"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." - Dorothea Lange

Friday, June 27, 2008

i’d rather have a root canal

You may have trouble believing this, but I have a fear of flying. It started shortly after I became a mom for the first time, and I’ve since learned that the same was true for many of my friends. I think I came by it naturally, though. I flew one time with my grandmother when I was a teenager, and when I got off the plane there were fingernail indentations in my arm that remained in place for several hours.

To keep from being paralyzed by this malady, I have tried various combinations of the following: hypnosis, behavior modification classes, deep breathing, drugs, alcohol, prayer and meditation. Those who have had the questionable good fortune to fly with me over the years know that when the weather gets bad and the pilot comes on the loudspeaker to warn passengers about the big “t” I hunker down in my seat and quietly begin repeating certain key phrases that I hope will help guide us safely through the storm. Of course, there have been those occasions when a sudden, loud exclamation, one that startles travelers several rows in front of and behind me and which probably should not be repeated in the company of young children, does seem to help get me through the terror.

I have often traveled by car or train instead of putting myself (and others) through the anguish.

Fully one third of air travelers’ knuckles turn white once they lift off. Fear of flying ranks right up there with fear of public speaking, fear of spiders and fear of crossing bridges.

My brother-in-law was a pilot, and, of course, he loved to fly. Unfortunately, he ran into bad weather on his descent into Kelso, Washington one morning fourteen years ago and was not able to keep the plane from going down in an old growth forest, where both he and his passenger died. A few months before that, though, convinced that he could shake me of my fear, he took me up in small plane and handed the wheel over to me, carefully explaining as we soared above Seattle each strange noise and each unexpected lunge and shudder. It was kind of exhilarating, and it kind of scared the bejeezus out of me. I admired his skills and his enthusiasm for flight, though, and to this day I think of him when I am flying and how he would want me to be brave when the air gets choppy.

Our flight today was one that involved steering around lots of thunderstorms. This meant frequent announcements to the flight attendants to take their seats, which is always the cue for me to go immediately into firm-grip-on-the-armrest mode. Needless to say, I gratefully acknowledged the goddess of aeronautics as I finally staggered off the 737. With several new gray hairs, a still slightly queasy stomach, and a good-natured husband who now has a few marks of his own on his arm, Portland, here we are.

1 comment:

Capt Tom Bunn LCSW said...

Since your fear of flying started shortly after you became a mom, you are "right on schedule". A few weeks prior to delivery, the expectant mother is bombarded with hormones which cause her to become obsessed with safety. These hormones continue for a while after delivery. Surely it must benefit the new arrival to have the mother so focused on avoiding every possible risk, but it doesn't benefit the mother. Once this obsession with safety attaches itself to flying, it doesn't easily go away, even after the hormones subside.

As both an airline captain and a licensed therapist, I have been working for almost thirty years to help people get relief from difficulty with flying. As more is learned about how the mind works, more effective help for flying has become possible. For example, that discovery about hormones in late pregnancy came only recently due to the development of brain scan technology, the functional MRI, which allows neuroscientists to observe changes in the brain as they happen.

Unfortunately, those things you tried (hypnosis, behavior mod, deep breathing, etc.) are not based on the new things learned about how the brain works. Those methods were used back thirty years ago; they only are helpful with mild cases of fear of flying. Those methods work too slowly to help in cases where feelings develop rapidly. For more difficult cases of fear of flying, only control that works automatically (and unconsciously) is able to act quickly enough and to stop high anxiety and panic. In other words, high anxiety and panic must be stopped -- not after they have begun to develop -- but before they even start. How anxiety arises and how it can be stopped is explained in a video at www.fearofflying.com/video_hs.shtml

And, if you would like som