Counselor Puts the Brakes on Road Rage

So you’re driving 10 mph over the speed limit, but you slow down when a tailgater starts honking. Very passive-aggressive.

Or you speed up when someone tries to pass you. Classic competitive behavior.

Or you scream and pound your steering wheel when construction limits traffic to one lane. Narcissistic personality.

Donald Einreinhofer has been diagnosing the personality types behind raging drivers’ worst habits for a year, listening--for $70 an hour--as motorists vent their frustrations.

The 31-year-old high school teacher--a certified hypnotherapist but not trained as a psychologist--began advertising road rage counseling after he couldn’t find anyone to help with his own traffic-related problems.

“It’s kind of made me a one-man specialty,” said Einreinhofer, who offers hourly sessions out of his home in rural Stockholm, N.J.

More than 30 people have paid for one-on-one sessions, and he counsels many others at seminars and one-day classes.

Einreinhofer says passive-aggressive motorists don’t start out antagonizing other drivers, but won’t tolerate anyone else they feel is a dangerous driver.

“There’s a lot of people who come in with a real law-and-order mentality,” Einreinhofer said. “Somehow they feel a compulsion to punish that person.”

Einreinhofer says he used to be a passive aggressor, and his pet peeve was tailgating. Now he uses hypnosis and muscle relaxation exercises to calm down. He focuses on the good drivers on the road and pulls an imaginary shade over his rear window so he can’t see the tailgaters.

Carol Rodriguez, director of the Institute of Stress Medicine in Norwalk, Conn., offers other advice: Treat other drivers as if they were guests in your home. Focus on the interior of the car, not the exterior. Listen to soft music.

Rodriguez, who has co-written two books on road rage with psychiatrist John Larson, holds six-hour, one-day seminars to calm angry drivers at companies and American Automobile Assn. offices.

Neil Turrin, 22, of Clifton, N.J., dropped in on a one-day seminar that Einreinhofer held at a bookstore to deal with his rage at being cut off. He used to swear and stress out when he saw those “stupid drivers. . . . They think they’re cool when they drive away.”

Now Turrin meditates four times a week and does breathing exercises during his 20-minute commute to curb his temper.

He says other motorists could use similar road rage counseling. “There are so many people out there that are a lot worse than me,” he said.

Rodriguez said a competitive culture and focus on violence in the mass media are making road rage worse.

“The culture is advocating violence as a solution to problems,” she said. “If you look at movies, if you look at television . . . the angry person becomes the hero.”