The actual name for those people who have driving phobia is hodophobia. Retraining the brain is always the main goal for whatever type of treatment for driving phobia. The phobia might have been cause by a near miss or a previous accident and there are several things that may have attributed to the phobia. Having an existing disorder for such is pretty common among motorists who are suffering from driving phobia.
The problem is, when your brain has an association between anger and driving. Whether you believe it or not, this type of phobia may extend through high level of anxiety even when the person rides as a passenger in the vehicle. By the time that your thoughts drifted towards the thought of driving, then you might start to feel the symptoms that come along with high level of anxiety which includes rapid heartbeat, seating, dizziness, scary thoughts, weak limbs, nausea and among other things.
Within just milliseconds of thinking about driving, your brain is triggering already your flight or fight response. Basically, this is a natural thing among everyone else whenever we’re dealing with an overwhelming situation in life or faced with dangerous situations. The thing is, this response shouldn’t be happening whenever you’re behind the wheel. Hormones adrenaline and cortisol are released which might annoy the nervous system. Now, such action can’t be controlled but what you could do instead is to retrain your brain to associate driving to something that is fun and relaxing.
And when it comes to treatment options, there are basically 2 primary options for it. You may seek therapy with professionals who are dealing with this kind of phobia. If you take this route, you will be given with anti-anxiety pills in order to help you feel more relaxed as you begin to drive. Therapy is quite effective but what seems to be the problem with it is that, it is oftentimes expensive and not everyone has the money to pay for the sessions. Another option is helping yourself through self-help techniques. Basically, doing breathing exercises and taking things slowly will be your primary objective. Breathing exercises can help in slowing down rapid heartbeat and taking things slow can help you as well in feeling accomplished. The impact that these things have is pretty big despite being a small step on your end.
There are a lot of self-help resources that you can take advantage of. These days, it is fairly easy to find driving phobias and driving phobia treatment processes. Online, you can literally find almost anything even about hodophobia, some even have programs designed to walk you through the entire process of overcoming the phobia.
