The fear of driving can come in many forms, ranging from the guy who finds a way to drive around town without ever making a left turn to the gal who won’t drive anywhere near a bridge or a freeway. For many, the fear is one of life’s little secrets that they may be too embarrassed to share with anyone else. Because it often remains a secret, the exact number of folks who suffer from driving fear remains tough to pinpoint.
But you can be assured they may go to great lenghts to find ways to avoid the specific driving sitaution that fuels their fears – or end up avoiding driving altogether.
While this might work if you have a devoted, driving-happy spouse, a brother who owns a cab company or live in a big city where public transportation is rampant, you’re still living with your fears.
“The mental pressure of living with a fear that you have not dealt with will affect every area of your life,” said How to Overcome Fear of Driving author Joanne Mallon. “It’s not just about the driving and getting from A to B.”
Development of Driving Fear
Driving fear is often just one of several phobias from which a particualr person may be suffering, according to Psychology Today writer and White Plains Hospital Anxiety and Phobia Center Director Fredric Neuman, M.D.
That’s because phobias like to grow, like unruly weeds, once one gets its roots in you. Let’s say Jenny suffers from agoraphobia, which Neuman notes is the most widespread phobia from which other phobias take root.
As an agoraphobic, Jenny fears having a panic attack in a place from which she can’t immediately escape. She may then start to avoid physical situations where she may feel stuck, like an elevator or an airplane, or social situations where she also feels stuck, such as dinner out with friends or in a large crowd.
She starts avoiding such situations, which is the key to what creates the phobia. Avoiding those situations leads to avoiding other situations and, before she may even realize it, Jenny has an intense fear of being out anywhere. This can include the fear of being in a car, whether she’s driving or not.
Any situation where she feels she is not in control or can suffer a panic attack and not escape can be fair territory for phobic behaviors. Even as a car passenger she’s not in control. And if she’s at the wheel? Well, she may believe she is apt to lose control if panic hits and all hell will surely break loose.
The more she avoids these situations, such as driving, the deeper and deeper her phobias can become, leaving her a prisoner in her own home basically of her own mind.
“Fear of driving can stop people living,” former driving phobic Penny Ling told UK’s The Telegraph. “You turn into a child having to rely on public transport or other people. If people have not had a phobia they do not know what it is like. It’s not just being silly; these kinds of thoughts and emotions paralyze you.”
Common Causes
Driving fear can sprout from other phobias, and it can also be the result of a traumatic situation involving driving. Perhaps you were in a major car crash, or your car malfunctioned in some weird way or the accelerator went nuts and you smashed into the side of a convenience store.
Additional examples include:
- The aforementioned former driving phobic Penny Ling, a hypnotherapist, who developed her fear after taking a job at a newspaper where her duties included photographing car wrecks.
- The woman who never learned to drive since she didn’t need to while living in Montreal, where she says “public transportation was a dream.” She got her license, at age 40, when she moved to a city where driving was a necessity. And then she moved to California with multi-lane highways and, as she writes to the Mercury News’s Roadshow column, “where most cars apparently do not come equipped with turn signals, mirrors or brake pedals.” She’s OK around her neighborhood, but terrified of driving on the highways.
- Joanne Mallon, the aforementioned author of How to Overcome Fear of Driving, is also a recovering driving phobic who had a double whammy that contributed to the creation of her driving fear. One was falling out of a car onto a divided highway at age 4. The second was driving a vehicle in which the brakes failed.
- Raising Kvell blogger Melissa Langsam Braunstein developed her phobia after moving to Boston, with a driver’s license, at age 18 and then promptly not needing it to drive anywhere. That is, however, until she had kids who needed rides out of the downtown Boston area and found herself terrified to get behind the wheel. “The longer I’d gone without driving, the more complicated driving had become in mind,” she writes. “I knew rationally that this was ridiculous, that many people drive, and that driving requires no special advanced degree, but I still freaked myself out.”
- Gemma Briggs, The Telegraph writer who wrote the article cited above, had her own driving phobia, although she had no major trauma to credit. She did, however, recall how after her third attempt at obtaining her license her driving instructor told her, “You’ve passed… but just only.” She said the words haunted her, making her think she was a crummy driver. He thus began to avoid driving whenever possible and, voila!, a phobia can be born.
Leaving anxiety and fear to fester can easily morph into full-fledged phobia. But we shan’t leave you in such a twisted-up state, as we’ll be sharing ways these folks and you can help manage or overcome your driving phobia.
Want more info? Check out our Tips for Managing and Overcoming Your Driving Fears
SOURCES:
- http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fighting-fear/201207/driving-phobia-ideal-treatment
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/road-safety/9750647/Fear-of-driving-and-how-to-overcome-it.html
- http://www.kveller.com/blog/parenting/confronting-my-fear-of-driving-for-my-daughter/
- http://www.mercurynews.com/mr-roadshow/ci_22979798/driver-needs-help-overcoming-her-freeway-phobia
