How do I get over my fear of flying? It is costing me opportunities and experiences.
I wasn't always afraid of flying. As a kid I went to Spain every summer and I even looked forward to the flight, but something happened at some point and I started absolutely shitting myself about it. In particular I don't like takeoff/the ascent, and I don't like when the plane drops a bit and I feel it in my balls. Even when nothing is happening, I feel like something awful is about to happen any second, like the engine will blow up, or we'll start to drop suddenly.
I can't even link it to any particular traumatic experience. I know it isn't' a rational fear, and statistics say blah blah and so on, and Christ alive my own father was even an aircraft engineer who tested the engines, but I can't help but shit my pants during a takeoff. Being vertical like that and flying through the fucking air isn't right man.
(I've put this in health because I feel like it is a mental health sort of thing).
EasyJet and BA run fear of flying courses. You get a talk from a pilot explaining how everything works, a talk from a psychologist on techniques for managing anxiety, then a short experience flight.
You might want to try CBT or hypnotherapy. Failing that, ask your GP nicely and they'll prescribe you a couple of valium to zonk you out for the duration.
I am similar. Never thought twice about flying, until I was an adult then suddenly had catastrophic thoughts. There's the usual spiel about how you're more likely to be run over by a bus than die in a plane crash, but when you've got genuine fear, that rationalising isn't particularly doable.
CBT may help. I know CBT is a bit of a meme, but it helped me overcome a lot of my social anxiety thoughts, so it could well help in fear of flying.
I was afraid of flying for some time, not because I'd never flown before but because it had simply been a very long time. Then when I went on a lads holiday to Magaluf with some mates, I was absolutely terrified during takeoff because it was a very windy day, where even the pilot apologised after takeoff. And at the slightest turbulence mid-flight, I kept hearing a screaming voice in the back of my head like, "WE'RE CRASHING!!".
And then on the flight back over the Pyrenees it got shaky again, this time with no word from the pilot, until a while later when he told us that there were heavy thunderstorms over much of central and northern France that we had no way of flying around, and that things could "get a little bumpy from here on out". So I was like, we're fucked.
The plane was rattling like an empty spray can in that thunderstorm for over 45 minutes, at some point lifting one of the trolleys in the back of the plane where I was sitting a few centimetres off the ground. But we made it out, and the weather noticeably calmed down over the Channel.
After that, I was no longer afraid of flying, and I've flown many times since. It was extreme confrontational therapy, but it worked.
As a tip - when there's turbulence, keep looking at the facial expressions of the flight attendants. If they're still calm, then whatever you're experiencing is everyday routine for them, so even if it feels very scary to you, you'll probably be just fine.
My dad was an engineer as well, and worked exclusively on wings. Every time we would get on a plane for our family holidays, he would look at the wing through the window and say something to the effect of "oo I don't know about that" quietly as if to himself, just to shit my mam up.
>>6079 People look at Putin as a monster unreasonably inflicting suffering on innocents but then think nothing of hopping aboard a CO2 machine to go swimming in Spain. Hypocrites.
