Flight Fright: Understanding and coping with fear of flying
It may be spring, but before we know it, the summer will be upon us. For some, this means facing up to a debilitating phobia.
You are two days away from the beginning of your vacation. You have been planning this trip for months, your bags are already packed and you are sitting down reading your Lonely Planet guide when it hits you: you are going to be on an airplane over the Pacific Ocean in about 48 hours.
Your palms start to sweat; you feel as though someone turned up the heat in the room and your mind begins racing through all the possible ways the plane could go down in flames – not to mention ruining your vacation.
For some people, the mere thought of getting on an airplane induces this type of anxiety response. For others, buckling their seatbelt just before take-off and hearing the plane engines roar is enough. These people are all experiencing fear of flying, which can be a challenging part of traveling for many. Understanding your body’s response to this phobia and learning strategies for successfully dealing with the anxiety can relieve some of the stress.
When someone experiences this state of physiological and psychological agitation as the result of fear, their body and mind become what we call “activated” – that is, they are experiencing sympathetic nervous system over-activation. This can mean rapid heartbeat, tightness in the stomach, a warm feeling of panic in the chest and in severe cases, people may even feel a sense of immobility or freezing.
From a psychological standpoint, fear of flying can have all sorts of different causes and may not be directly related to one’s having been on an airplane in the past.
Fear of flying is generally a chronic condition and is often part of a larger anxiety disorder. People who suffer from it often have other pre-existing conditions such as anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or claustrophobia that predispose them to future anxiety.
Additionally, people who have experienced a traumatic event related to airplanes, such as dangerous turbulence in flight, may have lingering anxiety and associations that create a fear of flying. The phobia tends to affect men and women equally, although it does not affect as many children as adults.
Fear of flying is a kind of anxiety, and the first step to managing anxiety is to understand it. Certain prescription medications such as benzodiazepines can be helpful in providing temporary anxiety reduction, but they do not help people overcome phobias. Mental awareness techniques and exercises can be helpful in overcoming fear of flying.
With extreme states of anxiety or panic, we tend to shut down and feel frozen, which has its evolutionary benefits. Predators do not attack frozen or dead prey – think of a “deer in the headlights” – and when we go into that immobile state, hormones are released to deaden pain. In an emergency, attack victims often describe having been unable to fight back. Extreme states of mental anxiety lead to this physiological state.
Often a sense of slow movement can disengage us from that state, and this is one technique for dealing with fear of flying. When you are feeling anxious, moving your legs and toes and paying attention to the physical movements can help disrupt the anxiety response.
A related technique is called somatosensory awareness. Many airlines practice this exercise onboard the aircraft when they have a very anxious passenger, and it is very simple to do. When you feel your fear of flight taking over, start to look around the cabin, letting your eyes rest on whatever they want to rest on. Pay attention to the feeling of your feet on the ground, of your back against the chair, or of your hand on the armrest.
The evolutionary science behind this approach is that when animals hear a loud noise, they orient towards the noise to determine whether it is a threat. Humans do the same thing, so by allowing yourself to look around the room, you are telling your brain that it is okay to look around your environment – that there is no danger your brain needs to be alert to and your eyes need to focus on. This allows your brain to feel that the danger has passed and allows you to feel less agitated.
If someone you are traveling with is particularly anxious and is having a hard time beginning the exercise, you might have to guide them through the exercise in a more directed way (“Look at the ceiling. Feel this magazine and tell me what the paper feels like”, etc.).
One final technique for reducing anxiety is called systematic desensitization, in which a therapist or counselor helps you confront the fear before you actually get on the plane. The first phase is covert desensitization. Your therapist would begin showing you pictures that remind you of being on an airplane, such as suitcases, and seeing if you can stay relaxed. If you cannot, the therapist would put the pictures away and help you relax again.
Once you become comfortable looking at pictures reminding you of airplanes, the next step would be driving to the airport or checking in and along the way dealing with any anxiety that might come up. The idea is to gradually work your way up to actually flying on a plane by taking little steps and dealing with smaller, more manageable amounts of anxiety at each step. This helps people gradually understand how to better manage their anxiety.
Like with other kinds of anxiety, dealing with a fear of flying often takes time and persistence to alleviate. The more you practice “deactivating”, the better you will get at it.
If you would like to discuss any of this in more detail, please get in touch with a United Family Healthcare psychologist or psychiatrist at (010) 5927 7067.