Worry Masterfully -- Not Catastrophically -- About Fear Of Flying

Worry Masterfully -- Not Catastrophically

Worry, if done masterfully, is a smart strategy. Pan Am captain Bill McDougal, a crew member on an ocean racing yacht owned by then IBM president Thomas Watson, said the skipper of the yacht told every crew member, "I'll listen to anything anyone has to say . . . once!" Because it might be something needing attention, any concern by any crew member needs to be voiced, and then considered by the skipper. Persistent voicing of the same concern would be counterproductive.

Worry, if done catastrophically, is without value. And, it can make things much worse. There is a temptation to try to get rid of anxiety -- which is simply the discomfort of not knowing -- by focusing on various catastrophic outcomes.

A client, who is rarely free of anxiety because of an exceptionally traumatic childhood, was obsessed with idea that her flight would be catastrophic. She had worried for weeks about hijackers and bombs. In the boarding area, she saw two men whispering to each other, and said to her boyfriend, "They are the hijackers." Her boyfriend summonsed a security supervisor who tried to explain why the two men were talking privately. He said to her, "It's OK. They are a gay couple."

Instead of saying, "Oh, I see," she replied, "Good cover!" Unable to accept the explanation, she used it to fit her belief. Once onboard, she saw a man dialing his cellphone. She said to her boyfriend, "He's programming the bomb!" A flight attendant was called who asked the man to put away his cellphone. My client then said, "It's too late; he already has it programmed!"

Most of the distress caused in phobia is caused when what is imagined is mistaken as actual; that is termed "psychic equivalence", which means, what is in the psyche (the mind) is what is true in the real world are identical, or equivalent.

This extreme example of psychic equivalence shows the importance of avoiding repeated imagination of disaster. As the captain of the racing yacht recognized, every concern needs to be heard . . . once. Nothing can be gained by more than one complete hearing, and a great deal can be lost.

Before the return flight, my client posted what happened on the SOAR Forum at http://www.fearofflying.com/message.htm, and I replied to her., "Look. You have generalized anxiety. You have it for a reason and you are never going to get away from a certain basic level. Whenever you attempt to get rid of it, you look for a target, something you think might be causing the anxiety. But your anxiety is caused by things from years ago. By finding a target for your anxiety and then fleshing it out, all you do is increase the intensity of feelings you don't want."

It's like poison ivy; it itches, and there is nothing you can do to get complete relief from it. And if you try to get relief by scratching it, you make it worse.

I told her how once, on a trip to Africa, I fell asleep on the beach and got a terrible sunburn. The next day it itched so bad I could not -- by willpower -- keep my hands off it. But every time I touched it, it got much worse. Finally, I took off all my clothes so nothing touched my skin, and -- literally -- sat on my hands until the itch calmed down enough that I could resist touching it.

I asked her, on her next flight, to accept a certain amount of anxiety as normal for her, and to "sit on her hands" to not make it worse. She reported that by accepting a certain amount of anxiety as her personal normal, she did much better.

Give your concerns one full and complete hearing. Make the hearing so thorough that further consideration can produce no new possibilities. Satisfaction that you have thought of everything helps avoids rumination. You will also need to recognize the following:

• You can not know until after the fact that the right decision has been made
  
• No one can know the outcome in advance

Focus on an undesirable outcome can make you "just know" it will happenYou can either (a) accept the impossibility of knowing in advance and experience the associated anxiety, or (b) mull over the matter until you "just know" the undesirable outcome will happen, causing you high anxiety, panic, or horror.

You may want to experiment with the two options and see which works better for you. If you do, I believe you will find that accepting a basic level of anxiety is normal for you is better than attempting to get rid of basic anxiety by less than masterful worry.

Discovering Your Basic Anxiety Level

Use the 5-4-3-2-1 to isolate your focus so that you are no longer dealing with fears or "what if" thoughts.

You can find the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise at http://www.fearofflying.com/wordpress/?page_id=34

This will leave you experiencing your basic level of generalized anxiety, the anxiety that arises from not knowing the future. See if this level of anxiety is acceptable to you. It can help if you remind yourself that your basic level never increases. Basic anxiety only seems to increase when you mix it with fear of some specific thing.

Notice the level of your anxiety on a scale of zero to ten. Accept that as basic. If more intense feelings arise, that is your signal that either consciously or semi-consciously, you are trying to get rid of anxiety by entertaining fear of some specific catastrophe. The increase in feelings is due to the release of stress hormones triggered by conscious or semi-conscious imagination of catastrophe. Use the 5-4-3-2-1 to eliminate the imagination and to burn off the stress hormones. Notice your level on a scale of zero to ten. Repeat the 5-4-3-2-1 until you return to your basic level.

Prove to yourself that you can deal with your basic generalized anxiety. Anxiety about how things will work out seems difficult, but most of the difficulty drops away when you isolate basic anxiety and deal with it by itself.

To gain further understanding of the cause and cure of fear of flying, see the eighteen minute video at http://www.fearofflying.com

Onset Of Fear Of Flying

The Onset Of Flight Anxiety ProblemsA person on the SOAR message board at http://www.fearofflying.com/message.htm writes, "Can one person fly for almost twenty-nine years with no turbulence and no fear and then just freak out about it? I was first on the plane at age of 6 months and never even once up until this year worried about flying. I would fall asleep on planes."

"Until one flight to San Francisco and back, my nerves were really on edge for some reason and they plane shook and its the first time ever I got nervous. A few months later I went with my family to Cozumel Mexico and on the way there the plane shook a bit, I cried, my arms got numb."

"When I tell people that I never really experienced turbulence up until this year they don't believe me. Now I am convinced that every flight I will take from now on will bump and shake. I even got nervous last week watching a plane in a movie."

"I was supposed to go to Paris in end of November for my 30th birthday and I had to cancel. I am a freelancer and will start getting sent on the trips overseas more often and I would probably will have to say no. How sad!"

Having worked with people to overcome fear of flying (both as an airline captain and a licensed therapist) I have found it is not unusual at all for flight anxiety to begin at age twenty-nine. In fact, the average age of onset for fear of flying is twenty-seven.

Nor is the cause a bad flight. Even on bad flights, most people on board do not develop fear of flying. So why do some begin to have trouble after a flight that others do not find so awful?

Each of us develops a limited amount of ability to regulate feelings. What we develop is developed before age three. When we don't get enough ability to regulate feelings, we turn to control of things, reassurance from others, a way out, if things don't go well.

Having those three "security blankets" helps us deal with anxiety. But there is another thing that seems to cause the onset in the twenties: the death of illusion. Teenagers typically believe nothing can go wrong; bad things happen only to other people. In our twenties, we begin to realize things that we thought only happen to others can happen to us, too. That changes how things look. Then, flying is a problem because we no longer hold the illusion of safety, and we are not in control, don't have reassurance (unless a pilot is in the next seat) and we can't escape if things go wrong.

The answer is to build inside the emotional strength to deal with things without high anxiety. That's where the Strengthening Exercise comes in. It builds the emotional strength we need so we can fly almost as anxiety-free as we did back when we -- naively -- thought bad things can only happen to others.

I've posted an eighteen minute video at http://www.fearofflying.com/free_video.shtml which explains both the cause and the cure of this problem. Though most programs dealing with fear of flying are based on the idea pilots have that if you know how safe flying is, you will be fine. It is not that simple when you fear either, (a) having a panic attack on the plane, or (b) that yours will be that one plane in five-million that does crash. There is a way to stop panic BEFORE it can start; in fact, to make panic impossible. And, there is a way to control anxiety about the very remote possibility of an accident.