Overcoming your fear of flying – is it stopping you enjoy life?

Here in the UK we can sometimes feel spoiled for choice by all the beautiful countryside, villages, towns, cities and sights there are to be visited. Indeed a lifetime would not suffice.

But many of us want to experience new countries and cultures, as well as exploring our own.

Guess how many of us in the UK would love to travel to another country for a holiday, but are too frightened to fly? Estimates put the number at around 6 million people.

This number also includes people who sadly may miss out on fantastic opportunities to travel through work, as they turn them down because of a fear of flying?

There’s certainly nothing new in having such scary thoughts, especially when you see the terrible results of plane crashes like the recent one in San Francisco.

But putting this into context, how often do you hear about serious plane crashes?

With all the millions more people travelling by air year on year, the actual percentage of accidents and incidents with air travel is minimal compared to other forms of travel. And despite the tragedy at San Francisco, air travel certainly continues to live up to its reputation of “the safest form of travel”. Just look at our motorways, or your own day to day journey to and from work for comparison, or listen to your local news – it can be quite an eye opener.

Having a fear of flying is usually not a ‘fear of aeroplanes’ but a fear related to a ‘loss of control’, either externally i.e. something to do with having no control over what happens to the pane, or internally – feeling something terrible will happen to your body or mind that you cannot control. Individual fears in the first group can include heights, turbulence, bad weather, and things happening to the plane, including terrorism. The second group of fears are about something happening to you, yourslef – worries about claustrophobia, agoraphobia, making a fool of yourself, and having a panic attack are part of this group of fears.

All of these feelings and thoughts trigger scary pictures in our minds. They can create a barrier which stops us from doing the fun stuff like getting on a plane to go on holiday, or makes us turn down that dream job abroad.  What you think influences how you feel, and how you feel often determines how you behave. 

It’s all about learning to question what we’ve come to believe. If we can experiment and find out that things aren’t as awful as we anticipate they will be, it’s then possible to challenge that scary picture in your mind, test it out, and from the positive results, come up with a new view on what we can achieve, and the enjoyment we can have.

This process is very doable. 

About Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

Cognitive behaviour therapy has been developed from extensive research.  People's behaviour and emotions depended to a large extent on what they understand is happening.  As mentioned before what a person thinks and anticipates can greatly affect his or her reaction to events and people

From the cognitive behavioural perspective, fear of flying can be seen as a conditioned response to an experience such as a near miss, a particularly turbulent flight, or a catastrophe that took place during a flight.  A pattern of avoidance behaviour is set up which feeds into the anxiety, making it stronger, and thus prevents the testing, and invalidating, of the feared prediction of future catastrophes.

So finding a well-qualified psychologist with skills and experience in the treatment of anxiety is very important. It can also be helpful to ensure they have prior experience with your particular difficulties.