{"id":240,"date":"2016-09-25T15:30:39","date_gmt":"2016-09-25T19:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/?p=240"},"modified":"2016-09-25T15:32:11","modified_gmt":"2016-09-25T19:32:11","slug":"keeping-what-if-thoughts-separate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/keeping-what-if-thoughts-separate\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping “What If” Thoughts Separate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Years ago, I went to Venice with a friend. You may have seen St. Marks Square in movies It is a huge square with outdoor cafes, a tower, and – at one end – the Doge’s (The Duke’s) Palace and the Basilica.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you go into the Basilica, and go up into the balcony, there is a doorway that lets you out to a deck. The deck is elevated and from it you have a magnificent view of St. Marks Square and all of Venice, the harbor. I took her out there and suddenly she said, ‘Get me out of here!’ My first thought was, ‘What – we ARE out (because we were outdoors).’ She started yelling, ‘Get me out of here, get me out of here.’<\/span><\/p>\n

Not knowing anything else – though it didn’t make logical sense – I took her back inside.<\/span><\/p>\n

She said, ‘You knew better than to do that.’<\/span><\/p>\n

I said, ‘What?’<\/span><\/p>\n

She said, ‘You knew better than to do that.’<\/span><\/p>\n

I asked, ‘What are you talking about.’<\/span><\/p>\n

‘IT’S TOO MUCH,’ she shouted.<\/span><\/p>\n

To me it was marvelous being out there, being able to see all of Venice I would look down at a cafe, at the pigeons, at people walking, at the tower, at rooftops, at the harbor.<\/span><\/p>\n

For her, it was too much; instead of seeing those things ONE AFTER ANOTHER at a comfortable pace, she had them all hit her at once.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was these various items which I saw one at a time, which overwhelmed her because she saw them all at once.<\/span><\/p>\n

Flight anxiety is like that. For some reason, we have trouble looking at one ‘what if’ after another at a comfortable pace; instead we look at the all at once, and since each one releases a shot of stress hormone, all of them at once causes multiple simultaneous shots of stress hormone.<\/span><\/p>\n

All that is necessary to gain control over overwhelm is to learn to organize, to put things into context, so we can deal with them one by one at a comfort- able pace, a pace at which any stress hormones released has a chance to be used up before going to the next ‘what if’ thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

Accomplishing That Automatically<\/span><\/p>\n

Under stress, being able to keep things in context may go out the window; we found that – to be assured of protection against anxiety – the mind must be trained IN ADVANCE TO DO IT AUTOMATICALLY.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is what we do with the Strengthening Exercise: we train the mind to AUTOMATICALLY deal with ‘what if’ thoughts one by one, and each one in a context that does not cause the release of stress hormone.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image Credit:\u00a0 KEKO64 \u2013\u00a0 freedigitalphotos.net<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Years ago, I went to Venice with a friend. You may have seen St. Marks Square in movies It is a huge square with outdoor cafes, a tower, and – at one end – the Doge’s (The Duke’s) Palace and the Basilica. If you go into the Basilica, and go up into the balcony, there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":241,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,50,105],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243,"href":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions\/243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fearofflying.com\/library\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}