How do your emotions affect the way that you drive?
When you are driving or are on a driving lesson how do you feel? What emotions do you experience? Do they stay the same or do they change?
We have three emotional systems that govern our actions and how we feel. We should experience all three systems throughout the day, with different systems being more prominent depending on the situations that we find ourselves in. Understanding more about how we all experience these emotional systems can help you learn how to manage them and use them to your advantage.
Three emotional systems
Drive System - this is our action system, the one that makes us feel motivated, ready to take action, rise to challenges, plan, work, get on and do things. We may feel alert, purposeful and have a sense of achievement. This is the perfect emotional system to be experienced while driving or learning to drive.
Defence System - this is our fight, flight, freeze which is responsible for our survival. It is always on the lookout for danger and always seeking safety. We need this emotional system to be switched on while driving for our hazard perception and so that we stay alert. However, we do not want this emotional system to be in overdrive and taking over as we can not run, hide or freeze while driving!
Soothing System - our soothing system balances our drive and defence systems. It is about rest and recovery, feeling calm, connected to family and friends and spending more time in 'being' rather than 'doing'. The techniques on this website teach you how to activate this system, so that if you find yourself feeling too busy, too nervous or too frantic then you can use your new skills to manage those feeling back to feeling safe and motivated.
Practice throughout the day checking into how you are feeling, what emotions you are experiencing and whether you can identify when each of the different emotional systems is most active. How does each system affect your thoughts, mood and behaviour? Do they have an impact on the way that you drive?
We learn best when we are between our soothing and drive systems, motivated and wanted to learn but feeling safe and secure to do so.
Find out more about which proven stress management techniques are included in our subscription packages for learner drivers and group subscriptions for driving instructors to help you successfully manage your three emotional systems.
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If you have a driving test coming up soon you might find our Ultimate Guide to Driving Test Nerves useful.
Read more of our reviews from happy learner drivers on Trustpilot
It's great to have a website offering fantastic techniques to assist with the challenges of driving. The website recognises the fact that learning to drive can be stressful and there are strategies to help with this. The website's name, 'CONFIDENT Drivers' is what a learner is aspiring to be, so it's very positive. The techniques also apply to building general confidence in all walks of life, so useful again. Thank you!
I was so pleased when my instructor signed me up for Confident Driver. I loved the hypnosis sessions & I recently passed first time with one fault. Recommend 100%
Confident drivers has been a really useful tool in changing my attitude to the driving test. I hadn't recognised just how much my negative thoughts about my ability rather than my actual driving ability have been holding me back and putting me off. I particularly liked the quick fix section that gives you strategies to calm down just before the test!
If you would like some self-help stress management resources to help you tackle your driving anxiety and improve driving confidence then our calming kit is created by leading industry experts especially for you. Access to all the resources is online.
These plans are created specifically for drivers and learner drivers looking for online solutions to manage driving nerves and anxiety. We also have a range of group plans created for driving instructors who would like to offer support offroad to their learner drivers, you can find more details on our ADI page.
We created this podcast for drivers who want to be calm and confident on the road. Whether you are a learner driver, a new driver or have been driving for years, this podcast will help you to beat driving nerves and anxiety and build your driving confidence.
Co-hosted by Kev & Tracey Field, each Driving Confidence podcast episode offers bite-sized information and ideas that are both relatable and achievable to help you manage your driving nerves or anxiety and transform how you feel about driving.
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Take a browse around our blog for articles written to help learner drivers and driving instructors recognise the most common reasons for experiencing driving nerves and confidence issues. Each article offers strategies and suggestions that may help you.
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