Five Tricks to Overcome Your Fear of Flying
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Regardless of who you are, some of us can not stand flying and some of us are even anxious. This isn’t applicable to those who fly public planes. This is also for those who have private jets.
Take Ben Affleck who is rumored to have struggled with fear of flying for a while. Since he was a kid he was scared because one flight he took back then ended up with the airplane getting hit by lightning. Even Sandra Bullock who had a fear of flying took on the lead role in “Gravity” because she saw it as a sign to face her fear.
In the end, there’s only a small percentage of people who have aviophobia, with the National Institute of Mental Health estimating about 2.5 to 6.5 percent of us with it. So, for those people, there are many different tricks we can use to overcome this fear of flying we have.
The first trick is to open up your phone and look through vacation photos. Lifting off or landing can always be really jarring and for many, this is some of the toughest parts to any flight. What some people find is if you travel a lot, be sure to take pictures of the places you been and pull them out during this time. Those pictures can serve as a reminder for why it’s worth flying.
Another trick is investing in “flight therapy” or private lessons. A lot of our anxieties of flying start when we are little and while we are older now, we can still consider some adult courses to get us through flying. For the kids, many airlines supply “flight therapy” courses that help with overcoming anxieties. The only thing is these courses aren’t cheap with some ranging from roughly $500 to $800. For the adults, one of the best way to help with overcoming it is taking flying courses. They are much cheaper and don’t take as long. Generally speaking, a thirty-minute discovery flight lesson costs $50-$100.
Going back to some visualization, some people visualize that when they are flying that they are on a boat but not a booze cruise. There is a creative analogy because airplanes experience turbulence. However, if you’re “on a boat” you can trick your brain by saying that the turbulence is actually just the waves in from the water.
If some of these tactics don’t work for you, another good trick is to lean on technology for help. Many airlines supply a variety of things. From movies to games, there are many ways to distract yourself. If you don’t want to be watching a movie, you can always turn to apps as there are multiple apps that can help you. Take Headspace for example. It’s an app that provides you with meditations and there are specific categories in there for flight meditations that you can leverage.
And if all else fails, you can always use a point of reference. What this means is look for someone who is calm and collected during some bumpy parts of the flight. A good example is flight attendants who are able to remain calm during those bumps and still able to eat dinner despite the instability and the stomach drops.
If you’re someone who freaks out about flights there are many ways to help you overcome it. In the end you may still not like flying but at least with these tricks the flying can be a little more tolerable.