Why Am I Afraid to Fly?

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Monday, June 22nd, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

In the year 2000 alone, commercial flights were taken by over 1 Billion people. There were only 20 fatalities in over 18 Milion flights. Compare this with almost 42,000 traffic accidents in that same year, and you can see that airline travel is much safer than driving by car.

And yet, many people who have no problem speeding from here to there in their car every day are afraid to step onto an airplane to the point that they experience physical and mental symptoms when they have to fly.

Probably the most important thing to keep in mind is that, while it may seem that the risk of flying is the cause of the fear, that is probably not the case at all. As with all fears, the root cause is worry and apprehension, which can be caused by many different things.

For one, there is very little control that an airline passenger has on a commercial flight. If the cabin is hot, you can’t open a window. If you feel snug, it is hard to make more room. We can’t hit the brakes or control the plane in any way when there is turbulence. In a car we are typically driving or know the driver personally, which makes us feel more secure than a plane, where we can’t even see who the pilot is.

With such little control, all those things that are just annoyances in our “real life” become bigger than life on a plane. Waiting on the runway our minds run away with the possible reasons the plane hasn’t taken off yet. the tight seating becomes more and more constricted until it feels like the sides of the airplace are closing in on you. A little turbulence becomes an out of control plane doomed to crash in our anxious minds.

While many are able to identify and conquer these anxieties before their conscious mind even experiences them, there are many more who encounter some form of panic when flying, which may vary in degree from tolerable, to uncomfortable, right up the scale to full out panic attack.

The good news is that there are ways to conquer your fears without drugs of expensive therapy. This free twelve part audio tutorial will share simple, effective techniques to use facts to conquer your anxieties and get rid of your chronic fear of flying.

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