Beep, beep.
“Thank you, Miss Schneider.”
I take my boarding pass back and utter a shaky, “Thank you.” I try to smile with it.
We’re entering the covered walkway that leads you onto the plane. My heart is pounding in my chest and my legs are beginning to feel weak, like they can’t prop my body in standing position much longer. I feel like I’m walking on air, striding down the hallway. I begin to think about how technically nothing is stopping me from whipping around and running right out the airport. I physically could do it….
Tight, tight space. The same circulated, stale air. Turbulence. Bumps, shakes. Sounds. The sinking-in-your-seat feeling when the plane slows down. American Airlines Flight 11. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The plane crash scene from Lost. Both engines fail and we fall out of the sky. The ground mechanics forgot to triple check every piece of the plane. Plane isn’t refueled all the way. I’ll have a panic attack and I’ll stop breathing and they’ll have to conduct an emergency landing. We’re going to crash in the water and we’ll have to use those life vests underneath the seats. I wonder if they’re dusty because they’ve never been used. The pilot is too tired but swears he’ll be okay. Loss of cabin pressure and utilization of those scary oxygen masks. And what if the oxygen doesn’t work?
All of that is able to race through my network of neurons before I even get to my seat.
I forget where I’m sitting so I rummage through my purse to find my boarding pass that I just crumpled up after getting it scanned. I hope for the aisle; at least there, I have a cloud of breathing room next to me. I also don’t have to bug people to get up so I can go to the bathroom.
Next thing I know, I’m literally seatbelted inside my fear. Trapped in it. Do I look nervous? I wonder if it shows on my face. I think the flight crew can see right through me.
Takeoff. The worst part. The plane picks up speed, the engines getting louder and louder. I’m squeezing my eyes shut, all too aware that I’m about to be soaring above the clouds in a matter of minutes. I’m holding my dad’s wrist with my left and white-knuckling my armrest with my right. My hands are sweaty, my heart is still racing, and I’m talking myself down in my head.
An amazing view of downtown St. Petersburg I captured right before landing in Tampa International Airport.
Dr. Martin Seif, a clinical psychologist who specializes in anxiety disorders, told the Washington Post in 2014, “When people talk about fear of flying, it’s almost a misnomer. It’s actually a confluence of a lot of different phobias.” Every aviophobe is afraid of flying for their own reasons, and there are many possible reasons. Some fearful flyers point to just one of these, while some point to a combination.
-
Fear of crashing
-
Fear of heights
-
Claustrophobia
-
Terrorism/hijacking
-
The idea of a loss of control
-
Post-traumatic stress resulting from a transportation accident
And if you’re like me….
-
Mostly the idea that air travel really just consists of sitting in a metal tube that gets shot up into the sky at hundreds of miles an hour and all you can do is trust that everything will be okay and you’ll get to your destination safely.
While it may be a totally unnatural, bizarre phenomenon, flying is incredibly safe. You are safer traveling in an airplane than you are in any other mode of transportation. Once you get to the airport, the hard part actually is over; you’re exponentially more likely to die in the car on the way there than on the flight. Arnold Barnett, a statistician from M.I.T., shared with ABC News in 2014, “If you take one flight a day, you would on average need to fly every day for 55,000 years before being involved in a fatal crash.”
Many people don’t necessarily enjoy flying and they may even experience mild discomfort or anxieties about it, but still do it. Their desire to get to Point B weighs more than their discomforts and anxieties about air travel. But if your flight anxieties are severely impacting your life, as in, you’re missing out on incredible travel opportunities, special family gatherings, or work trips, it’s probably more serious and you probably can safely consider yourself aviophobic.
Have no worries. After all, this is the Fearful Flyer’s Guide to Flying. This is written by a young woman who has come from a place of truly debilitating and life-altering flight anxiety, to now flying with no issue: yours truly. I’m going to share with you how I conquered my fear.
Let’s start with an anecdote from when I was at my worst to set the scene first.
In high school, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity landed in my lap. An opportunity to go on a trip with my theater class to New York City with tickets to shows, attendance to acting and dance classes, and classic New York sightseeing. I opted out simply because I didn’t want to get on a plane. I’m not kidding. Someone ended up unable to go, so this was a free plane ticket. I could have been spoiled in New York City for free and I turned it down because I didn’t want to fly. I’m still not kidding. My friends from that class to this day don’t know that that’s why I didn’t go (unless they read this article). I made up another excuse as to why I couldn’t go.
My flying anxieties didn’t magically melt away after I said no to this opportunity. It doesn’t happen like that. But my mindset switched that day, and that made all the difference. I realized after seeing my friends leave for the Big Apple without me, “Holy crap, I just gave up something amazing just because I felt like I couldn’t sit on a plane to get there?” It was a huge epiphany. I felt every cell in my body turn over in that moment. I decided this was no way to live. I’ll miss out on life if I choose over and over again not to fly. I had some work ahead of me.
I just really hated flying. If we were flying to go see family in Michigan, for example, I would start getting nervous about the flight about three whole weeks before. I would think about the flight on and off all day for three weeks. It would be the first thing on my mind when I woke up and the last thing in my head before I fell asleep. I look back and think that that’s so unbelievably ridiculous. But it was reality for me. Late in high school especially, flying was so torturous for me that I was prescribed an anxiety medication to take only when I fly that would take the edge off. It worked for me, and only in recent times have I freed myself from the medication. I now fly without any help. I fly on my own with newfound strength that comes from nowhere but within, and I’m proud to say I will for the rest of my life.
Every aviophobe is different, so I can only share what personally worked for me. I don’t count the medication as a component of my recovery because I consider it merely a crutch I used throughout the process. What cured my fear of flying was a magical cocktail of three things.
1. Education
Airplanes are so fascinating. Google “how a plane works.” Seriously! Sift through all the information you have there in front of you. You’ll also come across many interesting YouTube videos. I guarantee you’ll be amused. Education is key because once you grasp basics of physics and aerodynamics, an understanding of all the parts of the plane, and what all goes on up in the cockpit, you’ll feel better. Viewing a plane as a mysterious, monstrous machine is intimidating and scary. Break down the complexity and you’ll say, “Oh. That makes sense. That’s really cool.” Also, take a look at all the highly exhaustive safety tests that all commercial aircraft go through. Knowing those will make you feel better, too.
According to a 2014 article from BBC News, a few examples of extensive tests performed are to examine and ensure:
-
Wing flexibility (It’s important that wings are able to bend; if they are too rigid, they’d basically snap under any pressure.)
-
Bird ingestion (Flocks of birds may get sucked into in the engines when ascending or descending. Poor babies.)
-
Ability to withstand extreme temperatures (It’s very, very cold at cruising altitude. Temperature ranges anywhere from -40 to -70 F.)
-
Ability to withstand lightning (Believe it or not, there are special parts of the plane’s physical construction whose sole jobs are to deal with lightning.)
2. Actively changing my thinking patterns
Positive self-talk works! Keep telling yourself in your head (or out loud) that everything is fine and you will be fine. Remember everything you learned when you did research. Instead of being scared, think about how amazing air travel is. Remember all the safety tests your airplane went through and passed. Think about your destination; aren’t you excited to get there? Changing your thinking patterns also means that every time a negative, fearful thought about flying arises, literally picture yourself wiping it away as if it were written on a whiteboard in front of you and replace it with a positive thought.
3. Experience
Consider this: You wouldn’t think twice about flying if you did it every single day. You don’t really think about driving in a car the way you do about flying in a plane. It’s ironic that I used to be unfazed by car travel and completely terrified by air travel because cars are incredibly more dangerous, anyway. If you flew every day to get to school, work, or a store, you most likely would have no concerns about flying at all. Worries wouldn’t even cross your mind. That’s because you’d be so used to it.
You just have to fly. Keep flying. It gets easier every time, I promise. Experience is a huge key because after you feel the same rattles and shakes over and over, they become insignificant. Think of them as bumps in a road. Every time you go through security, you’ll feel less worried about a bad guy slipping in because you’ll learn something new every time about the TSA and what they do. Saying that experience is how you get over fear of flying sounds like a cliché, but it’s really true. Putting yourself on a plane over and over and over will make it become normal, more and more like riding in a car. Plus, the experiences you’ll have because you flew to them will be so worth it every time, that the transportation part won’t even matter. The only energy you’ll give to air travel will be towards buying your ticket and getting to your gate.
P.S.: Here’s a great SNL sketch that my dad and I quote together every time we fly.
Our favorite line is, “Now boarding first class….X-Men: First Class….and X-Men: Business Class.”
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/airport/n41324?snl=1
Happy travels. You can do this.
Love, Annie
Information From:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/12/31/lots-of-amer…
http://abcnews.go.com/International/odds-surviving-plane-crash/story?id=…
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140319-stress-tests-for-safer-planes