How to deal with Fear of Flying

If you Google ‘fear of flying cures’ you’ll find enough cures to keep you busy for a year choosing the right one. Which one will suit you? What should you look for if you want to overcome your fear of flying?

Here are the types of help are available.

• Individual Therapy
• Airline Courses
• Books, DVD’s Digital Help
• Websites
• Help Forums

Let’s start with the most expensive.

Of course there’s no limit to the money you could spend with therapists or psychologists These courses are usually on-going until the fearful flyer has found a strategy. The downside of these courses is that they can be open ended but the good thing is that you will get individual attention by an expert (as long as you choose properly).

There are many forms of psychological therapies available and each has its own appeal but the one that I most favour is CBT, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy because to me it’s demonstrably effective. It’s simple too. CBT says that what you think determines how you feel and how you feel determines how you behave. So if your behaviour is that you can’t get on a plane it’s a direct route back to how you think about flying. In other words if you think that flying is unsafe then you will feel as if it is, and consequently you will behave in a way that reflects that in other words you’ll be reluctant to board a plane. However if you can re-structure your thoughts then probably you’ll feel differently about flying and eventually be able to get on a plane.

The biggest group of non-specialist therapists are the hypnotists who use their techniques for a variety of problems. However before recommending it I like to explain it this way. If I were faced with climbing a very difficult and dangerous climb on Mount Everest would I prefer to be hypnotised or trained by a competent mountaineer? All psychologists agree that to overcome a fear you have to face the fear and however persuasive hypnotism seems I am not yet convinced by it.

The next most expensive courses are the ones run by airlines which usually last all day, the morning being used for talks by pilots, engineers and other people involved in flying. Normally there’s a session with a therapist before going off on a short flight before finishing. Although for many people the achievement of going up in a plane is a worthwhile one it doesn’t necessarily prepare you for flying on your own. In particular of course it doesn’t give you the preparation needed to deal with the anxieties that occur when you’re away on holiday and worrying about the trip home.

There are of companies who fly planes or teach people to fly who conduct fear of flying courses and though some people might benefit from having a go at flying the plane might help them this wouldn’t help many of the people with the usual reasons for a fear of flying. And of course being in a small aircraft may not replicate the feelings and fears of being in a big jet.

So those are some of the ways you can get someone else to help you overcome your fear but there are many ways to ‘do it yourself’. By do it yourself I mean without personal help, and there are countless websites to choose from. Generally there are three groups of sites, ones run by pilots, those run by cabin crews and those run as site that promote other people’s products. Clearly pilots will have a broader knowledge of flying and will always be technically accurate regarding flying. The pilots can speak from experience while all other groups have to rely on information gleaned elsewhere.

For a fearful flyer technical accuracy and simple descriptions are vital and without sufficient depth of knowledge it’s easy to simplify things and change the meaning of things that are important to them.

A fearful flyer needs explanations that are always valid and apply without exception because when doubts surface then inaccurate descriptions are easily misinterpreted and become the source of extra and unnecessary worries.

And of course the same applies to books and other courses available from shops and the internet, you need to be sure that the authors are expert in their field.

However the most important thing that a fearful flyer should remember is that their fear belongs to them, and only they can overcome it. There is no other way to overcome a fear of flying than to face it. It is for this reason that I believe that a successful strategy to deal with the fear is not a case of simply doing a course or reading a book it is a structured plan which involves some of the things I’ve mentioned here. The biggest advantage of products over courses is that a fearful flyer can easily refer to them prior to flight and during a flight.

There is a course available in the UK which is conducted in a de-commissioned plane and meets all the recommendations of the World Fear of Flying Conference.

Finally I should mention help sites. These are usually associated with fear of flying websites and are a simple dialogue between the site provider and customers. Of most benefit to a fearful flyer is a social network that allows its members to chat with each other and offer support and encouragement. There is no better person to help someone to overcome a fear of flying than someone who knows the fear.