Overcoming driving anxiety with hypnosis

Driving a car is the best thing in the world for some, but a nightmare come true for others. Driving anxiety is very annoying because in Dutch society you often need a car anyway, for example for work. In large parts of the country everything is easily accessible by public transport, but there are equally large parts of the country where a car is necessary. To give you more freedom, in this article I will discuss overcoming driving anxiety

Dealing with driving anxiety

Fear of driving is something that not only limits your freedom but also endangers the safety of other road users if you still get behind the wheel despite your fears. Traffic is often unpredictable, and you need to be able to react quickly. Cyclists who suddenly run a red light or a car that fails to yield the right of way are situations you don’t expect, yet you must react to them to avoid accidents. This stress of having to react can cause you to panic, leading you to make the wrong decisions. Take a look at the show *The Worst Driver in the Netherlands*, where you can see many of these kinds of panic reactions.

Another fear is more social, namely the fear that if you make a mistake it may be judged by others and you will suddenly be labeled as stupid when it comes to driving. Especially if you have ever caused an accident because of your driving that required you to surrender your license, this can be an obvious connection.

Research comparing anxious and non-anxious drivers shows that anxious drivers make mistakes more often than non-anxious drivers. However, the types of mistakes are all the same. So you don’t make more serious mistakes than a driver who isn’t anxious, but you do make them more often.

According to researchers, anxiety makes a driver feel that the risks of accidents are much higher than they are. To normalize this feeling again, attention must be paid to the sense of control, knowledge of the chances that something could happen and the sense of responsibility. Therefore, a hypnosis session against driving anxiety will always respond to the driver's feeling about driving.

A 2006 case study shows that a hypnotherapist can use various successful techniques for this. Initially, the woman with a fear of driving had to visualize a successful drive while under hypnosis. A hypnotherapist can help you with this, just as I did with a participant on *The Worst Driver in the Netherlands*.

In this case study, the woman needed only four hypnosis sessions, which is 1 month if you attend a session every week, to achieve her goals of daring to drive longer and more unfamiliar rides.

Driving anxiety highway

Many novice drivers or people who don't drive regularly have a particular fear of the highway. Because that's where you go fast and so if something happens, the possibility of it becoming a serious accident is much higher than if you drive in a 30-kilometer zone. This is actually not true at all. In fact, most accidents happen in built-up areas and if a pedestrian is involved it can certainly become a serious accident.

Highways are precisely the safest roads to drive on. People are prevented from driving on the wrong side of the road and there can be no cyclists or pedestrians. So on the highway, you are much less likely to get into an accident.

Cars are also made to cope with highway speeds and really don't fall apart if you drive 130 kilometers per hour.

During a hypnosis session, the driver’s beliefs about driving are always addressed. If someone has a fear of driving on the highway, these beliefs might include:

"I can't control the car on the highway."

"Everyone is driving so fast, it must be going wrong."

These types of beliefs cause you to avoid the highway, for example. During a hypnosis session, these beliefs are transformed into beliefs that make you dare to take the highway, such as:

"The car is made for these speeds and so I can keep it under control," he said.

"I can drive as fast as everyone else."

Driving anxiety can also be the result of a lot of insecurity. Therefore, a hypnotherapist will also apply ego-strengthening techniques to improve your confidence behind the wheel.

Driving anxiety after accident

After an accident, you may suffer from post-traumatic stress, which can make you anxious about getting back behind the wheel. When a friend of mine had just received a car from her father and wrecked it in a collision, panic set in. First and foremost, of course, because her father “would kill her”—figuratively speaking, that is. Fortunately, it wasn’t nearly as bad as she feared, because he was just glad that no one had been seriously injured, aside from a severe concussion.

The first thing he did when he picked her up was have her drive home. This was immediately an hour-long drive. Putting her back behind the wheel as soon as possible allowed her worldview about how safe it is on the road to normalize immediately. Because even though accidents happen it doesn't always happen to you. It's a matter of paying attention and driving practice, so above all, keep driving.

If you don't have a very compassionate father or have just been in an accident where bones do get broken and blood does flow, you can have post-traumatic stress disorder. You then have to think about the accident all the time and don't dare get into a car. Not when you are behind the wheel yourself and not when someone else is driving.

As a result, you don't just have less driving experience. Your driving skills are also no longer maintained, which means you are indeed driving more unsafely when you get behind the wheel again.

Sometimes it’s immediately clear that the accident caused your fear, but sometimes it isn’t. In that case, regression therapy is used to go back to the moment when the fear originated. The beliefs that formed at that moment and how you can view them differently so that those beliefs lose their power and the fear of driving no longer holds you in its grip.

In the aforementioned case study, the woman also suffered from post-traumatic stress due to accidents from her childhood and accidents she had right after getting her driver's license.

Self-hypnosis and driving anxiety

Most hypnosis treatment includes self-hypnosis. This is tailored to the driver and his personal fears. You are then given homework by the hypnotherapist, so to speak.

During self-hypnosis, you can perform a variety of exercises:

• Visualizing the ideal ride.
• Visualizing coping.
• Repeating suggestions.

Before you begin self-hypnosis, relax. This is because by being relaxed you prevent physical reactions of anxiety, such as an accelerated heart rate, tremors and panic. This allows you to focus better on self-hypnosis. Therefore, take several deep breaths to calm down before you begin visualizations.

When visualizing the ideal ride, you can play the ideal ride like a movie show in your head. Your car starts in 1 go. You have no trouble accelerating or finding the right gear while shifting gears. You see all dangers, such as fast scooters, crossing mothers with children and cars that do not give way in time and you react appropriately.

You can also visualize a little more metaphorically that you can address problems. A problem is like a stone in a river and you, the water, glide beautifully around it.

Next, you can also repeat suggestions you've received from your hypnotherapist. This is often to make you feel stronger so that you are more confident behind the wheel.

In short

Driving anxiety is not only super annoying for yourself, it can also affect your fellow road users. In fact, drivers with driving anxiety are more likely to make mistakes than people who get behind the wheel without fear.

When you get behind the wheel anxiously, your focus is not on the road but on your own fear. Fear is the idea of what might happen. Actually, all the time you are thinking about possible future scenarios and therefore you are not paying attention to the road. This can cause you to make mistakes that can endanger not only yourself, but also other road users. I don't want to make you even more anxious, I mainly want you to do something to eliminate that anxiety. It does not matter whether it is the fear of accidents or the fear of what others think of you. The most important thing is that you get into the car fearlessly.

There are several ways to tackle these fears with hypnosis. Some of those techniques include visualizations and suggestions.

In addition, a traumatic event may have caused you to have these fears. Through regression therapy, the hypnotherapist can help you figure out where your fear of driving originated and how to deal with it differently so you stop being anxious and regain mobility.

Would you like to know what hypnosis can do for you, or how you can help others use hypnosis to overcome their fear of driving? Then check out the courses and events offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands.

Also pin this handy infographic as a reminder:

Sources:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005796706001616

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022437513000170

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ch.29/abstract