Is it normal to have a fear of flying

It may also help to practice deep breathing techniques and consciously release muscle tension. Many people with aviophobia experience significant anxiety leading up to a flight. In some cases, Farchione says, this can be worse than flying itself. The above strategies may work for someone with a non-clinical fear of flying or mild aviophobia, but severe phobias often require professional treatment.

Farchione says treatment for the condition is increasingly moving toward helping patients reframe their fear response, and adds that virtual reality flight simulators may help as well. Write to Jamie Ducharme at jamie. So if you have memories of past flights in which you felt uncomfortable , and those memories come back to you easily, this can be at least partly responsible for your current discomfort.

We have clear examples of this phenomenon in the airline industry. Vicarious fears develop with every airplane accident we hear about. People will imagine what it would have been like for them if they had been aboard that particular plane. If your mind rehearses a traumatic event in imagery, your body will react to it almost as though it were happening in reality, and you will feel anxious.

What if you then predict that it might occur when you next fly? That means it could happen to my plane! It can be as simple as that. Fearful fliers often look for data to reinforce their anxieties. They tend to ignore articles that talk about safety and how much the airline industry has improved in the past two decades.

Instead, they seek out the articles discussing any possible danger or threat in the industry. This is a way people contribute to their own discomfort. They continue to gather evidence that supports their fearful position , while ignoring any data to the contrary. You developed other problems which increased your discomfort of flying Discomfort with flying can stem from a number of other fears: heights, crowds, closed-in spaces claustrophobia , panic attacks, and feeling trapped or out of control.

Perhaps you are someone who has had panic attacks. Your first panic attack might have been in a sales meeting or just before giving a speech.

Then, slowly but surely, the panic attacks started to occur elsewhere, such as in a car or on the subway, in a restaurant or a grocery store, in a church or in wide-open spaces. For example , you board a plane, find your seat and then sit back to watch other people board. A few minutes later you hear the announcements beginning, and you realize that the door is about to close.

At this point you may experience a rush of sensations: racing heart; light-headedness or dizziness; cold, clammy hands; tingling in your fingers, toes and mouth; difficulty breathing; becoming very hot or claustrophobic.

Any time you face your fears — such as claustrophobia — you may experience some symptoms of panic. Ironically, the more you worry about such problems, the greater the likelihood that they will occur. If you become worried enough, you may stop flying altogether as the only means you know to insure your comfort. Without you being aware of it, your ability to discern and test reality fades or become completely disabled. In this state you might begin to believe the turbulence you are experiencing is not, in fact, normal.

People with severe fear of flying will leave even a perfectly normal flight with the impression that they have survived a life-threating situation. No matter how many good flights you subsequently have, you will feel anxiety before and during the flight. The good news is, you can reverse this process. To combat fear of flying, or aviophobia , my fear-of-flight treatment program SOAR helps fliers to turn off their stress response when flying. How do we shut the stress response down?

In males, one reliable source of the love hormone, other than his dog, is an orgasm. So, in training, I direct men with a fear of flying to recall a moment of sexual afterglow. With oxytocin circulating in the brain, the amygdala—regardless of what it has learned to perceive as danger—is kept from releasing stress hormones. This can also be applied to non-flying situations. Fear of flying, and flight-related demand for anti-anxiety medication, often seem to increase after plane crashes make it into the news.

In particular, the Malaysia Airlines flight , which completely disappeared, continues to haunt people with a fear of flying because it lacks closure. I believe that the Germanwings flight , which crashed Mar.

It has a fix, and the fix is already in place in the US.