When I work with people in therapy on overcoming their fear of flying, there is almost a collective wish that it would always be a quick concrete solution. Of course, that’s 
normal. Who doesn’t want to be in-and-out for any issue that can involve debilitating anxiety and significantly limits your life? However, in reality, when it comes to flying anxiety, there are almost always varying elements and layers to the issue. And, for each person, what fuels the fear and anxiety around flying tends to be different from the person next to you. (You can each be afraid of turbulence, but for each person, where this stems from, what it means, and what it needs is often different).
Trust Issues Look For Catastrophe
Trust issues can have a heavy hand in fear of flying. When you have a hard time trusting, there is often the worry of what will happen if you were to allow yourself to be vulnerable. For example, you may not easily trust in relationships out of worry you will be hurt, left, taken advantage of, cheated on, etc. You may not trust the people fixing your car, providing you dental work, or anyone outside of yourself, even. Or, one of the most crippling forms of trust anxiety with flying — the idea that humans are imperfect and limited as a species, and therefore something must be likely to go wrong. It may be almost automatic for some to see exactly how they are going to suffer, lose, or worse when allowing themselves to trust, or rely on others, or be vulnerable. This is a significant issue with fear of flying.
Trust Issues Often Start At Home
It’s important to keep in mind that there are generally reasons for fear around trust. Most people who struggle with trust have either had distrust modeled for them from a young age, or they have been hurt before, or a combination of both. When it comes to fear of flying, trust issues often embedded from childhood can have a way of catching up and wreaking havoc. (Depending on the circumstances, they can also develop later on in ways that can impact fear of flying, as well). This can be especially difficult if you grew up in a home that didn’t tend to feel safe on a regular basis — where there was chaos, abuse, emotional shaming, or a sense of having to walk on eggshells for an emotionally volatile parent or sibling, or otherwise.
Either way, trust issues are complex. Because there likely have been times where trusting didn’t work out, as a child or later on. You or someone else may have experienced deep pain from one experience or a collection of them. Some may even experience ongoing pain. Trust issues aren’t all fantasy or paranoia. It becomes difficult though when you emotionally feel that the chances of catastrophe weigh equally (or greater) to the chance of being safe in certain situations. It is very possible that one’s trust meter can be negatively skewed due to these past experiences — and unnecessarily increasing your flying anxiety (or relationship anxiety, or otherwise), as a result.
The Plane Becomes The Momentary Home, Internally
When it has been baked in through critical stages of your life that the people you are relying on don’t always feel capable of keeping you safe, it can be very hard to go into a vulnerable environment and be able to feel safe. Especially if you are in a 
position of being completely out of control of the situation, which is often how flying is experienced. When you don’t know who’s flying the plane, or if you can trust who’s building and maintaining the plane, or if they really have your best interest in mind, fear becomes the next response, especially if you can’t do anything but sit in your seat and wait. It can feel like you’re just waiting for the shoe to drop and everything to fall apart.
This is why trust issues can often lead to panic in flying. If something doesn’t go as smoothly as hoped — turbulence, a flight delay, seat change, an uncooperative passenger, etc. — it can start to feel like things are getting ready to break down. You start to see all of your worst fears and catastrophes playing out in your mind, and they feel very real.
You Can Let Go Of Trust Issues, While Staying Safe
Trust is only one of a number of possibilities that can make flying difficult for people. When wanting to overcome your fear of flying, it’s important that you take the time in the counseling process to learn about and come through what’s feeding your own fear. No one can convince you that flying is safe when you’re scared. Fear doesn’t hear reason.
This is why I work from a deeper, more comprehensive and personalized approach to flying anxiety, that centers on you. It is also the reason that when I work with people, people often leave not only feeling better about flying, but also feeling less anxious, more grounded, and more trusting throughout their lives in general, even outside of flying. It is possible to move forward from this fear and open the world for yourself. Reach out if you’d like to discuss your situation or learn about how I can help you through this issue.
