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Driving Anxiety: Why You're Not a Nervous Driver and How to Get Yourself Back · Moving Minds Forward

• 0:10
  gary johannes: Hello and welcome to Moving Minds Forward. Today, we're talking about driving anxiety. People aren't broken and whatever they're carrying, there's always a way forward. I know because I've lived it. I left school at 14 with no qualifications, one of nine kids.
• 0:30
  I joined the RAF at 16 and then spent years in sales and run bars and nightclubs. Not exactly the typical route into mental health, but in my late 40s I met a hypnotherapist and everything I thought I knew about myself turned out to be a lot more flexible than I'd assumed. I retrained and started inspired to change. And then later, I took an MSc in Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health at King's College in London, starting at 58 and finishing at 60. I'm Gary Johannes, solution focused technotherapist, founder of Inspired to Change, and lecturer.
• 1:12
  And that belief that people aren't broken, and there's always a way forward, runs through everything on this podcast. One condition per episode. What's going on? What's keeping it going? And what actually helps?
• 1:28
  And if any of this is relevant to you or anyone you know, do hit subscribe and pass it on. Let's get into it. Let's start with the thing you might need to hear first. Driving is not a sign that something's wrong with you. It's not a weakness.
• 1:47
  It's not silliness. And you are nowhere near alone. In The UK, more than a third of drivers say they feel anxious behind the wheel. That's Aviva's research. More than a third.
• 2:01
  And the people who feel it, nearly half say that the nerves actually affect the way they drive. It hits younger drivers hardest. Around thirty seven of 18 to 24 year olds say that they feel driving anxiety often, compared to about nine percent of drivers overall. And here's one that shows how much of a grip it can get. Nearly a quarter of UK drivers now say they avoid driving as much as they possibly can.
• 2:33
  So if it feels like everyone else is fine, and it's you white knuckling the wheel, They're not, and it isn't. Now what does it actually feel like? For a lot of people, it feels like a panic attack. Heart hammering, palms sweating, dry mouth, a bit sick, breathing goes shallow and quick. Some people feel lightheaded, like they might faint or lose control.
• 3:04
  The mind starts racing ahead. What if I panic on the motorway? What if I freeze at the lights? What if I cause an accident? It can be one specific thing: motorways, tunnels, bridges, roundabouts, driving in the dark, driving alone, or it can be a whole lot of them.
• 3:26
  Here's what's actually happening in plain terms. Somewhere in your brain, there's a part whose only job is to keep you alive. It's fast. It's ancient, and it doesn't do nuance. It fires off a threat alarm and floods your body with adrenaline before the thinking part of your brain has even had a look at it.
• 3:50
  That's the racing heart, the sweaty hands, the tunnel vision. That's your body getting ready to deal with danger. The problem is that alarm can't always tell the difference between real danger and remembering danger. And it's not reacting to the road in front of you, it's reacting to a feeling. And once it's decided the car is a threat, it'll keep sounding the alarm every time you go near one, even when, logically, you know you're a perfectly good driver.
• 4:25
  That's a bit worth holding on to. This isn't a driving problem. It's an alarm system doing its job a little too well. What's keeping it going? So if the fear isn't really about driving, why does it stick around?
• 4:42
  Usually, it's a handful of things quietly feeding each other. The big one is avoidance. It makes complete sense. Something feels frightening, so you steer clear of it, and you feel better straight away. That's relief.
• 5:00
  That relief is real. But here's the catch: every time you avoid, your brain learns a lesson. That was dangerous. Endodging it kept me safe, so the fear doesn't shrink. It grows, and your world shrinks with it.
• 5:18
  The motorway becomes off limit, then the dual carriageways, then anywhere unfamiliar. Bit by bit, the map of where you'll usually drive gets smaller and smaller. Then there's the what if. The mind runs the disaster film before you've even picked up keys. The crash, the panic, the breakdown on the hard shoulder with everyone tutting as they pass.
• 5:44
  Your brain can't fully tell the difference between vividly imagining something or living it. So by the time you're actually in the car, you're already halfway into the fear. There's also the body watching. Once you're worried about panicking, you're scanning yourself for signs of it. Is my heart going?
• 6:07
  Am I dizzy? And of course, the moment you go looking for those feelings, you find them. And that gets read as proof something's wrong. The watching creates the very thing you're watching for. And often, it started with one bad moment, a near miss, a panic at a junction, a white knuckle drive through a storm, one event, and the brain generalizes.
• 6:36
  Not that was a hard day, but driving was dangerous. None of this means you're weak, or you failed. It means a very normal system is stuck in a loop, and loops can be broken. What actually helps? Here's the good news, and I mean this properly: the brain, the same brain that learned to be frightened of driving, can learn not to be.
• 7:03
  Nothing needs fixing, because nothing's broken. It just needs reteaching. Let's start with the practical, because small wins matter. Before you drive, take the pressure off. Plan the route.
• 7:19
  Pick the roads you know. Put the address into the satnav so you're not deciding on the fly. Give yourself far more time than you usually need, so you're not rushing, and go easy on the caffeine before you set off. It's a stimulant, and it can mimic the exact symptoms you're trying to calm. On the road, break the journey into chunks.
• 7:44
  You're allowed to pull over. You're allowed to stop for a breather. Knowing you can stop often means you don't need to. And breathe properly. When the alarm goes off, your breathing goes fast and shallow, which tells the brain the danger's real.
• 8:01
  Slow the out breath down. Make it longer than the in breath, and you send the opposite We're safe. Stand down. It's one of the few direct dials we have into that primitive alarm. Tell people too.
• 8:18
  If you're learning, tell your instructor. If someone's in the passenger seat, tell them what happens and what doesn't. You don't have to do this behind a brave face. Now, the deeper bit, because tips alone won't shift fear that's dug in. You've got two parts of your brain at play here.
• 8:41
  The primitive part, the fast, fearful, all or nothing, and the intelligent part, calm, clever, able to problem solve, and see the bigger picture. When you're anxious, the primitive part is running the show. The whole game is getting the intelligent part back in the driving seat, if you'll forgive the pun. That happens through three things: calm, bringing your overall stress levels down, so the alarm isn't sitting on a hair trigger to begin with. Focus, trading your attention onto what you want, not what you dread.
• 9:24
  And forward movement: small, repeated experiences of driving that go fine, each one quietly teaching the brain a new story. That's exactly where solution focused hypnotherapy comes in. And I want to be clear about what it actually is, because there's a lot of nonsense talked about hypnosis. It's not mind control. You're not asleep.
• 9:51
  Nobody's making you cluck like a chicken. It's a focused, relaxed state. A bit like being lost in a good book, or a daydream you drop into on a train. In that state, the brain is far more open to rehearsing, calm and building new associations. So we do a few things: we bring down the background stress the bucket of general worry that keeps the alarm primed.
• 10:21
  We use that relaxed, focused state to mentally rehearse driving calmly and in control, so the brain gets to practice the version of you you want, instead of the disaster wheel, and we quietly build a new link in your mind: car road calm instead of car road danger. You're not being fixed, you're being retaught at your own pace. I'll tell you what I've seen over and over in that chair. People come in convinced this is who they are now, that they've become a nervous driver. Full stop.
• 11:02
  End of story. And it never turns out to be true. The confidence didn't leave. It got buried under a fear response. And when you clear that fear, the driver who was there all along is still there.
• 11:18
  I've watched people go from dreading the school run to booking a road trip. Not because they become someone new, because they got themselves back. If you take one thing from this, driving anxiety is not the truth about your ability. It's an alarm that's learned to fire at the wrong time. And alarms can be reset.
• 11:45
  You are not a nervous driver. You're a capable driver, with a nervous system that needs a bit of reteaching. And that is a very fixable thing before you go. You don't have conquer the motorway tomorrow. You don't have to throw yourself in at the deep end and white knuckle your way through.
• 12:07
  Change doesn't work like that, and you don't need it to. It's small steps, in the right direction, with the right support. That's it. That's the whole thing. If any of this sounded like you, and you'd like a hand with it, every one of our therapists at Inspire to Change works with driving anxiety.
• 12:29
  In person or online, wherever you are in The UK, you can find one near you at inspiredtothchange.biz. No rush, whenever you're ready. This has been Moving Minds Forward with me, Gary Johannes. Look after yourself, and remember, you're not broken, you're capable of change, and there's always a way forward. If you found this interesting, do hit subscribe, and if you feel like it, leave us a comment.
• 12:59
  It always helps other people find the podcast too. Thank you.