Understand that whilst you are 100% in the care of someone else, they are the most capable people imaginable for the job that they are doing. And despite this fact, you are not completely helpless.
You can deal with the psychological and physical side-effects of fear of flying by learning and practicing deep breathing exercises, progressive relaxation and so on.
Discipline yourself to do these things whenever the fear of flying starts to set in again by making sure that these skills or abilities become a part of your regular flying routine. One way of doing this that will work for almost anyone who suffers from a fear of flying will be highlighted in the next chapter.
As for thinking about all of the things that could go wrong, you have to be realistic and grown up about the situation. For instance, whilst you might allow yourself to think dark thoughts before getting on the plane, once you are on-board, you should see view the whole thing as a challenge, a fight from which you are not going to run away.
Accept that whilst there are a multitude of bad things that could happen, the chances of any of these things happening are absolutely minutely tiny, so what is the point of worrying about something that is almost certainly never going to happen?
Teach yourself these thought patterns and it will help to banish all of the negative thoughts that between them make up the fear of flying.
The natural negative element…
One thing that differentiates flying from most other forms of public transport is that most people do not fly without a good reason to do so. Whilst you might for example hop on the subway to go down town to see what is happening, you almost always have a concrete reason for flying.
Sometimes, the reason that you’re flying is positive or happy, but this is not always the case. If for example you and the family are jetting off on vacation, you have a completely positive situation which probably means that your emotions and feelings are also completely positive.
However, most of us have suffered situations where the scenario was very different, where we have had to fly for a reason that was not especially positive or upbeat. For instance, there can be very few people who have not had to take a flight that was not in some way associated with family illness or even bereavement.
In this type of scenario, you are obviously going to feel a little downbeat and negative. You are suffering unpleasant emotions such as hurt or uncertainty and because flying has a psychologically negative side to it, it is easy for those negative emotions to be transferred or attached to the flying process itself. In effect, your emotions are already ‘dangerous’, so you transfer those negative emotions to flying.
If you have a fear of flying, it is probably not something that started before you went on your very first flight. Although the majority of people will probably feel a little nervous about flying for the very first time, these feelings usually pass when you see that flying is not really all that different to travelling on a bus or on the subway.
For anyone who has a more persistent fear of flying, there has probably been a previous flying experience when that fear first exhibited itself (sometimes with but usually without a specific reason).
This may not necessarily be associated with a bad experience in flight because it might be more associated with the negative reason for which that flight was being taken.
What you need to do in this situation is trace the reasons for your fear of flying. If you can trace what caused this fear in the first place, then you will be able to do something about it, so start by isolating when you first started to feel your fear of flying.
Next, analyze such factors as why you were flying, and what happened before, during and after the flight. Try to recall as much detail as you can, and write it all down as this may be the key to why flight is so scary for you.
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