How I Got Over My Internal Flying Nightmare
Exposure, Logic, and a Mental Kick in the Pants
I used to hate flying with a vengeance.
Not only would I avoid it if at all possible, but the hours and days before a flight would be punctuated by truly debilitating shots of anxiety and fear. From waking up in the middle of the night to suddenly remembering that I was going to be on a plane soon enough, that negative adrenaline rush would shoot me awake into a place of terror that I would carry with me up 35,000 feet in the sky.
From my late teen years until approximately 27, there was seemingly no escape from this way of life. I’d drive places when I could (including from Georgia to Colorado), but eventually at some point you have to fly in the modern world. The days of taking leisurely week long trips that don’t put you in the sky have been over since the Wright Brothers gave us the airplane, and you’d have to be independently wealthy to travel by boat or plane with any expediency now.
It’s much better to address the issue head on and deal with your fears than put your life on the back burner. By educating yourself about what flying entails and learning from my personal experience, it is my hope that you’ll be much better off in the future when flying the friendly skies.
Fear of Flying is Perfectly Rational, But Ultimately Illogical
I hate it when people say that a fear of flying is irrational or stupid. Not only only does it discount the experiences of many people (including celebrities) who are in internal turmoil when they have to fly, but it makes them double down on the whole experience being negative and terrible to deal with (which it already is, but for alternate reasons).
Having a fear of flying, from a evolutionary perspective, is perfectly rational. Humans don’t have wings, rarely spend time at high altitudes without support of some sort, and cannot move at 150 meters/second. Therefore when we enter a small metal tube that can do these things because of the miracles of science and engineering, it’s only logical to be in awe. If that awe is not properly understood or associated with bad experiences, it can very easily turn into fear, mistrust, and trauma.
The same thing should happen with cars, but because most people are exposed to them on a daily basis and even know how to drive them we don’t tend to dwell on it. People with a fear of being in vehicles suffer from Amaxophobia, and you can only scarcely imagine how crippling this is to someone’s life. Yet when you look at the statistics of how many people die in car wrecks vs. plane crashes, it actually makes more sense than a fear of flying.
Unless you plan on staying where you are permanently or somehow taking your car everywhere (including loading it on a boat, getting driver permits and doing lots of maintenance in foreign countries) then you’re going to have to get on a plane at some point. If for your career, your spouse, or your own sense of adventure and actually living your life to the fullest then I’d urge you to probe deep and find out how you can fix this for yourself.
Logic is a Great Tool
Something I had a hard time grasping onto, although it ultimately won out, is that by letting the fear of flying take over your internal state you are completely abandoning logic for an emotion that seems like it’s helping, but is really just crippling you. This is not to say that you should become a logic-obsessed automaton, but that it can be extraordinarily helpful to recognize that you’re working against yourself by not taking logic into account.
You could ask yourself just these three questions to get on a more stable footing when it comes to whether you’ll ultimately perish, be injured, or narrowly escape a flight disaster:
- How many flight crashes/accidents have occurred in my country this year? In most developed countries, it is minimal to none.
- Even if this number is more than I’m comfortable with, do I think that the pilots of this plane seriously want anything bad to happen to it? Wouldn’t they rather be at home eating dinner, spending time with their families, or watching a movie?
- Assuming the pilots are incompetent and we are impending toward disaster, am I aware of how many crazy safety features are built into planes? Many modern jets can glide for several hundred miles and land without any power at all.
If you think that planes are dainty little containers that are ready to break apart at the smallest gust of wind, then I’d urge you to watch videos like this one over and over again:
Planes are not only some of the most well-designed pieces of machinery in existence, they put everything else to shame. Unlike cars, which have a relatively short lifespan and are meant to be sold or traded in for the newest model, planes can actually last for decades. From being able to pilot through a hurricane to having their wings bent at absurd angles before they snap, cars are much more fragile and easy to get hurt in.
Pilots Know Best
We’re lucky to live in an era where not only are there more pilots than ever before, but they also have the ability to explain various parts of the flying experience on our favorite social media channels. Gone are the days when you’d have to know a pilot in real life or meekly tap on the cabin door of a aircraft to get insider knowledge of how flying really works.
From understanding fluid dynamics (how aircraft fly) to what turbulence actually is, there is a wealth of information from pilots who fly every week (sometimes every other day) and have been through it all. Pilots that have been through truly terrible situations and survived will also be quick to point out how their plane’s machinery functioned in a bad scenario, giving you some perspective on what will almost certainly not happen on a routine domestic or international flight.
Here’s Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger explaining turbulence and why it should not be feared, and what a source to pay attention to. Responsible for the “Miracle on the Hudson” in 2009, this is just one of many examples in which a plane got into a bad situation, had to make a crash landing, and nobody died. Amazing!
Something’s Gotta Give
Despite knowing most of the information above, I was still deathly afraid of flying until my late 20’s. It was seemingly an emotional response that could not be helped, no matter what I did. I would routinely assume that whatever clothes I was wearing on the flight would be soaked through with a light layer of sweat, that I would get absolutely zero sleep, and that I would arrive at my destination a frazzled and exhausted mess.
On a particular flight from Denver to Atlanta, I remember being so infinitely miserable that I had a sort of spiritual breaking point. The physical symptoms of anxiety were in full effect, and every second of this flight felt like 10 minutes. I was listening to a lot of David Goggins at the time, trying to face various fears and not be affected by external stimuli, but it was only partially working on this flight.
At some point, we hit a bit of turbulence and whatever fear I was experienced was five times worse, to the point of feeling faint and woozy. It’s hard to remember much after that, but I clearly remember a sentence going through my mind that was something like: this is my life?
Being afraid of flying and suffering through every experience, was it really worth it? If it was going to be like this forever, wouldn’t I rather be dead? I had always reasoned that the best part about being in an airplane crash is that you probably don’t survive. Instant death is like instant coffee, a pale imitation of the real thing but vastly preferable to nothing. Next to me was a woman who was sleeping blissfully and totally unaware of my crazed state and moral dilemma, providing a perfect perspective from which to ground myself.
The plane hit one more rough patch of turbulence, the plane shook, I gripped my char’s armrest and thought: “I don’t care if I die.” Almost immediately, my fear lifted and I relaxed by 10%. The plane shook slightly more, as if to taunt me, and I thought it again: “Don’t care.” The plane righted, the rest of the flight home was rather smooth, and the fear has never come back to me ever since.
I hope that you can get over your fear of flying by studying the science of flying and taking leisure flights to destinations that you’ve always wanted to go instead of having some sort of come to Jesus moment in the sky. While a psychologist might explain my experience as some bizarre and twisted form of exposure therapy, I chalk it up to life experience and mental growth. Eventually, something’s gotta give in order for you to recognize that flying is a part of modern life and that you’re better off mastering it than letting it get the best of you.
