Meet Stacy. She gets up at 5:30 every morning for work. She gets in her car and battles rush hour traffic for an hour and a half, sitting bolt upright with a death grip on the steering wheel and sweat pouring down her face. When she FINALLY arrives at the office, her neck and shoulders are killing her and her heart is pounding away like mad in her chest while she gasps for breath.  Stacy is one stressed-out driver.

Does this sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone.

For millions of people, the morning commute is the most stressful part of the day. We all know that stress is bad for you – bad for your heart, bad for your blood pressure…it’s even bad for your skin.  So how can we begin driving more free from stress? Try this simple tip: take a quick pause to relax your shoulder muscles.

Poor Stacy had to start her workday with aching shoulders and probably a tension headache to boot. Practicing this simple technique at stoplights would have saved some wear and tear on her shoulder muscles. You can literally do this in just a few seconds.

Watch this video on YouTube.

Try it the next time you find yourself totally stressed driving. It really is great for red lights! I use it every chance I get. When my shoulders are relaxed, my mind and body can relax too.

Now I understand why I suffered from a fear of driving for all those years! It’s partly due to my free floating anxiety.

My doctor said something recently that made my jaw drop. It was one of those things that’s so obvious it never occurs to you.

He had just given me an official diagnosis as having Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). GAD is also known as free floating anxiety disorder. It’s not like I never would have guessed I’m anxious until a doctor clued me in on the fact. I already know I’m anxious.

It what he said next that blew my mind. He was describing the symptoms of GAD and said, “It’s when someone is always worried”.

WOW. That hit me right between the eyes.

And it’s exactly right. While it’s true that I don’t stress (much) about driving anymore, I’m still a worrier. It’s almost like my anxiety is still looking for something to focus on. Because I tend to worry about everything.

And that got me thinking: is there a relationship between free floating anxiety and the fear of driving?

How Anxiety “Attaches” Itself to Things

More than 6 million people suffer from GAD in the U.S. alone, and it’s estimated that 8 to 9 percent of U.S. citizens will develop it at some point in their lives. It’s partly caused by brain chemistry and there may be a genetic factor to it as well. In other words, it’s possible to inherit problems with free floating anxiety.

Sigmund Freud pioneered the theory that phobias (like fear of driving) are formed when our minds “attach” a feeling of unspecified anxiety to a particular object. Future exposure to that object triggers the anxious feelings, even though the feelings may not actually have anything to do with the object.

Here’s an interesting quote from an article that further explains this concept:

“The mind, however, likes to attach things to one-another, and soon this ‘free floating anxiety’, as it is known, symbolically attaches itself to an object or situation, and in that split second, a phobia has been formed.

Now that this symbolic link has been formed, it will trigger the fear, whenever the object or situation is present, so, for example, when someone sees a spider, the link triggers the original fear to be felt once again.”

This theory seems to fit with my own personal experience. I’ve never had any terrible incident occur with driving. I’ve never been in a car crash, and neither of my parents had any problems with driving phobia. Yet for some reason, I developed an intense fear of driving that pretty much crippled my life until I figured out how to beat it.

Make Sure Your Fear of Driving Isn’t Just a Symptom of a Bigger Problem

There are different treatment options available for free floating anxiety. I’ve tried all of them. What’s been most effective for me has been a combination of psychotherapy and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).

If you have fear of driving, it’s possible that it’s a symptom of free floating anxiety. Your fear may not really be about driving per se. It could be that some generalized anxiety has “attached” itself to driving as the focus of your fears. People who are suffering from GAD should seek treatment. You’ll find a lot of good info about treatment options at PanicFreeMe.com

The human mind can associate fear and danger with almost anything. Make sure that your fear of driving is not just a manifestation of free floating anxiety in order to get the proper kind of help.

Sincerely,

Greg Weber

PS – I’d love to hear your thoughts about the connection between general anxiety and phobias. Please leave your comments below. Thanks!

You know you get anxious driving. But did you know that driving anxiety is a form of agoraphobia?

If this makes you nervous, you may have agoraphobia as well as driving phobia. Photo by Robert S. Donovan.

Agoraphobia, literally “fear of the marketplace”, is more commonly translated as a fear of open spaces. But I like this definition from About.com better because it’s more in line with what agoraphobics are ACTUALLY afraid of:

Agoraphobia - The fear of being trapped in a situation where escape is impossible or embarrassing, or help is unavailable in case of a panic attack.

Agoraphobics are not necessarily afraid of open spaces. What they’re really afraid of is having panicky feelings, and of situations where panic might be embarrassing, humiliating, or leave them feeling trapped with no way out and no one to help them.

Fredric Neuman, director of the Anxiety & Phobia Treatment Center in White Plains, NY, has this to say about the connection between agoraphobia and driving:

“People are really afraid that they are going to go out of control,” says Neuman. “They fear that they’ll start screaming, vomit, soil themselves or lose control of the wheel. They think if a feeling gets very strong, it will translate into action.”

Along with agoraphobia, Neuman says that fear of driving is one of the top three phobias treated at the center.

The Agoraphobia and Driving “Cluster”

Many think of agoraphobics as people who are housebound or unable to go outdoors. Although some with agoraphobia are indeed housebound, the view that all agoraphobics are shut-ins is mostly a stereotype. It’s just one of the many ways those of us with anxiety problems are lumped into broad categories that really don’t fit us very well.

The truth is that agoraphobia is a complex disorder that tends to manifest in “clusters” – situations that include social interaction like shopping, driving, or using public transportation.

Most phobias (for instance, fear of spiders) are specific to only one situation. Agoraphobia isn’t like that. It manifests in different ways for different people, which can make it hard to identify accurately and difficult to treat. Since agoraphobia is a progressive illness, it may grow to include more clusters when it’s left untreated.

Driving Avoidance – It’s Like “Miracle-Gro” for Agoraphobia

Here’s a GREAT description of the interaction between agoraphobia and driving from Anxiety Care UK:

Avoidance is like retreating from an enemy. We may feel safer to begin with, but we’re letting the enemy get us on the run. And we have to retreat further and further, until we find that a huge slice of our world has been grabbed away from us.

Read the whole article here…

As Smokey Robinson would say, “I second that emotion”. Avoiding everyday things like driving that frighten us may let us off the hook temporarily, but it comes at a high cost. We’re conditioning our brains to fear those things even more the next time around.

The Key to Success with Fear of Driving and Agoraphobia

I said in an earlier post that recovering from driving phobia basically comes down to facing our fears. And that’s not always a smooth process. Sometimes, we need to give ourselves permission to fail. We need to learn how to keep trying when we think we can’t do it. And that the only real failure is when we quit trying altogether.

Unlearning a fear of driving can be painful. That’s why we need tools to help us hang in there when the going gets tough. This is what Driving Peace is all about in a nutshell: helping you reclaim a big slice of your world that’s been taken from you. It’s about disconnecting agoraphobia and driving, so that driving becomes…well…just driving. The everyday, ordinary, even boring activity that it really is.

Remember, you can be afraid — very afraid — and still function. Despite how you may feel, there’s always something you can do to make things better.

Sincerely,

Greg Weber

PS – If you found this article helpful, consider signing up for the Driving Peace newsletter. I have lots more free tips on how to defeat driving phobia successfully. I’ll even send you a free report with strategies to you can use to start feeling better about driving right away.

Are procrastination and fear of failure keeping you stuck in driving anxiety? Are you ready to give up? You may just need permission to fail.

Failure is OK. Giving up isn't.

“In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

I just got schooled.

I don’t like being schooled, but I just learned something that totally applies to recovering from driving anxiety. I’d like to share it with you in the hope that it will help you too.

I’m experiencing anxiety about learning a new skill I undertook 2 years ago. It has nothing to do with driving. It’s a totally different area. But, the fear around learning this new thing is exactly the same fear I felt when I was recovering from fear of driving.

It’s the fear of failure.

I asked a group of Facebook friends how they push through fear of failure. Here’s one of the comments I got back:

There’s two types of failure. One is scary and the other feels great.

The good one is when you try something and it bombs. This teaches you what doesn’t work and moves you a step closer to what does.

The bad type is when you never do anything and you don’t move forward or learn anything at all. That’s bad failure!

He’s basically saying that trying and failing is a GOOD thing. Real (bad) failure is when we do nothing. Try nothing. Learn nothing. In other words, becoming paralyzed into inaction, doing nothing at all, is the only real failure there is.

Wow!

Do YOU need permission to fail?

I needed to hear the comment above because it makes me remember when my life was ruled by driving anxiety. I was so scared I’d fail if I did anything out of my driving “comfort zone”, which was very, very small. I already felt life a failure, and I was afraid I’d feel even MORE like a failure if I tried some new driving situations and couldn’t handle them.

Eventually, I realized I needed to give myself permission to fail. I needed the freedom that comes with trying something new and not being very good at it at first.

I encourage you to give yourself this same permission about your driving anxiety. The Driving Peace program is about reprogramming our brains, training ourselves to react in new ways to the things that scare us about driving. And that means learning (and USING) new skills. Which means that we’re going to fail sometimes. And that’s OK. In fact, it’s even a healthy sign of progress.

The failure that makes you grow

Let’s say that you have freeway phobia. You’re terrified of driving on freeways, so you avoid them. Eventually, you may not be able to drive on freeways at all. I talk more about the consequences of avoidance in my free report, which you can get here.

You may end up so afraid of not being able to drive on freeways that…you can’t drive on freeways! You’ve reached the state of paralysis that fear of failure eventually leads us to: we give up trying altogether.

What you need is to go on the freeway…and TOTALLY suck at it!

"We use fear of driving to criticize ourselves, which is pointless."

You need to give yourself permission to be the WORST freeway driver in the whole history of freeways.

It’s OK if you can only make it to the next exit ramp before you have to get off. It’s OK if you can only drive 100 yards before you have to pull over into the breakdown lane. It’s even OK if you drive to the on-ramp and simply cannot make yourself turn onto it.

Because at least you tried.

You may not have done it well or for very long, but you DID IT! You learned something. You did something different. It may FEEL like failure, but it’s the good kind. The kind that teaches you. The kind that makes you grow.

Andrew talks about how we use fear of failure to criticize ourselves in Part II of the Driving Peace program. Click here to listen to a clip.

Accepting failure as part of your driving phobia recovery

Recovery from driving phobia or any other kind of anxiety really comes down to learning how to face our fears. The only way to do that is to try new things – new behaviors, new attitudes, new reactions. It really is that simple. We make it complicated in our minds, but it’s not. This is what the Driving Peace program is all about.

Learning something new is scary because we’re afraid we’ll fail. But trying something new and not being good at it is not real failure. Real failure is when we give up. When we find excuses to stop trying at all.

I’m going to keep pushing forward with my new skills even though I’m afraid I can’t do it. I’m learning that doing nothing is the only way that I can truly fail.

What are you going to do this week to confront your fears?

What are some other things we can do to confront our fears? Please leave your comments below.

Sincerely,

Greg Weber

P.S. – Click here to join my email list for more important updates and free bonus materials for the Driving Peace program. You’ll get instant access to my free report, “Fast Fixes for the Top 5 Driving Fears”.

Fear of highway driving is one of the most common forms of driving anxiety, but avoiding highways is not the answer.

Anxiety Driving on Highways

It even LOOKS intimidating, doesn’t it? It’s like a giant steel river, and every vehicle is a twig being swept along in a raging current. No wonder anxiety about driving on highways is one of the most common forms of driving fear.

Unfortunately, highways are now a fact of life. Avoiding them due to anxiety is not always possible. If you live in a densely populated area, being unable to drive on a highway can be crippling. Going miles out of your way to avoid the highway is just not an option for many people. So how do you begin to overcome this very common type of driving anxiety?

Let’s break it down by the 3 main problems people tend to have:

 1). Merging onto the highway

Merging, especially in heavy traffic, can feel claustrophobic and threatening. Many people feel dangerously exposed sweeping into a flood of highway traffic from some small tributary interchange. There’s definitely a confrontational aspect to highway driving, and it’s most intense while trying to navigate your way into the current. Highways demand a certain level of driving skill and the ability not to back down.

Check out this non-driving New Yorker’s story about moving to the Bay Area in California. I lived in San Francisco for 2 years and I SO identify with what she says here:

A Highway Phobic Meets Her Demon: Merging Traffic

The only way she overcame her fear was to confront it. And she needed a lot of help to do it too. Learning to confront our driving anxiety is a common theme for successful recovery. Avoidance tends to make anxiety worse over time.

I’ll give you some more info about overcoming avoidance in a bit, but for now, here’s some “quick fixes” that will make merging more manageable:

Drive during off-peak hours. Avoid rush hour traffic if possible. That’s when highway driving is at its worst.

Take along a trusted friend. Having someone you feel comfortable with in the car helps you calm down. Plus you have another pair of eyes to help keep track of things. “Sensory overload” is one of the biggest complaints about highway driving, so having someone to watch your blind spots helps.

Take a defensive driving class. Your anxiety may be due to a lack of good driving skills. Skillful execution of the physical mechanics of driving means more confidence in scary situations like highway merging.

2). Changing lanes

This is VERY stressful, especially in heavy traffic. Having to maneuver inside a river of cars used to be one of my worst driving anxiety triggers. Here’s a couple of things I did that helped me a lot:

Know the lane changes ahead of time. Suddenly changing lanes on the highway can be extremely unpleasant. Plan out any required lane changes ahead of time, BEFORE you drive. Drive the route during off hours to learn the lane changes under easier conditions.

Use a driving app for your smart phone. Both the iPhone and the Android have built in navigation apps that give you turn-by-turn driving directions to almost any destination.

3). Driving at highway speed

Sometimes we have to drive at speeds that are faster than we’re comfortable with. What’s interesting is that most of our fear about driving faster is psychological.

Let’s say you feel safe going 50MPH but you get nervous if you have to go 60MPH. What’s really changed? In reality, not very much. Something inside you has changed because you’ve left your speed “comfort zone”.

Julie Cohen from Daily Strength suggests using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to handle these “psychological shifts” and broaden your comfort zone:

I am anxious when driving on the freeway. What do I do?

Here’s some more ideas to try when driving at highway speeds:

Stay in the right hand lane as much as possible. This lets faster traffic move safely around you on the left and allows you to drive more slowly. Slowing things down will automatically reduce your stress levels.

Know the speed limit and drive 5 to 10MPH under it. It’s OK (and perfectly legal) to drive SLOWER than the actual speed limit, especially in the right hand lane. Speeding up to accommodate other drivers is NOT your job. It’s THEIR responsibility to go around YOU if they want to go faster. That’s the law. It’s also just basic courtesy.

Recovery means overcoming your avoidance

Successful recovery from driving anxiety is ultimately about facing your fears. It’s about learning new ways of thinking and reacting to the things about driving that scare you. Most experts agree that habitually avoiding something we’re afraid of tends to make us MORE afraid in the long run.

My life was crippled by driving anxiety until I discovered how to “reprogram” my fearful reactions to driving. I knew there were lots of other anxious drivers out there, so I turned my discovery into the Driving Peace program with the help of anxiety treatment specialist Andrew Cunningham.

I hope this article was helpful for your anxiety about driving on highways. Get some other tips about dealing with common driving anxieties in my free report, “Fast Fixes for the Top 5 Driving Fears”.

Sincerely,

Greg Weber