The Original Driving Fear Program

Interview With PanicEnd Founder

I'm very excited to be able to post an interview with Jeff, the founder of one of my favorite sites on the net for anxiety and panic information, panicend.com.

Jeff's perspective on anxiety and story are very similar to my own, and I highly recommend you check out his site and read everything TWICE, the information is that good. The interview below is just a small sample of the vast knowledge Jeff has to share, and he graciously makes it all available completely free.

Jeff is also featured with me on the www.AnxietyAudios.com website, so you have no shortage of great, no cost information to help you with your driving anxiety, or anxiety in general.

Enjoy!

Rich: Could you tell me about your experience with anxiety, specifically how it affected you while driving, traveling, or leaving your "comfort zone"?

Jeff: Agoraphobia seemed strongest when driving alone because there appeared to be no safe place and the situation was lacking stimulation because the act of driving does not use up much of one's cognitive resources, i.e., the mind goes easily into analytical mode. With the unresolved fear issue of place and situation prevalent, and based in past experience with anxiety, it is easy to understand how a person suffering with fear will return to it out of a desire to control it, test it or check on the status of it! This was me for a few decades. Although I pushed the envelope by expanding my "safe driving area" of familiarity for a decade, I was always in fear of the larger event where I might panic.

Rich: What was the experience you had while driving that taught you to accept and not fight your feelings of anxiety and panic?

Jeff: I had studied the logistics and rationality of panic for over 10 years and felt that the only answer was in resolving the panic, resolving the question of "what was I afraid of happening." The "thing" I was afraid of just had to be an irrational assumption without merit. But without proof, I was venturing into unknown territory. So while driving alone far from home at night and in the midst of the rushing sensation of the panic I reversed course and allowed myself to feel and experience the panic in it's fullest most severe state, daring it to "kill me" - if there was "something" that was going to happen, that surely would make it come! When the panic ceased immediately I was bewildered but knew that I had achieved an understanding about panic and its modus operendi.

Rich: Why do you recommend trying to make the feelings worse?

Jeff: Because the feelings are not a "thing" doing this TO you. They are a feeling of apprehension only. They are coming from the instinctive part of your brain that you have no conscious control over but exists in everyone's brain as a survival mechanism from the days of the caveman. Therefore, they only respond to what you believe in, not what you desire or wish for. But panic is apprehension and nothing else. Still the only way to empirically understand this is through experience.

Rich: People I work with are very often afraid of “going crazy” and losing control while driving and driving off a bridge or into oncoming traffic…what are your insights into those types of thoughts?

Jeff: That these are silly testing thoughts reflective of the sensitized state of fear and NOTHING more than that. They are also obsessive attempts to control fear through testing one's reaction to some future fearful event based on the current sensitivity. The point is that causing harm to oneself or others in the vehicle is so repulsive to the person that the test, of course, returns a fear/threat response. In a rational sense it actually proves that the person would NEVER do it. Sensitized states produce a myriad of unresolved fear questions that belabor the idle mind. Accepting them as irrational and silly allows one to let them happen and let them go! Analysis or searching for the deeper meaning only serves to feed the fear. There is no deep significance. They are a nervous mind's chatter to be ignored.

Rich: What about that feeling of unreality people get when they’re anxious that’s so scary, what is that and how is it best to cope with it?

Jeff: Unreality arrives when one has exhausted their nervous system with constant worrying which is also constant analysis in searching for "what is wrong with me!" I often describe it as a delayed perception with depression thrown in. This could be a combination of overloaded nerve synapses and dysfunctional hormonal balance. But that is ALL that it is. If one could recognize unreality initially as just that, then by stopping the analysis, worrying and turning away from seeking out the stressful search for the deeper meaning, then unreality might be a short-lived experience. BUT - if a sufferer experiences unreality and perceives it as a THREAT to their sanity then the "fear of" unreality will imprint and catalog in the sufferer's brain. (All threats are cataloged for future protection.) Once that happens the only way to defuse the unreal feelings (that will reappear when one "tests" for it) is to accept them and then accept them again and again and LET THEM HAPPEN and refuse to seek out the "answer" for their existence. They will have become habitual threat reactions that need TIME to desensitize - lots of time and patience BUT that will work. Even after a few days a sufferer can look back and see improvement. The fear does not get worse and does not precede some mental illness or hallucination.