Case Study: Determining The Focus Of Driving Fears

Of all the challenges I have had to face, the one that pushed me over the edge was obtaining my driver’s license. After doing some research about driving phobia, I came to the realization that my actual problem was beyond having a fear of driving or riding in a car. Although statistics about this topic are scarce, there is a significant number of people struggling to obtain a driver’s license due to a driving phobia, a common condition classified under specific phobias. In many cases, people and even first-time drivers who had never experienced an accident before, struggle and fear. However, potential drivers that suffer from this condition do not take this seriously and even further, they are not aware that the driving phobia is in a significant

In most cases this fear extends beyond driving and negatively impact other areas of the individuals’ lives due to a range of underlying factors involved in causing this fear. All these factors taken to the extreme deprive from having a healthy and fulfilling life, paralyze the individuals from developing, and make them vulnerable to severe anxiety disorders. In the case study “Determining the Focus of Driving Fears”, published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders, researchers Taylor, Deane, and Podd claim that “those who present with a fear of driving often describe features consistent with various anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, agoraphobia, specific phobia, and social phobia” (455). All these anxiety disorders share almost the same characteristics and they appear to be genetically inherited, which made people more susceptible to develop the disorder. By implementing a mental health assessment alongside an annual physical examination throughout the individuals’ early stage of lives could ensure that the various anxiety disorders are not left untreated, otherwise, they could carry on and lead the individuals to a life of failures. As a person who had developed a fear of driving, this early detection of the nature of my driving phobia could have kept my mental health behaviors from aggravating and could have significantly prevented me to

For those who suffer social anxiety, this could be a traumatic incident that will intensify the phobia. While trying to identify the nature of my driving fear, I noticed an important behavioral pattern in me-a behavior that I have been having in other areas of my life too, the fear of making mistakes and feeling embarrassed. For instance, every time I went for a practice run with my husband and/ or while in a supervised behind-the-wheel training session in my third attempt to obtain a driver’s license, I was excessively anxious, overly defensive and having the most unpleasant dangerous thoughts. My anxiety was mostly triggered by my husband and the instructor’s harsh judgments of my driving skills. Once I was sitting in the car, all that confidence I had about my driving skills gradually vanished, my performance anxiety and negative thoughts were uncontrollable. These ongoing stressful exposures caused me to immerse myself into an episode of procrastination, putting on hold once more my goal of obtaining a driver’s license. Why was I feeling that way? I knew how to operate a car already so that was not the root of my fear, and also, while under the supervision of the other instructors I had–who focused more on the positive reinforcement of the job I was doing–none of the driving phobia-related symptoms arose. Making a negative impression on both my husband and