Human phobias, which are generally defined as an intense, irrational fear of an object, place, or event, are mysterious. They are very common - experts believe at least 1 in 10 people will develop a phobia at some point in their lives. Yet it's often unclear WHY they develop.Phobias are fears, and fear is a normal part of life. Fear is a good thing in many cases. It's good to be afraid of things that really can hurt us, like certain insects, dangerous animals, or falling off cliffs. But the human mind can fixate on some fears and over-exaggerate them out of proportion to their actual danger.
But you can change the way you feel by changing the thoughts that make you unnecessarily anxious. Positive affirmations are an effective way to do this. Affirmations are really just the substitution of more helpful thoughts in place of painful, unhelpful ones. They help reprogram the linkages within your brain and body between certain thoughts and certain feelings.Here are 7 positive affirmations for driving anxiety to help you calm your fears and drive with more peace, self-assurance, and confidence.
Tell yourself.I trust that life supports me. I am safe. The truth is, you are safe. Driving is an everyday activity that untold millions engage in without incident. The thing that makes you feel anxious is the belief you're in danger. You're really, really not.I am solutions oriented. Driving anxiety disorder is solvable. One of the main reasons people become more and more afraid of driving is because they see it as an intractable problem with no real solution. This is false. This disorder is very treatable - IF you're willing to change your belief that it's not. That's the starting point for all therapies: the belief that change really is possible. I take charge of my emotions, my desires and my abilities. You've gotten in the habit of letting fear take charge of you instead of the other way around. I know the fear feels big and unmanageable. That's perfectly OK. It's still just a feeling, YOUR feeling. It's a feeling that belongs to you. You don't belong to it.I'm confident. I know I will solve my problems successfully. Confidence is simply the belief you can do something. The more you believe you can do it, the more likely you are to do just that. Confidence starts with belief. Beliefs are just thoughts, and affirmations are an effective way to start changing them.
I live in the present moment and I'm confident of the future. All anxiety disorders, including fear of driving, are about what "might happen" in the future. The reality is, whatever you're afraid of ISN'T happening right now. In this moment, right now, you're OK. What you're really afraid of is that you won't be OK in the near future. Take your focus off the future and put it back in the present where it belongs. The future is just the present that hasn't happened yet, and it's going to be fine.I face difficult situations with courage and conviction. I always find a way out of such situations. There's no doubt that facing driving anxiety requires a great deal of courage. Something else that's not in doubt is that you've faced difficult situations before and gotten through them. There's lots of evidence in your life that you've somehow found your way through hard things. I mean, you've gotten this far, right? You'll work through your fear of driving too.Today, I'm willing to fail in order to succeed. This may sound strange, but failure is not something to be feared, but accepted as an inevitable part of learning new behavior. You can pretty much count on it. You're going to have to get comfortable with (or at least tolerate) failure in order to eventually succeed. You simply cannot learn to do something new and difficult without doing it wrong sometimes. Just remember that the only real failure is choosing to do nothing.
These will probably feel strange at first because you're arguing with your negative, irrational thoughts and you won't believe the new things you're telling yourself. Remember that repetition is a key part of success for affirmations.Repeating healthy, life-affirming thoughts has a hypnotic, mantra-like calming and soothing effect that will eventually change how you feel. Say these affirmations to yourself (out loud, if possible) whenever you experience driving anxiety. They have a cumulative effect which may not seem like much at first, but it will lead to surprisingly positive changes over time.You're nearing the onramp. Suddenly, you notice a constriction in your chest. Driving up the ramp, you feel a rush of fear as adrenaline surges through you. It's like being on a rollercoaster; the sweaty, dizzy feeling as the chain drags the coaster to the top of that first monster drop. Except being scared on a rollercoaster is kind of fun. Feeling scared when you're accelerating, trying to merge safely into the steel river of traffic looming in front of you...NOT fun. Not fun at all.
Driving anxiety is an example of a specific anxiety disorder. A specific anxiety disorder is one in which an individual may not feel anxious in general, such as generalized anxiety disorder, but will become anxious and panic in specific situations. Many times, people with a specific anxiety disorder will feel anxious effects when socializing with others, but this does not hold true for all cases. In other situations, such as driving your car, people are still able to experience severe anxiety based on their surroundings.
Merging. Merging into traffic at freeway speed is very stressful. Even "normal" (aka non-phobic) drivers find their hearts pounding a little. Merging can feel exposed and overwhelming. It feels unsafe because there's too much happening too fast. Lane changes. The combination of speed and traffic makes changing lanes difficult. Also, pushy drivers sometimes monopolize every extra inch of space, making lane changes even harder for less confrontational types. Lateral movement across lanes takes skill and a certain amount of aggression. This is tough with driving phobia.Passing or overtaking. Going around other vehicles at high speed is nerve-racking because you're so close to other large, moving objects. It's especially bad passing trucks or other big vehicles. Passing feels exposed and claustrophobic too.Feeling trapped. Driving phobia is a manifestation of agoraphobia, which "clusters" around social interactions where exit or escape is difficult. Like sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, or driving over a bridge where pulling over isn't possible. Any experience of close quarters with other people and no "fast out" can trigger panic. Crowded freeways are a prime candidate.
One technique which can help to overcome this problem is to go through a driving training course. Often the fear comes because you do not have enough confidence in your driving skills or because you have experienced a minor accident or even a moving violation. In circumstances like this a driving course will be of great help. The course will assist you develop your skills which will raise your confidence in your abilities behind the wheel. When you feel better regarding your capability in driving, you should be in a position to do it with no fear.
Driver Training / Coaching. Perhaps your fear is due to feeling that you lack good driving skills. Whether you need to learn how to drive, or just want to brush up your abilities, a good defensive driving course can make you more confident behind the wheel. Hypnotherapy. Common misconceptions about hypnosis are that you're under someone's "spell" and might be manipulated. This is mostly due to stage hypnosis that's used for entertainment. A qualified hypnotherapist treats anxiety by inducing a relaxed state where you learn to change your internal reactions to fear triggers.This also helps you control the physical reactions of anxiety like dizziness and hyperventilation by stimulating the parasympathetic response - your body's built in stress reduction mechanism.
Self-Help. Many, MANY resources are available. Evaluate your options carefully here, and proceed with caution. If you're brand-new to this world, you may want to start with professional therapy. It takes familiarity with effective treatment to accurately evaluate the quality of self-help resources. Not all are created equal, and not all have your best interests in mind.Medication. Sometimes anxiety is so intense it must be chemically reduced before other options can be explored. Medication is not an effective long-term strategy for driving phobia. It should be combined with other methods for more successful recovery. Always seek medical advice from a qualified professional like a doctor or psychiatrist. NEVER buy anti-anxiety medication from potentially dangerous sources like so-called "generic drug" websites.You don't have to live like this. And you don't have to continue avoiding freeways either. Your condition is highly treatable - it's just a matter of finding the options that work best for you.Next time your heart starts pounding as you approach an onramp, make a vow to get help for this crippling problem. When the day comes where you're driving easily down a freeway, WITHOUT fear, you'll be really glad you did.
But you can change the way you feel by changing the thoughts that make you unnecessarily anxious. Positive affirmations are an effective way to do this. Affirmations are really just the substitution of more helpful thoughts in place of painful, unhelpful ones. They help reprogram the linkages within your brain and body between certain thoughts and certain feelings.Here are 7 positive affirmations for driving anxiety to help you calm your fears and drive with more peace, self-assurance, and confidence.
Tell yourself.I trust that life supports me. I am safe. The truth is, you are safe. Driving is an everyday activity that untold millions engage in without incident. The thing that makes you feel anxious is the belief you're in danger. You're really, really not.I am solutions oriented. Driving anxiety disorder is solvable. One of the main reasons people become more and more afraid of driving is because they see it as an intractable problem with no real solution. This is false. This disorder is very treatable - IF you're willing to change your belief that it's not. That's the starting point for all therapies: the belief that change really is possible. I take charge of my emotions, my desires and my abilities. You've gotten in the habit of letting fear take charge of you instead of the other way around. I know the fear feels big and unmanageable. That's perfectly OK. It's still just a feeling, YOUR feeling. It's a feeling that belongs to you. You don't belong to it.I'm confident. I know I will solve my problems successfully. Confidence is simply the belief you can do something. The more you believe you can do it, the more likely you are to do just that. Confidence starts with belief. Beliefs are just thoughts, and affirmations are an effective way to start changing them.
I live in the present moment and I'm confident of the future. All anxiety disorders, including fear of driving, are about what "might happen" in the future. The reality is, whatever you're afraid of ISN'T happening right now. In this moment, right now, you're OK. What you're really afraid of is that you won't be OK in the near future. Take your focus off the future and put it back in the present where it belongs. The future is just the present that hasn't happened yet, and it's going to be fine.I face difficult situations with courage and conviction. I always find a way out of such situations. There's no doubt that facing driving anxiety requires a great deal of courage. Something else that's not in doubt is that you've faced difficult situations before and gotten through them. There's lots of evidence in your life that you've somehow found your way through hard things. I mean, you've gotten this far, right? You'll work through your fear of driving too.Today, I'm willing to fail in order to succeed. This may sound strange, but failure is not something to be feared, but accepted as an inevitable part of learning new behavior. You can pretty much count on it. You're going to have to get comfortable with (or at least tolerate) failure in order to eventually succeed. You simply cannot learn to do something new and difficult without doing it wrong sometimes. Just remember that the only real failure is choosing to do nothing.
These will probably feel strange at first because you're arguing with your negative, irrational thoughts and you won't believe the new things you're telling yourself. Remember that repetition is a key part of success for affirmations.Repeating healthy, life-affirming thoughts has a hypnotic, mantra-like calming and soothing effect that will eventually change how you feel. Say these affirmations to yourself (out loud, if possible) whenever you experience driving anxiety. They have a cumulative effect which may not seem like much at first, but it will lead to surprisingly positive changes over time.You're nearing the onramp. Suddenly, you notice a constriction in your chest. Driving up the ramp, you feel a rush of fear as adrenaline surges through you. It's like being on a rollercoaster; the sweaty, dizzy feeling as the chain drags the coaster to the top of that first monster drop. Except being scared on a rollercoaster is kind of fun. Feeling scared when you're accelerating, trying to merge safely into the steel river of traffic looming in front of you...NOT fun. Not fun at all.
Driving anxiety is an example of a specific anxiety disorder. A specific anxiety disorder is one in which an individual may not feel anxious in general, such as generalized anxiety disorder, but will become anxious and panic in specific situations. Many times, people with a specific anxiety disorder will feel anxious effects when socializing with others, but this does not hold true for all cases. In other situations, such as driving your car, people are still able to experience severe anxiety based on their surroundings.
Merging. Merging into traffic at freeway speed is very stressful. Even "normal" (aka non-phobic) drivers find their hearts pounding a little. Merging can feel exposed and overwhelming. It feels unsafe because there's too much happening too fast. Lane changes. The combination of speed and traffic makes changing lanes difficult. Also, pushy drivers sometimes monopolize every extra inch of space, making lane changes even harder for less confrontational types. Lateral movement across lanes takes skill and a certain amount of aggression. This is tough with driving phobia.Passing or overtaking. Going around other vehicles at high speed is nerve-racking because you're so close to other large, moving objects. It's especially bad passing trucks or other big vehicles. Passing feels exposed and claustrophobic too.Feeling trapped. Driving phobia is a manifestation of agoraphobia, which "clusters" around social interactions where exit or escape is difficult. Like sitting in bumper to bumper traffic, or driving over a bridge where pulling over isn't possible. Any experience of close quarters with other people and no "fast out" can trigger panic. Crowded freeways are a prime candidate.
One technique which can help to overcome this problem is to go through a driving training course. Often the fear comes because you do not have enough confidence in your driving skills or because you have experienced a minor accident or even a moving violation. In circumstances like this a driving course will be of great help. The course will assist you develop your skills which will raise your confidence in your abilities behind the wheel. When you feel better regarding your capability in driving, you should be in a position to do it with no fear.
Driver Training / Coaching. Perhaps your fear is due to feeling that you lack good driving skills. Whether you need to learn how to drive, or just want to brush up your abilities, a good defensive driving course can make you more confident behind the wheel. Hypnotherapy. Common misconceptions about hypnosis are that you're under someone's "spell" and might be manipulated. This is mostly due to stage hypnosis that's used for entertainment. A qualified hypnotherapist treats anxiety by inducing a relaxed state where you learn to change your internal reactions to fear triggers.This also helps you control the physical reactions of anxiety like dizziness and hyperventilation by stimulating the parasympathetic response - your body's built in stress reduction mechanism.
Self-Help. Many, MANY resources are available. Evaluate your options carefully here, and proceed with caution. If you're brand-new to this world, you may want to start with professional therapy. It takes familiarity with effective treatment to accurately evaluate the quality of self-help resources. Not all are created equal, and not all have your best interests in mind.Medication. Sometimes anxiety is so intense it must be chemically reduced before other options can be explored. Medication is not an effective long-term strategy for driving phobia. It should be combined with other methods for more successful recovery. Always seek medical advice from a qualified professional like a doctor or psychiatrist. NEVER buy anti-anxiety medication from potentially dangerous sources like so-called "generic drug" websites.You don't have to live like this. And you don't have to continue avoiding freeways either. Your condition is highly treatable - it's just a matter of finding the options that work best for you.Next time your heart starts pounding as you approach an onramp, make a vow to get help for this crippling problem. When the day comes where you're driving easily down a freeway, WITHOUT fear, you'll be really glad you did.
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