Driving instructors are assholes. No, seriously. Not all of them, of course. But the majority are. I’ve met a lot of driving instructors via Driving Peace in the last 10 years. I’ve not been impressed. Some have been downright repulsive. Cretinous, small-minded, petty authoritarians who are legends in their own […]
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Much of defeating driving anxiety depends on your ability to calm down and be present. It’s no accident that my co-founder, Andrew Cunningham, is a clinical hypnotherapist; hypnosis for driving anxiety is a very effective technique for reprogramming your brain to see driving as a safe, non-threatening activity. Another way […]
More and more people tell me lately they get sudden vertigo while driving. Vertigo — which is also a fantastic Alfred Hitchcock movie — is a feeling of sudden dizziness. It’s the sensation that the world around you is spinning, even when you know it isn’t. Vertigo is a medical […]
Hypnosis has gotten a bad rap over the centuries. Many people still think of staring at a swinging watch, with some cheesy guy saying, “You are getting veeeeeerrry sleeeeepyyy“. But hypnosis is a highly respected form of therapy. And hypnosis for driving anxiety is very effective. Andrew Cunningham, the co-founder […]
When driving in heavy traffic, merging is a common challenge for many drivers. Traffic congestion can be a serious nightmare. On some highways, three lanes merge into two, or two lanes merge into one. Merging fear is common when you have driving anxiety. Without the proper skills, you could easily […]
Merging on the highway is a tricky beast. You have to make a series of lightning-fast decisions on the fly, and they all have to be correct. It makes sense that fear of merging on the highway is probably the scariest part of highway driving. It’s basically every phobic driver’s […]
It turns out fear of being a passenger in a car is way more of a “thing” than I realized. I’ve spent years on here talking about anxious drivers. But I only learned recently how many people cope with driving anxiety as a passenger. Check out the number of Google […]
A common manifestation of driving anxiety is feeling anxious about night driving. Driving at night can cause you anxiety, especially if you’re over 50 like I am. It’s more difficult for older folks to see well in the dark. Our night vision deteriorates rapidly with age. The solutions for this […]
Resisting a panic attack is the most natural thing in the world. It’s an animal instinct, direct from our lizard brain. That’s the brain stem, the oldest part of the brain. It reacts with fear and/or aggression to any perceived threat. Unfortunately, that includes threats that don’t actually exist. Our […]
Merging into freeway traffic is hands down one of the most scary driving situations. It’s scary even if you don’t have driving anxiety. One thing that helps is to make sure you’re using the correct procedures for freeway merging in order to make it less scary. Making Freeway Merging Less […]
Recovering from driving anxiety is a process, not a destination. And although we are trying to get to a place where it no longer rules our lives, we need to remember that anxiety recovery is a process that we’ll be working with (off and on) for the rest of our lives. […]
“Plug ‘positive thinking’ into Amazon.com, and you will find a never-ending supply of products designed to help us see life through rose-colored lenses, including ‘Power of Positive Thinking’ wall calendars and an ‘Overcoming Adversity with Encouragement and Affirmation’ poster series.” Scientific American Positive thinking. Our culture is awash in a […]