I was asked a question the other day about whether or not someone should buy a new car as a way of attempting to recover their confidence when driving. Whilst this approach may work for some it will not work for everyone. It is also a rather expensive and drastic measure which reflects the desperation felt by the person who posed this question.

To be able to ascertain the best way in which to work upon regaining ones confidence it is important to identify the factors which led to a loss of confidence in the first place. This is true, of course, for all cases of lowered confidence, not just confidence relating to driving.

This particular person had always enjoyed driving and could actually trace her problem to a specific event; she had suffered a meniere's attack whilst driving and had had to pull into the side of the road and wait until she felt able to make her way home. During this time she not only felt terribly ill she also felt panicky about how and when she would get home. She was also trapped in this situation and trapped by these feelings for quite a considerable amount of time.

It is easy to understand this lady's fear of driving after that experience. She does know that logically speaking she is unlikely to have another attack whilst driving, but is aware that it could happen. Her logical mind can put the events into perspective and she knows that she should be able to drive quite safely and comfortably. The problem lies in her automatic emotional reaction to the thought of driving; an immediate tidal wave of emotion washes over her. Those same feelings of fear that she had experienced whilst trapped in her car now have the ability to almost trigger a méniere's attack even before she gets into the car.

This is how the human mind works. When you experience something which triggers panic, your brain records all of the peripheral details attached to the event and then these in future trigger an instantaneous response so as to deal with perceived threat. In this lady's case the act of driving triggers the emotions of panic which she felt previously. The question now is how can she unravel this instinctive emotional response and recover her driving confidence?

As I said before to buy new car would definitely not be the first place to go. It COULD possibly work, but this would be more due to the placebo effect than any other reason. Her "pattern match" is more related to driving than to that particular car; but, if she believes that a new car will snap her out of it, it could do exactly that. The human mind is very strong and if you believe in something enough it will tend to materialize.

An alternative approach would be to use hypnosis. Hypnosis allows one to access the subconscious mind, the part of your mind which acts instinctively and spontaneously. This therefore is the part of the mind you would need to access to enable the changing of an instinctive emotional response. A lack of driving confidence, caused for whatever reason, is triggered from the instinctive and emotional part of the brain. You can use hypnosis to access this part of your mind and then make suggestions to encourage a different response. Suggestions can be made to build your driving confidence and to feel comfortable whenever you are in the driving seat.

Hypnosis is in itself a state of relaxation, and by learning to use hypnosis you can learn to change state and relax whenever you want to or whenever you feel that you need to. With hypnosis you can not only build suggestions for confidence in relation to isolated situations but also to feel confident and relaxed towards life in general. Hypnosis is easy to learn and easy to use and also it does not need to be expensive. You can obtain high quality self hypnosis mp3 recordings at very little cost.

Roseanna Leaton, specialist in self hypnosis mp3 recordings for success and well-being.