How
Did Your Discomfort with Flying Begin?
Some
people have gradually become uncomfortable flying, and no
particular event seems to have caused their problem. We're
not certain why people might grow increasingly fearful as the years go by. Perhaps it's an issue of
age, since the fear of flying begins at 27 years old on average.
As we get older, many of us have a family we care about. If
we are leaving our young children or a spouse behind when
we fly, we may feel threatened or afraid that they'll be abandoned,
that we will never see them again. It is those thoughts that
may cause us to become more fearful. Or perhaps as we get
older we pay more attention to the fragility of life, so that
the older some people get, the more fearful they become. That
fear can translate into a discomfort about flying.
You
may not be able to pinpoint when your anxiety about flying
began. Many people, though, can identify at least one of four
different circumstances that contributed to their first problems
with flying. These are:
- remembering a bad flight
- hearing scary stories about
flying
- taking a flight while feeling
nervous or claustrophobic
- travelling during a personally stressful
phase in their life.
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Common
Causes of Fear of Flying
You
had a difficult time during a previous flight
The
vast majority of people who become uncomfortable flying never
experience actual danger on a flight.
This is because danger is rare in commercial aviation. Yet
they become frightened while flying, which causes them to
worry about future flights.
How
do you define a frightening experience? It is any experience
that your mind decides is frightening. Realistically it might
not be a problem; there may be no threat to your life or health.
Yet if you feel scared, you will remember the experience as
a dangerous one.
Let's
say you're taking a commercial flight, and the ride is smooth
and calm. Then you see the seat belt light turn on, and the
Captain announces, "Ladies and gentlemen, soon we will
be approaching some choppy air. We would like everyone to
return to their seats and fasten their seat belts." Simply
hearing that there is going to be turbulence may make your
heart race immediately. Even though the plane is safe, you
end up feeling traumatized. That is, you were frightened,
regardless of the real danger, and you felt out of control.
Whenever
you think you are out of control, you will have fearful thoughts
and your body will become tense. If that experience is frightening
enough, you will become "conditioned" to it. This
means that when you take flights in the future, you will begin
to anticipate the possibility of turbulence again, and become
anxious just thinking about it.
So
if you have memories of past flights in which you felt uncomfortable,
and those memories come back to you easily, this can be at
least partly responsible for your current discomfort.
You
reacted to stories you have heard
You
can also develop discomfort simply by hearing about someone
else's problem. We call this "vicarious" learning.
You hear about another person's experience, and then imagine
yourself having that same experience. We have clear examples
of this phenomenon in the airline industry. Vicarious fears
develop with every airplane accident we hear about. People
will imagine what it would have been like for them if they
had been aboard that particular plane.
If
your mind rehearses a traumatic event in imagery, your body
will react to it almost as though it were
happening in reality, and you will feel anxious. What if you
then predict that it might occur when you next fly? ("Hey,
it happened to that plane. That means it could happen to my
plane!") You will likely get more anxious and associate
that anxiety with your next flight. It can be as simple as
that.
Fearful
fliers often look for data to reinforce their anxieties. They
tend to ignore articles that talk about safety and how much
the airline industry has improved in the past two decades.
Instead, they seek out the articles discussing any possible
danger or threat in the industry. This is a way people contribute
to their own discomfort. They continue to gather evidence
that supports their fearful position, while ignoring any data
to the contrary.
You
developed other problems which increased your discomfort of
flying
Discomfort
with flying can stem from a number of other fears: heights,
crowds, closed-in spaces (claustrophobia), panic attacks,
and feeling trapped or out of control.
Perhaps
you are someone who has had panic attacks. Your first panic
attack might have been in a sales meeting or just before giving
a speech. Then, slowly but surely, the panic attacks started
to occur elsewhere, such as in a car or on the subway, in
a restaurant or a grocery store, in a church or in wide-open
spaces.
Most
people who have panic attacks need to believe that they can
escape a fearful place easily, that they won't feel trapped
or out of control. Well now, planes don't sound too much like
they fit that criterion!
For
example, you board a plane; find your seat and then sit back
to watch other people board. A few minutes later you hear
the announcements beginning, and you realize that the door
is about to close. What if you don't like feeling trapped,
and the idea of the door closing makes you feel trapped? At
this point you may experience a rush of sensations: racing
heart; light-headedness or dizziness; cold, clammy hands;
tingling in your fingers, toes and mouth; difficulty breathing;
becoming very hot or claustrophobic. Coupled with all these
physical symptoms, you may have the urge to rush off the plane,
thinking, "I'm about to lose control, and I'm going to
be trapped," "I'm going to go crazy," "I'll
have a heart attack," "I can't tolerate these feelings,"
or, "I'll make a fool of myself." Thoughts such
as these will obviously increase your panic.
Any
time you face your fears -- such as claustrophobia -- you
may experience some symptoms of panic. If you have had uncomfortable
symptoms on a recent flight, it wouldn't be surprising, then,
for you to start questioning how well you will handle yourself
on your next flight. Ironically, the more you worry about
such problems, the greater the likelihood that they will occur.
If you become worried enough, you may stop flying altogether
as the only means you know to insure your comfort.
You
had several months of stress prior to becoming uncomfortable
Your
first difficulties with flying might have come after a period
of stress in your life. This frequently relates to people
who have developed panic attacks. We know from research that
people tend to have their first panic attack following six
to eight months of stress. This stress often relates to the
theme of loss, such as death in the family, long-standing
illness of someone close to you, moving, changing jobs, divorce.
Even some events that seem like gains, such as marriage or
having a child, can precede the first panic attack. Each of
these positive events includes not only something that you
gain, such as a partner or a son or daughter, but some sense
of loss, such as your freedom, your ability to control your
time, and your independence.
If
you go through a very stressful period, it is as though your
mind becomes more vulnerable and more fragile. Then, out of
the clear blue, you have your first panic attack. If these
panic attacks continue, then you will begin to fear places
or situations in which you feel trapped or out of control.
Airplanes can fit into that category, since you don't get
to fly the plane and you don't get to get off whenever you
want!
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