Driving Anxiety
Overcoming a driving anxiety may take you a significant amount of effort and time depending on how severe your condition is. There are individuals who find it easier to overcome such feeling when they try to relax which they will do by taking deep breaths and relaxing the muscles. If your case is more severe, you can submit yourself to a therapy so you can work through a previous traumatic event or resolve the issue if it has become a phobia. It will also help you to enroll yourself in a driving school which will train you to relax and have confidence while driving.
If you have moderate or mild driving anxiety that discourages you to drive in challenging conditions like on a city or highway and make turns at busy intersections; you can work on this when you start to practice driving. Have a slow start and drive for short distances on familiar routes so you will feel safe. If you can feel that there is a reduction in your anxiety in such situations, you can start to drive your car on situations that are a bit challenging like on getting behind the wheel on busier roads. Gradually increase the level of difficulty of your driving and practice more. With such practice, you will be exposing more yourself to difficult situations which may have previously caused your driving anxiety.
For some people, taking a driving school defensive driving course is a great means to overcome such anxiety. The course will teach you how to safely react to particular situations that drivers don’t expect. This way, the level of your preparedness will increase. If you feel the driving anxiety while driving, you can perform some breathing exercises so you can relax and tighten your muscles. Usually when you have anxiety you tend to breathe slowly and this will worsen the anxious feelings. When you are into this condition, you can take a deep breath and tell yourself that there is no problem. This will help you avoid a panic attack.
When you are driving and you having a panic attack, you must pull over until such condition passes to prevent yourself and other people on the road from danger. If a traumatic event caused the driving anxiety you should seek the help of a therapist to overcome such feeling. The professional will help you tackle the event and create strategies to cope with the anxiety. You can expect a longer time to recover from this and feel at ease behind the wheels again. When you will be ready to drive again, it is necessary to work on your own pace and do not be forced by anything or anyone else.
The best thing to do to overcome driving anxiety is to practice your way up and resist the trial to test yourself over bridges or some fearful areas or situations. Keep in mind that you have the goal to get better. You can also ask the assistance of a driving school instructor to help you cope with your driving anxiety so you will feel more secured while you try to overcome it.
