Overcome Fear and Phobia of Driving, Flying or Travelling with Hypnotherapy
DSFH, HPD; Reg CNHC, AfSFH, ABNLP, ABH, IARTT; BA Hons (London), PGCE (Cantab)
Effective, fast therapy for driving, flying and related phobias and fears, including traumas, social and generalised anxiety.
Fear of Travelling - a Common Fear
As a hypnotherapist, helping people with anxiety-related issues, I am often asked: “What are the most common fears and phobias you work with?”
The answer is, indisputably, fears and phobias related to travelling: driving, flying, travelling on trains, and even being a passenger.
What kind of travel fears and phobias are there?
Imagine you could travel wherever you wanted
Fears related to travel may be linked to everyday journeys, or to travelling overseas, which is even more challenging.
Different kinds of travel fears and phobias
Travelling fears include or are linked to fear of travel itself - hodophobia and …
Fear of flying - aerophobia
Fear of driving - vehophobia
Fear of being a passenger - amaxophobia
Fear of being ill - emetophobia, germophobia
Fear of insects - entomophobia
Agoraphobia and Claustrophobia
Social phobia
While some people’s phobias are linked to specific modes of transport, such as planes or trains, others fear being a passenger in a car or driving.
Agoraphobia, claustrophobia, emetophobia and social phobia are more complex phobias which may impact on your ability to travel comfortably and they can take a little longer to resolve. It’s why Sense-Ability doesn’t offer expensive two session packages, tailors sessions to clients and charges reasonable fees.
What causes these fears, what drives us to eventually tackle them and what can be done to resolve them?
“I contacted Sense-Ability to get help with my fear of flying. Best decision ever! Jane helped me a lot. Our sessions were in a cosy studio/ room where I felt comfortable, relaxed and in good hands. I have finally conquered my fear of flying. Would I recommend Sense-Ability? Definitely! Thank you ever so much”
How and why we create fears around travel
When we travel somewhere new, by definition, we are out of our comfort zone. That makes us anxious. There are a host of other reasons why travelling becomes stressful or overwhelming too. The most common reported causes in my clinic are:
1. Becoming a Parent
Being responsible for a vulnerable baby, and then driving with the baby in the car, understandably, can lead to heightened anxiety. This anxiety can develop into a persistent fear or phobia. I see a lot of young mothers with intense fears around driving which are usually resolved quite quickly.
2. Lack of Experience
If travelling is a new experience because there hasn’t been any opportunity to travel for a long time, it’s natural to be anxious and fearful. It may be that research and planning, practical knowledge and skills will overcome those anxieties. However, when the fear feels overwhelming and debilitating, and it is stopping you from travelling, it may to time to seek help.
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help you reframe the whole experience, from start to finish. You can imagine and rehearse various travel scenarios through the Solution Focused conversation, and embed them through suggestion-based hypnosis, until you feel confident and ready to travel.
3. Past trauma
If someone has been in a car accident or in a particularly turbulent and dramatic flight, the fear of the experience can become embedded in the mind creating persistent fear and anxiety, or a full on flying phobia. This is a very common problem and quite easy to resolve.
Dr Muss’ proven Rewind Trauma Therapy is very effective in helping people process past traumas quickly and painlessly. NLP and breathing techniques keep you calm in any situation. Rehearsing the flight through a reframe and embedding the positive experience through hypnosis, ensures traveling becomes an enjoyable experience once again.
4. Stress and Anxiety
Being very stressed or anxious makes anything that requires your focused attention, particularly new activities, feel overwhelming. It may be that you are just stressed and overwhelmed in general. Reducing stress and sorting your sleep patterns ensures that traveling once again becomes effortless and enjoyable.
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy is a process which naturally and organically helps you reduce stress and anxiety, and returns you to calm. Challenges and new experiences are no longer overwhelming. Many clients simply forget they ever had a problem and life becomes easy and straight-forward again.
5. Phobias
When fear of traveling becomes a phobia it’s called hodophobia. This phobia can manifest itself in many different ways, from procrastination and hesitancy, to avoiding traveling to any new places.
““I contacted Sense-Ability to get help with my fear of flying. Best decision ever! Jane helped me a lot. Our sessions were in a cosy studio/ room where I felt comfortable, relaxed and in good hands. I have finally conquered my fear of flying. Would I recommend Sense-Ability? Definitely! Thank you ever so much.””
Fear of driving is very common
For many, fear of travelling is linked to another phobia such as agoraphobia, claustrophobia or emetophobia or fear of vomiting.
For some people, the fear of driving or travelling on a bus can be so overwhelming, they struggle to a leave home at all. Such intense fears or phobias can lead to social isolation, generalized anxiety, depression, and conditions like OCD.
The Sense-Ability Rewind Phobia process is sometimes enough, although if you’ve been isolated and anxious for a long time, a course of Solution Focused Hypnotherapy before you undertake the Rewind and Reframe process would be helpful.
6. Self-limiting Beliefs
We carry with us self-limiting beliefs, often instilled from childhood. We believe things like: “I’m not good enough…. I’m not clever enough … I’ll never be able to …”. We all have real physical limitations but many limitations are in our mind.
Self-limiting beliefs can be addressed gently through Solution Focused Hypnotherapy which helps you identify or uncover your true motivations, hopes, aspirations, abilities and strengths, and then helps you imagine and realize your best hopes; including travelling to wonderful locations or learning to drive. I supported a young pilot to gain the confidence to pass his exams and assessments and become a commercial pilot; so who knows what’s possible?
Fear of travel and the primitive mind.
Being in a state of overwhelming fear moves us into our primitive minds, and then we find it hard to think clearly or to make good decisions.
Managing all the organisation involved in travelling - checking-in luggage; going through check in; following security procedures or dealing with delays - becomes very challenging. Every part of the journey becomes overwhelming. All these issues are linked to how the brain works and how we move from the intellectual sensible part of the brain to the irrational primitive part when we are under threat. We literally cannot think rationally, solve problems or come up with new solutions.
If you want to find out more about the neuroscience behind your fear of traveling read my article Change your Mind; and your Future.
All of these fears can be resolved
The good news is that all of these issues can be resolved, in most cases, with Solution Focused Hypnotherapy, or Trauma or Phobia Rewind Therapy. Sometimes supported by breathing exercises and NLP techniques.
“Having overcome much of my driving fear with Jane in 2020, I came back to her in 2020 because I had a very long unfamiliar drive coming up. This time, Jane recorded a tailored hypnotherapy session with the landmarks and stops on my planned journey. I played this the evening before and, as a result, I felt so much better driving. Now, if I drive with someone in the car with me, my fear of driving has been completely eradicated..”
”
Motivations for Overcoming Travel Phobia
Here are some of the many reasons people are driven to overcome hodophobia and related phobias.
Family life: You don’t want to pass your fears on to your children; you want to be able to drive them to school or to after school clubs. A family wedding or funeral and other family gatherings mean you may need to drive longer distances; out of your locality and out of your comfort zone.
Work and Career: You need to travel to work or to conferences and training events further afield. Moving forward in your career may require driving or flying
Holidays: Your partner, your family or your friends would like to travel with you to new interesting destinations, and you feel you are holding them back.
Social life: Your social life has become restricted and you don’t want to be socially isolated; or you just want to make new interesting friends.
Imagine what you do when your have addressed your fears
How to Overcome a Fear of Driving, Flying or Travelling?
Whatever the reason we know that it’s relatively quick, easy and cost-effective to resolve irrational fears, people, and even traumas linked to driving, flying or traveling overseas.
Most fears related to traveling are the result of general anxiety or a loss of confidence. In this case, a short course of Solution Focused Hypnotherapy or just one or two Rewind Therapy sessions resolve most travel related fears. Some travel fears and phobias require a little more work.
Overcoming Phobias
Simple Phobias are remarkably easy to resolve with Rewind Phobia Therapy and Solution Focused Hypnotherapy. Often people choose to not resolve their phobias. They have simply adjusted their lives around their phobia. It feels part of who they are.
However, the phobia can be shifted so quickly and painlessly they are often astounded and wish they had done it sooner.
To find out more about overcoming phobias click on: How to Overcome Phobias Quickly.
Resolving Past Traumas
We treat travel and phobias linked to traumas slightly differently. By literally ‘Rewinding’ a trauma, I help you process past events by moving them to the part of the brain where they will be stored as narrative memories, and the attached overwhelming fear element will be resolved. It’s possible to resolve the trauma completely with Rewind Trauma or Phobia Therapy.
For detailed information on resolving traumas see: Can I Recover from Trauma?
Reducing Anxiety Related Fears
For any fear related to generalised anxiety, Solution Focused Hypnotherapy is usually the best approach. By calming the central nervous system and facilitating the client to change the way they think, act and react at a subconscious level through Solution Focused conversation and hypnotherapy, organically reduces stress and anxiety. Confidence and resilience develop naturally so that new situations, including traveling, become easier to manage.
“I started working with Jane in 2019. My anxiety reduced quite quickly and my quality of sleep improved significantly. However, it wasn’t until after a few sessions, when I drove with my partner up to Manchester, that I realised the difference with my driving. I was very calm when driving and the night before the trip, instead of the usual sleepless night, I did not feel any fear or anxiety. This gave me a lot more confidence driving to Manchester and in general.”
The Sense-Ability Solution Focused Approach
Would you go on holiday somewhere excitng?
The Sense-Ability Solution Focused approach focuses on now and the present - the outcomes you want, NOT the problems you don’t want. With travel related phobias, clients are encouraged to create a vivid picture of how they want their life to be when their phobia or fear has been resolved.
The Solution Focused part of Sense-Ability Hypnotherapy works like this…
Imagining the Future
Imagine this problem was solved for you… What would you notice?
Will you be able pick up my children from school, to take the baby to hospital or drop them off to sleepovers?
Will you go on holiday, travel somewhere really interesting, visit relatives overseas?
Will you be able to go to a family event?
What would it mean to you if you could …?
Why is that important to you?
Creating your Preferred Future
The description of how things will be when you have resolved your travel fears and related phobias is called the Preferred Future.
We want this to be as vivid as possible. Once you have defined the outcome you want, your subconscious mind now knows what you want; it can start helping you to get there.
By shifting out of your negative problem-focused brain, and describing the wonderful vision of yourself driving, flying or visiting somewhere new - and creating a vivid picture in your mind - you are already beginning to imagine and create that future.
Imagine how you will feel when everything is planned
Scaling and Incremental Steps
The Solution Focused scaling exercise involves measuring where you are on a scale between 0 to 10.
We start with the idea that a score of 10 is your Preferred Future - the picture of how you want things to be. Your 10 might be something like:
Inter-railing across Europe, knowing everything is planned and you are feeling excited and joyful.
Flying in a plane, feeling calm and in control.
Driving down to the coast as naturally as you drive to the local shop.
Where is your Fear?
Once we have established what your 10 is, I ask: “If 10 is your Preferred Future, and 0 is as far away from that goal as possible… Where are you now?” You throw out a number. It’s subjective and instinctive. Perhaps you say 3.
I ask, “Why are you a 3 and not a 0?” You reflect a little and consider all the things that are working well - things that make you believe you could successfully travel. For example:
Scenario 1: You have a passport, you’ve been in Europe before, you speak basic French etc. And together we explore everything else that’s in place that will help you reach your goal.
Scenario 2: You can drive to the shops and work every day feeling relaxed, calm and in control in the moment.
The Miracle Question
Then it’s the Solution Focused Miracle Question. It goes like this. “If you went to bed tonight, and a miracle happens, and when you wake up you are 4 on the scale - that’s one step forward - what do you notice is different? “
You are starting to imagine and create that preferred future, one step at a time. As you answer the questions, you are focusing on solutions, not problems. As you describe what you would notice if you were one strep along your scale, new neural connections begin to be forged. You may, or may not, have moved along the scale in the morning, but you have discovered new possibilities and solutions for a successful outcome you hadn’t considered before.
Hypnotherapy or Hypno-coaching
The gentle, safe process of suggestion-based hypnosis (no commands which the subconscious mind tends to resist) helps you envisage and embed your preferred future, and trains your subconscious mind to be calm and in control in all circumstances, to confidently plan forward.
““I had a fear of driving alone. We had only one session of NLP and Hypnotherapy and next day I was able to drive alone to work, I felt amazing. Jane made the experience very nice, relaxed and efficient.””
Imagination and Reality
Your travelling dreams are becoming a reality even as you imagine them going well. How?
The subconscious mind can’t tell the difference between imagination and reality so by imagining your perfect journey or journeys, you are rehearsing that reality. You create a ‘pull’ motivation that’s so strong it pulls you forward to your desired outcome (rather than away from your fears which doesn’t work so well as a motivation).
Start Where you Want to End
“It’s so much easier to be a passenger and to drive than it was. Occasionally, when I’m very tired, I gave a momentary lapse and fear comes back. Then I use my strategies to get back to calm quickly. Mostly though travelling is just a pleasure. ”
Try this Exercise
Write down the month and year you want to travel.
Now write what you are doing on that day, in the present tense and in vivid first person narrative (I am... not I will be) what you will be doing.
Define your Best Hopes
“It’s Summer 2022. I am in a train going across Europe and I’m on my way to Venice. I am visiting [list countries] and staying in mid-priced hotels with friends. I have a comfortable budget of £3,000 and am enjoying making new friends, seeing new sites and learning the basics of new languages.”
Now take a few minutes to close your eyes and imagine you are on this journey. Ask yourself …
What am I be seeing?
What am I doing?
What am I taste, smell, touch?
Make the sensations very real in your mind. Linger there for a while. How does it make you feel?
You have created a vivid, experiential vision of your future. A vision so compelling you are motivated to get there.
That is the power of your imagination.
Planning Ahead
Realising this vision will, of course, take some effort and planning. But now you have a clear, positive and compelling vision to keep you focused and motivated.
Discussing your plans with experienced travellers and travel experts will help you work out what you need to do to get there: passports, flights, booking trains and hotels, ensuring you travel safely, know what to pack and so forth.
Envisioning your dream journey will give you the motivation to do the work that will get you where you want to go.
Your Preferred Future is Happening Now
Notice, we write the Best Hopes or Goal as if it’s happening right now … but it is dated in the future.
Pin your Best Hopes on the fridge and look at it every day. Every decision you make with regard to travelling takes you closer to this vision and keeps your mind clear and focused on the outcome you want.
Realise your Dreams
Imagining your future in this vivid way may just give you the confidence you need to create your travel dreams.
However, if you need some support or help removing or managing your self-limiting beliefs, fears, phobias or anxiety, then Solution Focused Hypnotherapy might be the answer.
Through Solution Focused Hypnotherapy you can learn the right strategies to stay calm and relaxed wherever and however you travel. In no time at all, you will be able to stay calm and in control when traveling by car, train, or plane; traveling to friends and relatives, and traveling to far flung exotic countries.
How long does it take?
Sometimes just one or two sessions are enough to resolve your travel fears or phobias. Where there are complex phobias or generalized anxiety it may take a few weeks. We can discuss your particular issues, and work out a programme together with the aim of resolving your fears in the shortest possible time.
Call for a half hour initial chat to find out more, or get in touch to book your initial consultation.
Create your Preferred Future
Travel Photos: (c) Unsplash: Man on bike countryside Marcu David; lady in Paris, Atikh Bana; cliff jumping, Austin Neil; Suitcase, Arnel Hasanovich; Venice, www.fiverr.com/share/4EaPR
Thank you for the use of your photos