Who We Are

The Driving Anxiety Institute was founded as a single source for all information related to the fear of driving, driving anxiety, or driving phobias and disorders.

You can learn about your fear of driving and anxiety, what your treatment options are, where to find support, and everything else you need to know in order to successfully get on the path to overcoming your fear.

Please remember that the information on this site is for educational purposes only and is not meant to be a substitute for professional treatment or advice.  Please work with your therapist or physician to find the best course of treatment for you individually.  Also, please be sure to learn about our recommend treatment for anxiety and fear about driving.

Treatment Options

The first thing everyone with a fear of driving wants to know is how to treat and overcome it.  Below we discuss several of the most common treatment paths, along with some specific suggestions, as well as contact information of professionals who specialize in the treatment of driving disorders and driving anxiety that may be in your area.

Self-Help

The most common approach to treating driving anxiety is a self-help course of treatment.  This can mean many things, including buying a book on anxiety at the bookstore, reading information you find online, or using a course or program tailored to your specific fear or phobia.  Let’s look at the pros and cons of all these paths:

General Book on Anxiety or Panic Attacks

Walk into any bookstore, or perform a simple search on Amazon, and you’ll come across dozens, if not hundreds, or books devotes to anxiety.  Like everything else, some are better than others, but most have elements of good advice to be found within their pages.  In addition to books, there are medical and professional journals, magazine articles, and more that can be researched to broaden your knowledge and understanding of what anxiety is and what steps you can take to combat it.

However, the largest negative to this approach is the sheer volume of information to go through in order to discover the foundation of properly treating your condition.  You could easily spend months if not years reading and researching different perspectives to find a course of action that would be appropriate for you to take to conquer your fear of driving.  Not to mention that the mere act of reading a viewpoint doesn’t mean that the approach is best or recommended while driving.  While there are virtually limitless books on anxiety and panic, there are sadly very, very few books or resources on overcoming the fear of driving specifically.

Online Information

Similarly, there is almost nothing that cannot be fond online given enough time and effort, and much of it is very good and informative.  However, the ease if information distribution online is also one of its greatest flaws.  Anyone can put anything they wish on the web, and it can be incredibly difficult to impossible to validate the accuracy of what is being stated.  A simple Google search will yield 473,000 results as of this writing devoted to whether or not unicorns are, in fact, real.

The time necessary to read, research, and validate the information found across all the available books, articles, professional journals, and online make it an approach that we feel simply isn’t the best for most people struggling with a fear of driving, although broadening your personal knowledgebase on anxiety and gaining alternative perspectives in never a bad idea in addition to a more effective primary approach.

Self-Help Programs

Self-help programs for anxiety are a wonderful alternative to starting yourself from scratch.  The beauty of a comprehensive program is that the author has put in the necessary time and effort to research and evaluate the information prior to assembling the course, so you don’t have to and are left with the accurate and beneficial information to use to conquer your fear.

Some programs are purely informational in nature, and others are actual step by step systems to overcoming your fear.  Some are downloaded online, others are sent to your home.  Some are written, some are audio you listen to and learn from.  Your choices are many and you should select a program that you feel is best for your preferred learning method and individual fear.

Additionally, most programs offered are very cost effective.  From your own home or automobile, you can spend hours with an instructor via the program material, for what breaks down to be a very small per hour charge.  For instance, if you were to select a self-help program for driving anxiety that was $600, and it took ten hours to read through the material, that would come to an hourly rate of $60 hour.  Although some of what you may read will be similar to what you would be exposed to an individual therapists office, it would cost you what would likely be a fraction of the cost, and you can refer back to any area you like whenever you feel it’s necessary.

Some individuals who can afford the increased expense and inconvenience of an individual therapist do enjoy the person interaction that you don’t necessarily have as much of with an in home self-help program. An individual therapist does give you a certain amount of accountability and personalized support that a self-help program has a difficult time duplicating.  However, as you will soon see in our discussion below, professionals that specialize in the treatment of driving anxiety is exceedingly rare, and the chances that you live in an area where one exists is remote.  While there are certainly many therapists and professionals who treat general anxiety and panic, in our opinion, the unique considerations posed by a driving phobia require someone who has a deep level of knowledge in that particular area of anxiety, and unfortunately, there are only a small handful who meet that criteria in the United States.

Along the same lines, there are many different self-help programs for general anxiety and panic attacks, but very few that are tailored specifically for the fear of driving, which as we said, makes an incredible difference.  The self-help program that is almost certainly the most widely used around by a wide margin for the treatment of driving anxiety, by both individuals and clinicians, is the Driving Fear Program developed by Rich Presta.  Rich Presta is known as one of the pioneers in the treatment of the fear of driving, and one of the, if not THE, most respected and influential authors on the subject of driving anxiety anywhere in the world.  His Driving Fear Program is one of the very few designed specifically for the fear of driving and earns our highest recommendation.  The overwhelming success of his program is partly due to the great lengths taken to ensure that it meets as may needs as possible, and removes many of the limitation found in other self-help programs.  It includes both written material in the form of manuals, reports, and workbooks, as well as hour upon hour of audio material, so whether you lean better through reading or listening to the material, you will find what you’re looking for in the course.

The Driving Fear Program is also a step by step program, which shows you precisely what to do, and in what order, to fully conquer your fear.  It’s the closest thing we’ve seen to being with an actual therapist.

It is available in either download or print and CD format, so whichever you are more comfortable with is easily available to you.  You know that you can trust the program by its sheer volume of worldwide use, but it also includes an exceptionally generous return policy and money back guarantee.

Lastly, it is far and away the most cost effective treatment we’ve come across.  The Driving Fear Program can be had for as little as $67 and includes FAR more high quality material than any other we’ve come across.  We highly recommend that anyone with a fear of driving start with obtaining a copy of the Driving Fear Program.

You can read more about the Driving Fear Program by clicking here.

Post Accident Rehabilitation

If you have anxiety from being in a collision or accident, you may have special needs that may not be fully addressed by typical anxiety programs or books.  In those cases, it may be advisable for you to seek individual treatment with those that specialize in post accident driving anxiety treatment.  Unfortunately, finding a suitable treatment center is difficult, but we can recommend Challenger Rehab on Wheels, located in Ontario, Canada.  There are no US based facilities we can recommend at this time.

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