Making sense of driving phobia

A new phobia treatment centre has opened in Spain ( Burmin Institute ) which uses virtual reality simulators to treat a range of phobias and anxiety states. The treatment – called virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) – is based on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) whereby gradual exposure to the feared situation in a controlled virtual world is intended to reduce or extinguish the fear responses. Over the years there has also been research into the efficacy of virtual reality treatments on driving phobia. For example the study by The University of Manchester ( Science Daily ). These studies show some benefit although it can be a slow process – often taking 12 sessions over 3 months – and a costly one (creating and running the advanced simulators is expensive). Far better then to use the greatest virtual reality simulator know to man: the human brain. Everyone’s got one and access is quick and free. But using it correctly is the trick. In fact, it’s the misuse of this wonderful simulator – the human imagination – that creates so many problems in the first place. That’s why we can terrify ourselves with nightmares and phobics can scare themselves just by thinking about their phobic trigger. A driving phobic just has to think about a future journey and the imagination will kick in and create a disaster movie of it in their head. The brain struggles to distinguishing between reality and this near-perfect simulation and starts to trigger basic survival responses and can tip them into panic even before they get anywhere near a car. So what we do in the MindSpa Phobia Clinic when treating the fear of driving and other phobias is to utilise the power of this virtual reality simulator using a variety of tools which rely strongly on directed visualisations to decondition the phobic patterns and responses and install calm ones for future. This can all be done in a very safe and controlled way and very quickly – typically in one or two sessions.

When enough is enough

People develop very similar strategies to cope with their fear of driving

Well it's not drive-o-phobia

From driving anxiety to driving calm

Driving phobias start for very similar reasons (usually raised background stress levels leading to panic) but because the initial set-up event will happen in different situations for different people, driving phobia becomes linked to different things for different people. The most common trigger situations for driving phobia are: Driving on wide open roads like multi-lane highways (most common) Motorways or multi-lane highways with no hard shoulder or emergency lane Fast busy roads (so having to drive at speed) Bridges & flyovers Overtaking (especially large or long vehicles) Being tail-gated Being boxed in by heavy traffic Being close to particular vehicles (usually large or high-sided ones) Aggressive drivers Hills (or even slight inclines up or down) High, mountainous roads Tunnels Particular routes (especially unfamiliar roads) Bends (can be left or right or both) Cambers (usually adverse) Complicated junctions Restrictive roadworks Traffic lights Night driving Poor weather conditions Driving phobias often start on multi-lane highways and spread to dual carriageways, then to smaller roads restricting the routes, speed and distances that can be travelled.

A psychiatrist who had driven very happily for many years developed a driving phobia when her grandmother became very ill. Her grandmother was in a care home an hour’s drive away and the only times the psychiatrist could visit her was before she went to work each day. So she would get up early, drive out to see her grandmother and then drive on to work. This became very stressful because not only was she stressed by her grandmother being unwell, she was getting up very early each day and this was exhausting her. Added to that her visits were always very upsetting with her grandmother always begging her not to leave her there. One day, after a visit to her grandmother she experienced a moment of mild panic when driving to the office. This was the beginning of her driving phobia. It was brought on by physical and emotional stress. Not wanting to self-medicate with drugs (few doctors we see take their own medicine), she came to the MindSpa Phobia Clinic for help and was so surprised by the result that she is now studying the techniques we use in the clinic because all her training had led her to believe that change could not happen so quickly.

Lucy Atkins writing in The Telegraph, Saturday 1 November 2008 “I could probably cure just about any phobia in five minutes” says Guy Baglow, psychologist and founder of the Phobia Clinic. As I lie back in his comfy Harley Street offices, it would be an understatement to say that I feel cynical. Still, my glossophobia — fear of public speaking — is the most common problem Baglow treats. It’s estimated that as many as 75 per cent of us suffer from it, hence the old joke that the average person at a funeral would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy. Currently, Baglow’s schedule is packed with nervy City bankers riding out the credit crunch. “They’re terrified that if they can’t present themselves brilliantly they’ll be out,” he says. A phobia can develop over several years or strike suddenly. “It can happen to anyone,” says Baglow. His clients tend to be high-octane career people, hobbled by their fear of public speaking. One was a police chief, who, although confident when dealing with terrorists, had a paralysing dread of making a presentation. Then there was the top Texan salesman who was used to presenting material to hundreds but who froze on day one of a new job in front of only 20 people. His confidence plummeted and, like me, he ended up on Baglow’s couch. My own presentational nadir came 18 months ago when, at short notice, I had to introduce a famous writer to 300 people at a literary festival. The sea of faces triggered a powerful physical reaction: my limbs shook, my mouth dried up and my mind went blank. I was just about able to speak, waveringly, but feared that I might collapse at any moment. I have since, through dread, turned down interesting speaking and interviewing opportunities. “People go to enormous efforts to avoid what scares them,” says Baglow. “This can seriously hamper careers.” Sometimes the cause is deep-rooted. One City bigwig developed a sweaty back, neck and shoulders when giving speeches. During his treatment, it emerged that, in childhood, his father would stand over him threateningly as he recited his times tables. Baglow’s technique, known as the “fast phobia cure”, breaks these negative psychological associations and replaces them with new, calm and positive ones. I close my eyes, put on headphones and let Baglow’s hypnotic voice take me back to that awful literary event. I run through it in my head as if watching a black-and-white movie. We fast-forward my “movie”, then rewind it at high speed, several times. This “deconditioning” exercise removes negative emotions (there is no time to feel them), creating a sense of control. I then envisage a confident “future self’ before an admiring audience, and “fast-forward rewind” this scenario a few times. At the end of the two-hour session I feel weirdly confident: I could almost rush straight to Speakers’ Corner and let rip. “No one needs to live with a phobia,” says Baglow. He claims to have cured many phobias — about anything from tomatoes to sharks and, memorably, male strippers — in a couple of sessions. There is no need for Freudian analysis, tears or tearing out of hair, he says. Whether I am cured remains to be seen. But one client, a quaking banker with a public-speaking phobia, has just enrolled on a stand-up comedy course. There is hope for us all.

Chris Evans, The Guardian, 12 June 2017