Cure Your Flying Phobia

Of the top ten worst phobias people have the number three in the list is the fear of flying. Even though flying is twenty-nine times safer than driving an automobile over 40% of people have aviophobia or aerophobia, the fear of flying.

This phobia or fear is one of many anxiety disorders many of us have. Anxiety does not become a disorder until it becomes excessive or irrational.

When it causes you to not be able to handle every day conditions; for example, if your work requires you to fly for a business trip and the anxiety from that causes you to no longer be able to function at work, then your anxiety has possibly become an anxiety disorder.

The fear of flying itself is sometimes brought on due to other phobias we have. We may not be scared of the plane or the flying itself but may be afraid of being in the air.
Many are scared of closed places (claustrophobia), heights (acrophobia), or crowds of people (agoraphobia). All of these things are present during flight causing many to have anxiety about flying.

Many people are scared of flying due to the fact they feel trapped and cannot alter things such as opening the window if they feel stuffy. In an airplane there are many things we cannot control and the loss of that control causes anxiety in itself.

Here in the United States many of us began to fear flying after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center buildings. We now have the added fear of what if that happens again and it happens on my plane. While it is not likely it does not make us feel any more secure that it will not happen. We have seen what can happen and that alone is enough to keep us on the ground.

Some are scared of flying simply because of airplane crashes they have witnessed on the news or fictional television programs. Other times it is due to a family member or friend being injured in a plane wreck.

Many times just a person close to someone dying can cause a person to be scared of flying simply because they are afraid they may be the next die. They end up scared of flying because they have developed the fear of dying or necrophobia.

Through all of this we must keep in mind that aviophobia and any other phobia for that matter is a psychological condition.

There are many ways in which we can learn to cope with our fear of flying including realizing you have the fear and then challenging it. This may not work for you. You may need something different such as simply more facts or statistics on why flying is safer than driving or the fact that it is just safe in general.

Some of us just need to see proof that flying isn’t as bad as we imagine.

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