161–170 of 266 posts
I’ve struggled with this for years and missed important events as a result. I went to the doctor and got a small prescription of anxiety medication and it helped me tremendously. I take a small dose once I get in my seat on the plane. It doesn’t make me drowsy or feel very different but the extreme levels of terror that I felt before don’t affect me now. I still have to be calm and rational as I’m preparing for my fl…
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OK, so I just saw Tom Cruise and James Corden jump out of a plane. Before I saw Will Smith do it. It looks like so much fun, but its so scary. I wonder if the visualization aspect of jumping out of a plan would also help my nerves. Maybe set a date and then watch YT videos for a few minutes a day on tandem jumping.
That is, in fact, a facet of ACT. Do things to expose yourself to tiny amounts of fear an anxiety, then progressively increasing that exposure that until you either don't feel them or don't perceive them as bad. Put another way; you become comfortable with being uncomfortable. Believe it or not, you can actually enjoy those feelings.
For 2 out of the 3 people profiled, the OCD stemmed from a fear of something bad happening and that was their way to cope. For one specifically, her mother had a surgery gone wrong and almost died.
The therapy was to have a mock funeral for her mother, go to the hospital and watch her mother have blood drawn and essentially go through all of the motions of having her mother die so that she could process it.
By the end of the treatment (which seemed to be a little ad for only a few weeks) her symptoms were drastically reduced.
Reading this book will give you an understanding that probably the episode of turbulence resonated with some other past experience(s), and had a multiplicative effect on your fear. These effects are deeply engrained in the unconscious mind, and are hard to deal with through rational or conscious thoughts.
The book guides you through a process to work on these issues.
I know not everyone have the means for that, but here we go: Why don't you try to take flying lessons ? Or at least the basics: - Weather - How a plane works, flies and such - Wind, current, clouds, etc.
How to stop worrying and start living https://amzn.to/2OyxSTh
It gives lots of practical steps on how to deal with worst case scenarios in your mind and then prepare for it.
My favorite example from the book: a man who was in charge of loading explosives onto cargo ships during one of the world wars was paralysed by the thought of the explosives detonating. The book outlines how he overcame that fear essentially by putting the worst possible scenario in perspective.
Highly recommend it.
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Can you take like a one off intro to flying and fly a plane? Or is it more involved then that?
Yes! A lot of private/instructional airports have what they call discovery or introductory flights. You sit in the cockpit of a Cessna with an instructor who takes you to a safe altitude and lets you do some turns and altitude changes in the plane, see the scenery, then takes you in and lands for you. The idea is you take this before you buy all the textbooks and commit to learning to fly to see if it's for you.
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Can you take like a one off intro to flying and fly a plane? Or is it more involved then that?
One advice though is to schedule the first discovery flight closer to sunset when the air is usually very calm and there is no turbulence.
United used to have a feature called "From the Flight Deck" where you could listen to live radio communications between your pilots and air traffic control. Unfortunately, it's now only available on a few routes and planes: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/united-airlines-mileageplus/... I found it very comforting to listen to it during an entire flight, because you could find out what the pilots of your flight were a…
Off Topic. Listen to the ATC feature (channel 9) on United planes was possibly used by the Sept 11 hijackers.
You can also listen to ATC with a handheld radio.
Planes don't fall, they glide. Also, dropping a few feet when you're at 20,000' to 40,000' is a small change.
I had a fear of flying, which I overcame completely by accident: I started playing a realistic flight sim for a while. Because it was realistic, I had to learn the basics of how to actually fly a plane. It taught me two things: what some of the noises, the vibrations, and the movements were; and how hard it is to actually crash a plane. Once you made it in the air, you'll want to try crashing your plane in the game (…
I had a somewhat similar experience. I had a long-haul flight on Singapore, and the entertainment system had a bunch of videos on the basics of the aircraft and how it flies. This included a few videos on what causes turbulence, how the plane and pilots handle it, and how it’s not particularly dangerous. Now instead of just telling myself that the odds are in our favor when I’m on a turbulent flight, I can think back…