Most likely, everyone met in the life of a person who categorically refuses to drive a car and prefers to travel by public transport, walk or be in the role of a lifelong passenger. Even if such a person has a car, he can carefully avoid the driver's seat, because he is afraid. Fear of driving a car is amaxophobia.
What it is?
Fear of driving a car is usually found in novice drivers, cadets of driving schools, but it happens with drivers with a long record of service as a result of severe psychological trauma after the accident. For some reason, it is believed that the fear of driving a car is a typical female problem. However, medical statistics show that amaxophobia is equally common in women and men, just the latter are less likely to admit to themselves and others in panic fear of the prospect of driving.
Fear of driving a car belongs to the category of specific phobias. In the International Classification of Diseases, he is assigned the code F-40.2, which encodes all local phobic disorders.
At first glance, amaxophobia is not a big problem - you are afraid to drive a car, do not drive it and the problem will be solved. But not so simple. A private problem can become global, since a mental disorder, of which amaxophobia is, tends to progress rapidly. It can lead to the development of other mental problems.
In psychiatric practice, cases have been described when an amaxophobe, who was initially only afraid to drive a car, began to be afraid of any transport over time, even as a passenger refused to board a tram or bus.This is fraught with the fact that a person will have to adjust his life under fear - to look for a less prestigious job (but you don’t need to go near the house), refuse to meet with friends (you have to travel the metro halfway). Therefore, it is believed that Amaxophobia, while it is still just beginning, must be treated in order to maintain the quality of human life.
Why arises?
The reasons why the fear of driving a car develops are numerous. Most of them lie in the experienced negative experiences. Most often the disease becomes a consequence of psychological drama, a severe shock experienced in childhood, in adolescence, and even in adulthood.
What events are in question is not difficult to understand - they are somehow connected with cars. These are road traffic accidents (RTAs) in which the person himself was injured and injured. Moreover, he could be at the time of the accident both at the wheel and in the passenger's seat. Cases are described when fear of driving a car appeared in a downed pedestrian who survived a car collision and was injured.
Mental disorder can develop against the background of the tragedy - the death of someone from loved ones after an accident. Phobic disorder is more characteristic of impressionable natures, with suspiciousness and heightened anxiety. Mature men and women, young girls and boys may possess such characteristics. Sometimes amaxophobia develops in people who themselves did not directly experience the tragic events and did not end up in an accident.
If a person is in severe stress, depression, he has a vulnerable and unstable nervous system, then even a news release that reports a massive accident and reinforces the message with bloody shots from the scene of an accident can be a “starting mechanism” for a phobic disorder.
Psychotherapists attach considerable importance to the role of education. If parents, grandparents explained to the child that cars are a danger, that they will certainly drive him down, if he starts to cross the road in the wrong place, goes on red, plays near the road, then the likelihood of phobia increases. An important condition is that the child should also be quite easily suggestible, anxious and suspicious. Of course, children need to talk about the rules of behavior on and near roads, about the rules of the road, but everything is good in moderation.
If the family already has an adult amaxophobe, then the likelihood that the child will grow the same is even higher. A parent who carefully avoids motor vehicles automatically passes a behavior model to his son or daughter. Parents who consider the method of intimidation as the most effective educational method succeed more than others in the formation of phobias in their children. They devise and describe in detail terrifying pictures of what could happen to a child if she decides to cross the road where it is not supposed to.
Symptoms
Amaxophobia in its manifestations is not far from most phobic disorders. A frightening situation causes an adrenaline rush that manifests itself on a physical level changes in blood pressure, heart rate, etc.
If necessary, to drive a person with this phobia, there is intense fear, which prevents him from thinking rationally, sensibly, and the manifestations of fear cannot be controlled. Adrenaline causes dilated pupils, pallor of the skin, hands and back sweating, fingers trembling, a person feels weak in the legs, and unpleasant sensations appear in the stomach area, which are physiologically associated with the outflow of blood from internal organs and its influx at the command of the brain to muscle tissue . In severe cases, nausea, vomiting, fainting may occur.
Amaxophobe himself understands that his fear cannot be considered rational, because at the moment it is not connected with a real threat to life. But this is still an excessive manifestation of the instinct of conservation, the brain of a person suffering from a phobia tries to protect him in every possible way from a possible getting into a dangerous situation, for example, in an accident.
From a healthy fear that a person can cope with himself, a phobia is not controlled. Panic is growing, a person can’t control the situation. He has an inexplicable, great need to run away and hide somewhere in a safe place.
Uncomplicated classical amaxophobia is manifested in certain situations - while driving, when a person has to drive, while in the car (even as a passenger), while driving (there is no fear in a standing car, it appears only at the moment of starting the engine and starting to move). In severe form, complicated phobia extends to situations in public transport, taxis, minibuses.
Quite quickly, phobes begin to practice avoidance behavior - they try to live in such a way that they do not encounter frightening situations. They walk, refuse to receive rights. But the most dangerous is a sudden panic attack, which, for example, can happen to a person with moderate amaxophobia while driving a car. If you get behind the wheel, get off and drive it turns out, then in any emergency situation on the road (someone signaled, cut, overtook, the pedestrian suddenly ran out onto the roadway), the fob experiences instant severe panic attacks that can lead to an accident and tragic consequences.
How to get rid of a phobia?
A modern person who needs to regularly overcome significant distances, keep up with several places during the day, just needs to be able to overcome the fear of driving a car or the fear of transport in general. But the advice of psychologists from the Internet or enrollment in courses and trainings to overcome fears will not help much. They never take into account the individual characteristics of the phobic disorder, and after all, starting from the root causes, different people have different situations.
Therefore, those who are determined to defeat amaxophobia can only be advised - You need to start by visiting a psychotherapist or psychiatrist.
If you go to a psychiatrist uncomfortably (such is our mentality regarding these necessary and very important medical specialists), then visiting a psychotherapist is a normal, familiar thing for most residents of different countries.
The sooner you turn to this specialist, the faster you will be able to get rid of a phobia, the more favorable the future forecasts will be. Launched, perennial forms of this type of fear are very difficult to treat. The first symptoms can make themselves felt in adolescence, as well as at the beginning of training in a driving school. If several times in a row you can’t get behind the wheel due to panic fear, should not be delayed by contacting a specialist.
The therapist begins by identifying the causes that led to the development of fear. They can hide deep in childhood, but it is necessary to find out, because the effectiveness of psychocorrection and treatment depends on it. The doctor does not force a person to overpower himself, does not require taking and fighting fear by willpower, since the medical specialist understands well - in the case of phobia this is impossible in principle, because a person in a panic loses control over his actions.
Cope helps cognitive-behavioral method of psychotherapy. It is based on a person reviewing his attitudes, because of which fear is born. At the second stage of treatment, the specialist begins gradually, under his control, to offer the patient situations in which he was so afraid to be previously. Key reactions to these situations must change.
It is clear that the psychotherapist will not drive and drive around the city with you. Used for this hypnosis audio sessionswhen a person in a trance sees himself in a car salon, starts a car, drives around the city, encounters unusual and abnormal situations. His reactions to them are worked out together with the therapist and are corrected.
If fear is not associated with panic attacks, they speak of mild amaxophobia. Often it is eliminated as the novice driver acquires the proper driving experience, therefore Do not neglect the additional classes with the instructor.
Only new, acquired experience will give more confidence in your abilities and help to cope with the excitement of driving.
There is no need to cure such fears in a full understanding of this word. But severe forms of amaxophia, which are associated with the fear of transport in general, need serious treatment. In this case, medications may be recommended - antidepressants, rarely tranquilizers. A key role is also given. psychotherapy.
In all cases, at the stage when the acute symptoms of fear disappear, classes on special simulators are useful. There are such in driving schools, and there are also driving simulators in the form of applications and computer programs. Psychotherapists often recommend computer racing games. At the recovery stage, you should often ride in the front passenger seat, as a person gradually gets used to seeing the road through the windshield - this is a common driver's review.
Do not assume that fear will pass quickly, that a few lessons with a specialist will be enough. For the most part, overcoming the problem requires about 2 months with mild stages of a phobic disorder. More severe forms require longer treatment. Inept attempts at self-treatment are fraught with the rapid progression of phobia and the onset of depression, an inferiority complex - these situations will already require a more serious medical approach.
