If you haven’t read my previous posts about approach I developed a while back for helping people overcome fear of flying, you can find them on my blog on my website.
There are four main components involved in overcoming fear of flying: normalization, underlying issues, emotional regulation, and passenger flying education. Each one addresses a separate and relevant pathway that feeds fear of flying. I won’t go into all four in this post. However, for each person, it varies what’s presently needed. It all depends on where you are emotionally, your own history, and your own experiences. It isn’t step-by-step, as much as it is understanding where your needs are in order to help you feel comfortable to fly.
Normalization and Decreasing Flying Phobia
Normalization is an important element of being able to resolve flying anxiety. The concept of normalization is to be able to emotionally experience the normalcy and routine nature of something so your brain and emotions don’t react like there’s a catastrophe about to happen. Even if there is technically some variable risk in many parts of life, we are able to do things every day that have risk in them because we experience them as normalized. We know that driving has a much, much greater statistical risk attached to it than flying. However, it’s easy for many people who fear flying to still get into their cars every day and drive multiple times per day because it’s so normalized that the brain doesn’t react to it as a threat. You may know there’s risk, but emotionally it’s become an every day routine that you can trust.
With flying phobia, most people who have a fear of flying have not been able to normalize the experience in this way. This can be for a few reasons. Therapists for cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) would tell you that you just need exposure. But I’ll tell you now that traditional CBT does not tend to work well for fear of flying. First of all, it’s not possible to provide people enough appropriate exposure with flying unless you can fly regularly (on a weekly basis at least), or get past security in an airport without flying. However, even if you could in theory make this happen, many people come to me who do fly regularly for work and still feel anxious about flying every time they travel. Every time they land they feel they’ve just gotten lucky and it’s a sigh of relief. Exposure on its own doesn’t create normalization.
Blocked Normalization
When people aren’t able to internalize normalization, it’s usually because there is something underlying that is blocking it. Getting to the underlying issues reinforcing your fear of flying is another main component of overcoming this phobia. For everybody, it is different what’s happening underneath the surface that is feeding the fear, but it’s imperative that what’s bolstering your flying anxiety is understood and worked through so you can make room for the normalization. The underlying component is the part of the process that brings the rest together. Removing the underlying blocks while working on the normalization opens the space to internalize normalization, which ultimately allows you to feel more like you’re just getting in the car to go from one place to another, rather than a daunting feeling of dread or fear of catastrophe that can appear with getting on an airplane (or can keep you from getting on the plane).
Reverse Normalization
Another part of what reinforces fear of flying for people is the idea of reverse normalization. This is when you are exposed to more negative images and stories about flying than positive, and it leads you to understand flying as dangerous. The images that people often have in their minds of the scary things they imagine can happen, or things they see on tv or in the movies, or even stories in the media that call up these scary images is part of this. This leads to blocking and even undoing normalization. So part of achieving normalization is helping you to be able to let go of the images you may carry about flying while bringing in positive engagement with flying.
Fear of Flying is Emotional — Not Logical
When flying is normalized, you’re able to experience it in your body and emotionally as routine. It’s worth knowing that flying phobia is rooted in emotions. You may know statistics, you may know everything about how flying works, you may have all the logical reasons that you’ll be okay. But when you fear flying, your body may react before you even have the chance to slow it down. The emotions and body cannot align with what you logically know. This is why people can go into a flight equipped with logic, but then still find themselves afraid anyway.
When the attention is given to what you need emotionally, normalization to flying becomes possible. I have seen people come to either feel indifferent about flying — where they fly and it’s a just a mode of transportation — to actually enjoying flying and wanting to do it more, even when they used to cancel flights and not get on the plane because it was once so scary. It is possible to overcome this fear.
If you’d like to work on your fear of flying, you’re welcome to reach out and we can discuss your situation.
