How to Cope with Anxiety While Driving?

 

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Driving Anxiety

One of the more common questions I’m asked is how to cope with anxiety while driving. People have many different fears in this area, ranging from fear of being caught in traffic to crossing waterway bridges.

Often the anxiety stems from a fear of being trapped in the vehicle in gridlock traffic or losing control of the vehicle and causing a collision.

Needless to say, even though they may have been battling a driving phobia for many years, almost all of the people I’ve consulted with have not actually had any of these mishaps occur. Let’s look at the primary fear: having an accident due to the distractions of an anxiety attack while driving.

Most people work themselves into a state of high anxiety even before they’ve pulled out of their driveways. They imagine scenes of causing ten-car collisions on the highway because they “freaked out” and hit another vehicle.

If you have such concerns, the first thing to do is review your driving history. Have you been a reckless driver in the past? Do you have a history of bad driving?

Most phobic drivers actually have clean driving records and have never even been in a minor road incident. Anxious drivers are not a deadly hazard on the road; in fact, they can be a lot more vigilant than many ordinary drivers who, after a long day in the office, are virtually asleep at the wheel.

As we discussed previously when looking at the biology of anxiety, by virtue of their conditions anxious drivers have a high level of sensory alertness. This level of alertness keeps them aware of potential hazards and focused on the task of driving—not daydreaming, chatting, or rooting around in the glove compartment.

This, of course, does not suggest that anxious driving is the ideal way to commute.

But I believe it’s important to make this point because so many chastise themselves for being anxious in their cars.

If you’re generally a good driver, before you set out in your car take confidence in that fact, and reaffirm it to yourself. Acknowledging and reaffirming that you’re a capable driver will go some way toward alleviating this concern.

The second major concern of most phobic drivers is the fear of being trapped in the car in some manner. By this, I mean being caught in traffic, on busy three-lane highways, on long bridges, or even stopped at red lights.

When allowed to, your mind will run away with this fear and imagine all kinds of deadly scenarios where you feel cornered or trapped in your vehicle with no assistance available should you experience a major panic attack.

The important thing here is to curb these fears before they take root, by offering yourself viable solutions to any of these scenarios and not letting your mind trick you into believing there’s a trap ahead.

Give it some thought. Are there really any situations, such as the ones described above, where you’re truly trapped with no means of escape?

No, of course there aren’t.

Eventually, traffic always moves; it doesn’t remain gridlocked forever. There’s flow, and there’s always an exit. This may mean figuring out the exit for yourself, but never let these thoughts corner you into thinking that there’s no escape.

When you counteract these fears with logical solutions, you undermine the control that fear holds over you. You begin to see the bluff it’s playing to keep you petrified of what could potentially happen out there in the traffic.

Your mind may rebel and come up with the worst possible scenario that you may get “stuck in”—but again, is this really the terrifying trap you imagined? Be careful not to let these thoughts trap your thinking.

Every minute of the day, people’s cars break down in traffic. These drivers have no option but to put on the hazard lights and leave the vehicle. It’s not going anywhere.

There you are, and there’s an exit, albeit an extreme one; however, by using my technique, it never needs to come to that. In fact, you’re going to learn how driving can actually be an enjoyable experience once again.

To learn how to cope with anxiety while driving, watch this video – How to overcome driving anxiety

Learn more about Panic Away here.

By Barry McDonagh, who is an international panic disorder coach. He created the Panic Away program to help people around the world deal with their anxiety and avoid panic attacks – a subject that he is personally attuned to because he himself found that he was prone to these issues since he was young. His hatred of his powerless lead him down the path of finding natural ways to treat himself without having to depend on expensive medications.

His informative site on all issues related to panic and anxiety attacks can be found here: How to Cope with Anxiety While Driving?

How to end fear of flying?

 

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Flying is often an anxious experience for the average person, so it’s understandable that it poses a difficult challenge for a person with high anxiety and frequent panic attacks.

I’m going to demonstrate how to apply the 21 Second Countdown to conquer a fear of flying—so you’ll feel confident and safe within yourself while flying both long and short distances.

Most people who suffer from panic attacks generally don’t fear a mechanical failure in the aircraft, but rather a failure within themselves (i.e., an out-of-control episode of sheer panic while flying).

This is because people who experience panic attacks feel like they’re walking around with an internal bomb that could go off at any moment, sending them into a downward spiral of panic.

If this “internal bomb” goes off in a safe place, such as the home, it’s much easier to deal with because that environment is a safe zone in the person’s mind. Being thirty thousand feet in the air creates the dilemma of not feeling safe and comfortable in the environment.

An element of claustrophobia also often manifests itself with fear of flying. The person experiencing the anxiety frequently feels a need for more open space or somewhere to hide and be alone, away from other people.

If you’re affected by airplane anxiety, your initial attitude when you book your flight is important. Be excited that you have this opportunity. Remind yourself that while on the plane, you’ll have new techniques on hand to help you overcome your fear and enable you to fly to far away destinations.

Don’t worry—you’ll be perfectly safe on board.

Often, a carefree flight begins the night before. Try to ensure that you get some good rest before your departure. Fatigue can cause excess stress. On the day of the flight organize your schedule as best as possible, ensuring there’s no hassle getting to the airport, passing through customs, etc.

You can do this by giving yourself plenty of time. There’s no point in adding more stress to an already nervous trip simply because you have to rush through the airport at the last minute.

As you board the airplane, reaffirm the fact that should the anxiety manifest itself, it won’t damage you. As you’ve always done in the past, you’ll move through a period of anxiety unharmed, and being in an airplane doesn’t mean that you’re in a situation where these thoughts don’t apply. So here’s your new approach to flying.

You board the plane, not in the hope that you’ll feel relaxed and calm, but in the hope that you will experience the anxiety and have an opportunity to process it.

As always, the real trick to making this approach fully effective is to completely throw yourself into the experience. If you hold a thought that all feelings or sensations of anxiety are bad, then that will only terrify you more and make you feel less positive about flying.

Allow yourself to feel anxious and expect you will probably feel anxious some time before the flight.

Capt. Tom Bunn of the SOAR fear of flying course recommends anxious flyers should not hide their anxiety from the crew and to, in fact, request a short meeting with the pilot during boarding. He suggests that just a simple hello and a few words with the pilot can erase a large percentage of the fearful flyer’s anxiety.

Now take your seat and if you’re not feeling any of the familiar anxious sensations, ask them to make themselves felt while the rest of the passengers board. If the sensations are there, you want them to reveal themselves. You can do this because you’re not hiding or running away from them. You’re not sitting in your seat praying that they don’t appear.

Remember how you reacted before when they started becoming apparent? Most likely, you started to get anxious and thought about how being on a plane was the last place in the world you wanted to be. Those thoughts grew in momentum until you scared yourself witless, and this was even before the main cabin door was closed.

If, on the other hand, you feel nothing alarming, that’s fine. Begin to distract yourself with a magazine, a book, or music. But, to be sure, check your feelings regularly to see if there’s anything anxious lingering in the background.

By expecting that you may have a panic attack, you place yourself under less pressure when you start to feel anxious. There is a voice inside us that, when alerted to a potential panic attack, screams one of two things:

Please, God, not now. I can’t cope with this here. Red alert!

. . . or the positive and empowering

There you are. I was expecting you to show up. Well, show me what you’ve got. I’m ready, waiting, you have got 21 seconds.

So if you feel the beginnings of a panic attack, that’s fine. You were never trying to run away from it; in fact, you were hoping it would emerge so you could move through it.

The more you really demand to have an attack during the flight, the more empowered and confident you’ll feel in yourself. It can sometimes help to become a bit emotional or excited with the fear when you demand it to show itself, because this helps the emotions to release and flow. You may experience a hot flush when this happens.

It is expected to experience a rush of adrenaline on take-off; notice that it has a wavelike effect. It courses through your body—and if you pay close attention, you’ll feel it pass quickly, in twenty or thirty seconds.

Nothing to fear here. After it passes, confidence returns—until the next wave comes, and the next, until eventually you notice the pattern. And, by not reacting, the effect on you is nothing more than bodily sensations minus the panic.

To learn how to end the fear of flying, watch this video – End your fear of flying forever FOREVER | MEL ROBBINS

Learn more about how to treat anxiety in Panic Away.

By Barry McDonagh, who is an international panic disorder coach. He created the Panic Away program to help people around the world deal with their anxiety and avoid panic attacks – a subject that he is personally attuned to because he himself found that he was prone to these issues since he was young. His hatred of his powerless lead him down the path of finding natural ways to treat himself without having to depend on expensive medications.

His informative site on all issues related to panic and anxiety attacks can be found here: How to End the Fear of Flying ?