horrible things that run through your mind when you’re anxious usually just aren’t true, no matter how real they feel at the time.

As a matter of fact, one of the things you’ll learn in the Driving Fear Program is how you can teach yourself to NOT have those thoughts anymore.

Once you get those ridiculous and frightening thoughts out of your head, driving can get a lot LESS stressful.

The other, and maybe most important thing you need to understand about your fear of driving is that it is NOT hopeless, you do NOT have to live with your fear the rest of your life, and that I’m confident you CAN completely and permanently overcome your fear just like so many others have.

In my experience, with my life and the lives of thousands of others, the condition you have can be completely overcome, if you decide you want it gone, it can be.

The Driving Fear Program has been used successfully all over the world by both individuals and in clinical settings to help people work through their fear and eliminate their anxiety about driving or driving in certain situations such as on highways, over bridges, in traffic, with people, alone, etc.

If you’re struggling with anxiety or fear while driving, you owe it to yourself to learn more about the Driving Fear Program, the easy to use, affordable, and fully guaranteed self-help program specifically designed to help you overcome your driving anxiety and take back your freedom and confidence.