The SOAR Library

The following article was just published by the Masterson Institute. It is a bit technical, but with some introduction to the terminology, it can add to your understanding.

When the article uses the term “object”, it means a person who has psychological importance to you, since they play a role in your ability to regulate feelings. It can mean an actual physical person, but — even if it does — its more important meaning is psychological. We “internalize” . . . we built into ones self . . . what that person is to us. That person has a life — not just outside in the world — to a life INSIDE us.

The term “affect” means feeling. Affect regulation has to do with our ability to regulate our feelings on our own, and via persons whose characteristic ways of interacting with us are carried inside ourselves, to help us manage emotion.

The term “paranoid-schizoid position” refers to the way infants and very young children are psychologically organized inside. It is, I believe, an unfortunate term for a simple concept in which we all, originally, think in very simple terms or good and bad, right and wrong, safe and unsafe.

The term “depressive position”, again, could have been better named. The depressive position refers to having outgrown, somewhat, seeing everything in simple terms.

We have to be able to regulate emotions to move from the over-simplified way to seeing things to the more advanced way of seeing things.

And, when we get emotionally distressed, we can lose our ability to continue seeing things in more advanced way, and we slide back to oversimplified ways, such as safe and unsafe, and then get even more upset when we feel locked into an unsafe state (even though a person in the more advanced state would have a very different view).
========== THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FLIGHT ANXIETY ==========

Feeling Out of Control

Anxiety arises when we reach the limit of our ability to regulate affect internally. Since our internal ability is not easily increased, we turn outward for relief through control of the situation. If external control is insufficient, we seek escape from the situation, or from awareness of the situation.

Anxious fliers complain of “feeling out of control” on the plane. They have neither internal nor external means to regulate affect. Sensations of flight are so intrusive, particularly during takeoff and in turbulence, that strategies to escape awareness can fail even when aided by drugs and alcohol. Anticipating failure to control affect, some choose physically risker – but emotionally safer – transportation.

Thus, although risk of fatality is far greater when driving, anxiety is less. Imagination of a car coming at us is easily countered by imagination of escape, by turning the wheel. Though escape is not always
possible, this illusion of control preempts stress hormone release.

Rather Than Assurance, Statistics Provide A Focal Point For Distress

Statistics tell us the risk of crashing is one in several million flights. To the anxious flier, one in a million flights and one in a hundred-million flights mean the same thing. Both include the term “one”. How is the anxious flier to know he or she will not be that “one”? Awareness of safety as relative (rather than absolute) produces intolerable anxiety. The most remote possibility of disaster makes affect regulation impossible.

Affect regulation can be so limited that routine daily functioning demands rigidly correct alignment within a world of simplistic absolute categories: safe and dangerous, right and wrong, or good and evil. Any challenge to the this simplistic world-view causes anxiety, which leads to defense, such as attempts to convert others to the same point of view, or aggressive accusations of being unpatriotic or having no values.

Flying strips away the illusion of absolute control, and with it, the illusion of absolute safety. The more airtight the defense, the more dependent on absolutes, the less prepared one is for any confrontation with reality, including the confrontation with reality flying imposes.

Anxiety management can therefore be seen to be divided between two groups, each of which utilizes a different strategy. The first group, incapable of internal affect regulation, manages anxiety, ambiguity and conflict externally via control, illusion of control, and correct alignment within the absolute categories. Correct alignment may lead to control of others, conversion of others, or the destruction of others who are evil by virtue of being incorrectly aligned.

The second group, capable of affect regulation to manage anxiety, ambiguity and conflict internally, is able appreciate complexity, see humans as relational, values as relative, and discrete events as distributed to form a bell curve.

Concrete Support For Soothing Transitional Objects

For those who cannot manage affect regulation internally, concrete evidence of safety and connectedness becomes crucially important. Though high altitude cruise is the safest phase of flight, it is emotionally the most difficult phase, because of the earth’s remoteness. The earth, like Linus’s security blanket, is a Transitional Object, i.e. a concrete object that can be used to soothe the separation anxiety incurred when an object of attachment (like the mother) is not available, and the internalized representation of that object is not yet fully integrated. Internalized resentations of objects which cannot stand unaided are buttressed by the concreteness of the Transitional Object.

When the concreteness of a Transitional Object is compromised, its power to support internal representation is lost, and the Representational object loses the capacity to provide soothing. Therefore, when physical contact with the earth is lost, the power of the earth to reunite the anxious flier with any Object is lost. Difficulty with affect regulation begins when instant concrete access to the earth is lost by the closing of the aircraft’s door. Difficulty increases at the moment when contact is lost between the ground and the wheels of the aircraft.

Then, difficulty increases as the earth becomes more visually remote. This is evident in the following email from a client: “It may be my imagination, but the altitude affects me negatively. I’ve always said I wouldn’t mind flying if we weren’t up so high. For example, on a little commuter plane I didn’t fell nauseous at all. I was so excited. However, when I got on the plane to Germany (note: which flies higher), the same sick feeling came back.”

At lower flight altitudes, imagination that one could almost jump from here may provide sufficient soothing. Higher altitudes make the fantasy untenable and the earth’s ability to serve as a Transitional
Object tends to collapse.

Psychodynamic Theories Relevant To Fear Of Flying

The work of Melanie Klein provides a useful psychodynamic perspective from which the roots of fear of flying can be derived. Thus, the anxious flier starts, on the ground, in the Depressive Position
with insecure internal representations buttressed by the earth as Transitional Object. If in flight, everything representational, transitional, and concrete is lost, he or she plunges into the Paranoid-Schizoid Position, leaving him or her in a relational void in which positive self and other representations cannot be maintained, the world becomes full of threatening darkness, and panic results.

Note the concreteness of expression in this email: “As we were lifting off and once we were in the air, it felt like bubbles were building up and popping in my brain, it was actually slightly painful. My body feels so heavy and I’m afraid to move because it will make me feel dizzy and sick. Are these true physical feelings or is my mind causing these feelings?”

In the Paranoid-Schizoid position, concreteness becomes the primary perceptual and conceptual mode of apprehending the world. In the realm of concreteness, flight does not make sense, as it is based on Bernouilli’s theorum, an abstraction which can be processed by the left brain only when there is adequate soothing to support the ascendancy of abstract reasoning over the visual evidence that “nothing” is holding the plane up.

So long as left brain abstraction balances right brain visual evidence, the score is tied one to one, and anxiety is kept in check. But in turbulence, kinesthetic evidence – the sensation of falling – is added to the visual evidence. The score changes to: right brain, two; left brain, one. Closure, that the plane is indeed falling, takes place.

Imagination Triggers Stress Hormone Release

With closure, one shot of stress hormones is released which increases arousal, placing the person in the “fight or flight” response. This one shot of stress hormones will, on a scale of zero to ten, take a
person to two or three. But if further images of disaster follow, each will trigger one additional shot of stress hormones. A rapid sequence of images will cause a rapid sequence of hormone releases,
resulting in extreme arousal. In the absence of a neurally linked internal Soothing Object, extreme arousal is experienced as high anxiety or panic.

Panic Mimics - But Is Not - Death

For Self-Representation to exist, it must be constantly produced. When the mind is overwhelmed by affect, generation of positive Self and Object Representations falter. If the Self-Representation vanishes, its
momentary death may result in panic.

But panic is not always the result when Self-Representation production is overwhelmed. Consider other contexts; when sexual pleasure overwhelms the Self-Representation, the self, the loved one,
and the world are all one. We regard this as ecstasy.. When the Self-Representation drops away in sports, it is called “being in the zone”. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi titles his book on this subject “Flow”.

Absence Of Control = Abandonment Affect = Death

When in difficulty, pilots can also turn the wheel, or can turn to the flight manual for a procedure to avoid disaster. But for the anxious flier, control in someone else’s hand may seem worse than no control at all. Control in the hands of another can result in affect worse than death. The problem with flying is not BEING dead but GETTING dead; the affect one expects to experience when doomed.

What is the basis for such an expectation? The anxious flier “knows” and dreads what will be felt when plunging deathward, profoundly alone, utterly helpless, and nothing can be done. The fact that this experience is so familiar suggests it is not simply imagination. It may indeed be the implicit memory of early abandonment affect.

An implicit memory contains solely affect. It contains no data. It contains no autonoetic sense (the sense of ones self as the experiencer). Thus, when an implicit memory is recalled, the subject experiences what the implicit memory contains: affect. The implicit memory contains nothing to inform the subject that the affect is from memory; thus, it may appear to be causally connected to the present. This constitutes a “flashback”.

Abandonment affect can, in the absence of an internalized soothing object, reach a level at which the mind’s capacity to produce self-concept is overwhelmed. Loss of temporary self-concept may be experienced as death.

=========== PART TWO: TREATMENT OF FLIGHT ANXIETY ==========

Where Abandonment Is, Object Shall Be

A client said, “I just had a light bulb moment . . . why am I not afraid when I think of sitting in the front with the pilot . . . but lose it when I can’t see them in my mind?” Attachment Theory tells us the ability to be soothed by another person is part of our hardwiring. Object Relations Theory tells us that a person – and the soothing contact – can be internalized. Some of us have many neural connections which soothe; some of us have few.

When a harpoon is shot, it trails a line behind which connects the person firing it to the object the harpoon strikes and anchors itself into. Think of Winnicott’s “holding environment” as a circus tent in which a harpoon is fired. Whether aimed or not, the harpoon will hit some part of the tent and will anchor itself there. The trailing line connects the shooter with the tent.

In a soothing holding environment, every harpoon shot of self-activation becomes neurally connected with a reliably attuned Object. But if the holding environment is not a complete enclosure, or if the holding environment is capricious whether a harpoon shot of self-activation becomes neurally connected to soothing affect, or to abandonment affect, is hit-or-miss.

Masterson’s Personality Disorder Triad

Personality disorder results from a scarcity of neural connections between the child’s efforts at self-activation and a holding environment constituted by an available, attuned, empathic Object.

When self-activation is not neurally connected to a Soothing Object, self-activation leads to dysphoric affect. Attempting to self-activate, a client said, “If something goes wrong and the plane is about to crash, I won’t be able to handle it knowing I made the decision to take this flight.”

Providing Soothing Neural Connections

The treatment of flight anxiety requires nothing more than establishing a neural connection between every expected flight experience and the emotional component of a recalled experience with a Soothing Object.

First, the client selects a moment with another person which is pleasant to recall and, when re-lived, brings warm feelings. Moments frequently chosen are saying wedding vows, holding a newborn,
becoming engaged, walking on the beach with a loved one, or enjoying a family holiday feast.

Next, the client is asked to add something to the memory, to imagine a magazine is lying there, on the floor, on the sand, or on a table. The client is asked to imagine that on the magazine page, there is a
small black-and-white photograph of a flying scene, and to quickly refocus on the memory and the strong positive affect of the memory. A neural link between the flight image and soothing affect begins to be
formed. Repetition over several days establishes the link.

Each image that could come to mind during the flight is included in the exercise, including images of disaster. To introduce difficult material without causing stress hormone release, the client is asked
to imagine that, during the positive experience, a comic book was lying there. In the comic book, a cartoon character is seated on a plane. Though the plane is flying normally, the cartoon character is
imagining the disaster (depicted above the cartoon character’s head in what cartoonists call a “balloon”). The client quickly refocuses on the positive memory and its positive emotion. In this way a neural
link is made between a Soothing Object and images of hijacking, the plane falling, people screaming, etc.

Then, again using cartoon characters to prevent stress hormone release, one-by-one, each element of the fight or flight response is neurally connected to the Soothing Object: rapid heartbeat, rapid or
difficult breathing, sweatiness, confusion, disorientation or derealization, and tension in the body.

Limited Repair

This exercise achieves limited repair where anxiety arises due to inadequate neural connection between flight situations and an internalized Soothing Object. In my experience, after connecting each
flight situation to an Object, high anxiety does not develop, and panic is prevented.

The exercise can be applied to elevators, bridges, tunnels, or a MRI. It has been used successfully with one client suffering from fibromyalgia. In the treatment of personality disorder, if this approach can enhance affect regulation of dysphoric affect in the second step of the Triad, defense may be less pronounced.

Choosing An Airline

When considering airline travel, Captain Tom recommends you choose an airline with:

• an established track record
• a widely recognized brand name
• a pilot’s union
• minimal outsourcing of maintenance

Why are these important?

• With an established track record, statistics mean something. Since accidents happen rarely (only once in several million flights) it takes several millions of flights for statistics to reliably indicate a safety record due to commitment to safety rather than to luck.
• A widely recognized brand name means an airline is likely to regard safety as more important than an airline that can easily afford change its name after an accident.
• At a non-union airline, captains can be fired if they make too many waves about safety or refusing to exceed limits prescribed by law. At an airline with a pilot’s union, captains are backed up by the union when they refuse an airliner that needs maintenance or refuse to ignore legal limits.
• Mechanics employeed by an airline get passes for themselves and their family members. Self-preservation is a strong motivator to do good work. That motivation is lost when maintenance is outsourced.

Airlines Associated With ALPA, SWAPA or APA And With A Widely Recognized Brand Name

With two of the four criteria above established, the two variables are outsourcing rate and accident rate.

Listed in order of least outsourcing rate * followed by accident rate **

* outsourcing data source: Consumers Report March 2007** accident rate source: www.airsafe.com18% American Trans Air (insufficient flights for meaningful statistics)

47% American Airlines 0.40

48% Delta 0.17

63% United 0.31

68% Southwest 0.00

69% Continental 0.14

76% America West 0.00 (now merged with US Airways)

77% US Airways 0.28

80% Hawaiian Airlines (insufficient flights for meaningful statistics)

92% Alaska 0.33

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Strategy

Get to the boarding area early. Give a copy to the person in charge.
It asks they board you ahead of the other passengers; that makes it easy to meet the captain.

• If they agree to, stay nearby so they don’t forget.
• If they will not board you first, have them point out the boarding doorway. Stand as close to it as you can. (I say stand because, seats near the door may already be taken)

As soon as the first boarding announcement begins, board the plane.  Don’t wait for the announcement to end. The announcement usually goes like this:

“We would like to invite our first
class passengers to board now.”  This is followed by “people with children,
and anyone who needs extra time.”

“Extra time?”  That’s you. But don’t wait to hear that. As soon as you recognize the beginning of the boarding
announcement, get on!

Onboard

A flight attendant will ask for your boarding pass and point toward your seat. Say, “Thank you but I have to do something first.” Do not go to your seat. If you do, you will have to fight traffic to get back

Find a different flight attendant who has time to take the letter to the captain. As you enter the plane, the galley is usually straight in front of you. If not, it will be toward the front of the plane, so go left toward the front and find the galley. The flight attendant assigned to the galley can help. If no one is in the galley, just wait.

When you find a flight attendant, tell him or her the following:

• I’m an anxious flier, and . . .
• I’m working on it with someone, and . . .
• he says it is REALLY important for me meet the captain.
• I understand about security so I don’t want to go up to the cockpit
  unannounced, so . . .

• Please take this letter up to the captain for me.  (Place the letter in the
  flight attendant’s hand like you are serving a summons.)  Then say . . .

• I’ll wait right here while you check with the captain.

Two things can go wrong, so be prepared:

1. The flight attendant says, “Give me your seat number and if the captain
says it is OK, I’ll come and get you.” That is a brush off.  Do not accept it.  Instead, say, “I have to find out about this right now.  I’ll wait right here while you check.”

2. The flight attendant says, “Because of security, you can’t do that anymore.” That is not true.  So just say, “I understand, but please take the letter up  anyway. Maybe the captain - or the copilot - has a moment to come back.”

• Do not approach the cockpit; just get the letter carried there. If the captain gets the letter, he or she will meet with you.
• Approach the cockpit accompanied by a flight attendant. If the captain or flight attendant signals from inside the cockpit to come up, don’t. A sky marshall might not be able to see their signal. Wait to be accompanied.

Captains - because they love to fly - are always more than happy to help someone who is at trying to, at least, like it. Don’t worry about interrupting anything. The pilots have finished their checks BEFORE you board, so that if maintenance is needed, it can be done before departure time.

Why Does This Help So Much?

If you could fly in the cockpit, you would have a great flight. There would be no problem with anxiety because there would be no imagination. You would SEE what is going on. (imagination - not reality - is always the cause of anxiety). Since you can’t fly in the cockpit, the next best thing is to meet the pilots
who will.

Then, when you hear a noise or feel some unexpected motion, instead of picturing disaster, you will picture the captain’s face, and the captain’s confidence that he or she knows how to deal with anything that could possibly happen because he or she has been flying for many years and practices everything that could go wrong in the simulator every year during recurrent training.

• Ask the captain about possible turbulence.
• Ask the captain how much of a power change to expect at “noise abatement”.
• Ask if he or she will make extra announcements to explain what is going on.

Know that the toughtest part of the flight - now that you have learned how
to control anxiety DURING the flight - is in the boarding area. Once you meet the
captain, all your tools and skills and practice will “kick in.”

While in the boarding area, use the 5,4,3,2,1 to focus on things that do not
lead at all to anxiety.

Psychology of Flight Anxiety

Copyright © 2006 by SOAR, Inc.

All rights reserved.  No part of the SOAR Course may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or other means without prior written permission of SOAR Incorporated, Box 747, Westport, CT 06881-0747.

Disclaimer Of All Warranties And Liability

SOAR, Inc. makes no warranties, either expressed or implied with respect to SOAR Audio Course or its fitness for any purpose other than that of providing educational information.  It is sold with the understanding that in no event will SOAR, Inc. , those editing or contributing to the SOAR Course, be liable for direct, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages resulting from its use.

Table of Contents

1.  Welcome

2.  Introduction

3.  What Causes Fear of Flying

4.  How Fear Of Flying Develops and How It Can Be Gotten Rid Of

5.  Seven levels of arousal

6.  Take Along My Phone Numbers

1.  Welcome

Problems with flying can lead us to think we lack something.  Actually, we lack nothing.  All that is needed to fly comfortably and confidently is motivation and adequate assistance.  If you are motivated to succeed, I believe our assistance will give you the results you want.

No other way to deal with flying equals what we have here.  The SOAR Video Course on DVD is - by itself enough for almost everyone.  When the Course is followed with a one-to-one counseling session tailored to meet individual needs, we rarely - if ever - fail to achieve success.

At this point, however, almost everyone seems sure nothing will work.  What a difference they find when they later fly!  I am truly pleased that you are beginning.  I look forward to sharing your joy, excitement and pride when the whole world is open to you.

But looking forward can lead to anxiety.  Why?  To master anything, we first learn “how to”.  Then, we “do”.  If we think of doing something before we know how to so it, we become anxious.  It is like being thrown into a pool before knowing how to swim.

So - when you think ahead toward successful flying - you may feel anxious.  This is completely natural.  But when you have completed SOAR you will know “how to”.  Until then, whenever you feel doubtful, whenever you feel uncomfortable, remember - next time you fly you will be prepared - next time can feel different - next time you will have a number of new ways to control unwanted feelings, any one of which can give you the help you need.

But for now, forget control.  Be gentle and understanding with yourself.  Just allow whatever thoughts, feelings, or doubts you have to be present as you continue learning “how to” gain control over the feelings which have made flying a problem.

As you go through the SOAR Course, certain parts will stand out.  Make notes so you can locate them later.  This enables you to review more efficiently to brush up when you have not flown for a while.

Some information useful to others will not be useful to you - and may not make sense to you.  Don’t spend time digging into information you do not find readily understandable.

If you want to go through a whole CD - or even several CDs - at one time, that can give you an overview.  But you really need to spend some time going through each DVD one idea at a time.  After the presentation of just one idea, stop the player, and take some time to mull it over. Let that single idea or technique “perk” by remaining active with you for a day.  Compare the way you have been seeing things before with using the idea or technique with how your see things without it.

This way, each idea which can make a difference will become part of you, and each idea which does not fit will be discarded.  Use the manuals the same way.  Read a bit.  Then check it out with your own experience for a day.

Each set of CDs provides information you need.  You will gain confidence about safety.  You will learn techniques which control the feelings you have tried unsuccessfully to control.

The full (guaranteed) SOAR Program consists of the SOAR Audio Course on CD plus a one-to-one counseling session with me - usually by phone - to strengthen your ability to fly.  It is designed to locate the process that cause feelings to grow and make changes so that uncomfortable feelings are no longer are present.

Counseling sessions can be done without purchasing any CDs at all.  But you have a better foundation if you have gone through the CDs first.

If you have an upcoming flight and feel you need more help, we can schedule a session.

Please feel free to call me at (877) 332-7359 or email me at

tom@fearofflying.com

with any questions you may have.

2.  Introduction to the SOAR Audio Course

The SOAR Audio Course contains what might be called “senior information.”  By this we mean information which everyone has the capacity to use, yet appears out of reach.

Whatever seems out of reach appears that way because of the concepts we hold about ourselves.  We have a concept of who we are (identity) and we have a concept of what we are capable of (ability).  Both these concepts are based on the past.  Both concepts are based on what psychologists call “mirroring of the self.”  Other people serve as “mirrors” of who we are.  The problem is, what others “mirror” back to us is distorted.  The “mirroring” others give us provides us with our “self-image.”  Since the “mirroring” is distorted, we gain a distorted “self-image” or “self-concept.”

Whatever self-image, whatever self-concept we have, it colors the present and limits the future when we operate in our ordinary way.  Though a “good” self-concept gives us more confidence than a “poor” self-concept, both can limit us when we operate in our ordinary way.

Ordinarily, we regulate how much effort we commit to an activity.  Ordinarily, we measure out a 50%, 80%, or 100% effort.  All of these, 50%, 80%, or 100%, are in proportion to what we - based on these concepts - believe we are capable of.

When we operate in an ordinary way, what we believe is our maximum effort is something other than that.  It is actually a MEASURED effort, 100% of what we believe we are capable of based on these concepts.

Since our self-concept is based on the past, when we operate in an ordinary way, we allow our future to be determined by our past.

The SOAR Course is about discovering your ability to operate in a way which is not simply a function of the past.  Senior information presents this choice.

Given less than “senior information,” people necessarily fail.  Less than “senior information” is dispensed when what works is not known, or when it appears the recipient does not have the capacity to use what works.  Some who approach teaching others to overcome fear of flying take the position that people who have fears are not very capable, and have to be given “crutches.”

They tell people that flying is absolutely safe.  Nothing is absolutely safe.  Everything we do has some level of risk, and everything we decide not to do also involves some risk.

People who have fears are capable.  They don’t have to be misled in order to fly.  In fact, people who have fears are potentially more capable that others, because they are more in touch with their feelings and with themselves.  It is only because they lack certain “senior information” that they appear to be less capable.  We have found no one, willing to follow the instructions of the SOAR Course, who has not been able to succeed.

That which works does so so invisibly that we do not notice it.  Or, if we do notice it, we fail to be impressed.  What works and works so invisibly?  This: when you choose to move your finger, your finger moves.

When you can be impressed with this phenomenon, overwhelmed by its simplicity and in awe with its being miraculous, then you will have made a start.

The SOAR Course is education and informational in nature.  It is in itself neither psychotherapy nor intended to be therapeutic.

We do provide counseling services which, when combined with the SOAR Audio Course, constitutes our Full Guaranteed Program.  Counseling is also available separately.

For other therapeutic assistance, a qualified professional should be consulted. Information contained in the SOAR Audio Course may be a useful adjunct to such therapy.

If any question about emotional of physical fitness to fly exists or arises, these should be addressed by a qualified therapist or a qualified physician before flying.

Though the education and information provided in the Course, many people have discovered an ability to fly satisfactory.  SOAR cannot guarantee the results for any individual other than as follows:

When you fly after completing the full program (which consists of the SOAR Audio Course and one-to-one counseling) if you are not satisfied, you receive a full refund.

You Have Already Done The Toughest Part.

You have already done the toughest part of overcoming fear of flying.  You have overcome two elements which can bar success.  They are:

• 1. unawareness that fear plays a dominant role in determining our choices and actions; and,
• 2. lack of determination to regain control.

This is important.  Everyone has fear.  Some are aware of fear, but keep it covered up.  Some have hidden their fear so well that they no longer are aware that they have it.  They are not in a position to accept what SOAR has to offer.

Your awareness about fear provides a unique opportunity.  This opportunity is so remarkable that you may later be grateful you had this problem to deal with and to learn from.

You have both the desire and the determination to deal with fear.  You might be surprised how many people contact us and claim they are interested in dealing with the problem . . . but later.  They do nothing.  It is all talk.

You are not all talk.  You are in action.  I congratulate you for what you are doing.  It is a great pleasure for us to assist you in getting what you want.  It is wonderful for us to know people who - like you - are in touch with feelings and are open about feelings.  It is inspiring to work with
people who are determined and courageous.

Being Courageous

You may not think of yourself as courageous.  Most people think courage is not having fear at all.  We think being courageous is having fear and being willing to have it while continuing.  Ralph Waldo Emerson agreed.  He said: “Courage consists in equality to the problem before us.”

It is not courageous to do something which we do not fear.  Courageous means being open enough and real enough and whole enough to have fear, and continue anyway.

Fearlessness Is Foolishness

Airline flying is not risky.  Some other flying, such as in supersonic jet Fighters, is downright hazardous.  Fighter pilots have this saying: “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots.”

Fearlessness Is Fear That Is Covered Up

Much of what passes for courage is actually fear, the fear of appearing fearful.  Fearlessness is fear that is covered up.

We do NOT teach people to be fearless.  We do NOT teach people to ignore fear.  We do NOT teach people to block fear.  I have known many great race drivers and fighter pilots.  None of them used such methods.

Some were aware of their fear but did not know how to integrate it.  They did not let fear stop them.  They toughed their way through.  But, because fear was not embraced, and thus integrated, it bothered them enough to keep them from performing with the best.

Facing Fear

Others pretended to be fearless.  They sought to prove what they pretended was true.  In their quest, they overextended real limits.  None of them survived.

Face And Embrace Fear

The great ones, though, not only recognized fear but embraced fear.  This allowed them to integrated it into the fabric of their experience.  They did nothing to “deal with” fear.  Instead, they simply allowed fear to be a necessary part of doing anything new, of doing anything unknown, and doing anything which appears to involve risk.  They lived, loved, flew and drove on the edge of what is possible and what is fatal and survived.  THEY WERE MAGIC!  They performed brilliantly.  As if living a charmed life, they seemed able to enter the jaws of disaster and return.  Theirs was a different sort of boldness - not boldness to establish their fearlessness - but the boldness to recognize fear and continue, ultimately embracing fear and making fear an
integral part of experiences.

Does it seem bold to embrace fear?  It is not.  When we look unreservedly at things, we embrace them as they are.  To face and embrace life’s unknowns and risks is an authentic form of self-expression.

Fear Is Essential

It is essential to have fear.  We need it to alert us when danger MAY be present.  It automatically prepares the body for action.  We master fear by learning to embrace it as a natural and essential part of living; otherwise, fear masters us.

Fear Dominates Us If We Resist It

If we are unwilling to experience the sensations of readiness which we call fear, we avoid all that is unfamiliar and unknown.

It is impossible to block these normal physical sensations.  They stop only through a process in which the unfamiliar becomes familiar, or the unknown becomes known.  Psychologists call this process “desensitization.”  It simply means after enough exposure to something, automatic reactions when exposed to it no longer take place because it has become familiar and known.

Unwillingness to experience these sensations blocks the “desensitization” process.  Blockage of the process causes fear to become fixed, which can lead A person to make to major compromise: avoidance of all activity that is unfamiliar or unknown.

An Essential Distinction

We need to begin making a distinction between fear and danger.  What we call fear is the body going on alert.  The best alert is instantaneous and automatic.  This is what the mind-body interaction provides.  But fear is ONLY an alert signal.  FEAR SIGNIFIES UNCERTAINTY.  FEAR DOES NOT EQUAL DANGER.  Our correct response to the alert signal is to resolve the uncertainty.  If there is in fact danger, action may be necessary.  For that possibility, the body is primed by fear to be ready.

Neither fear not the physical sensations connected with fear are equivalent to danger.  The sensations are frequently just a false alarm.

We are slow when we wake up in the morning.  Yet, we are instantly ready for action if a smoke-alarm sounds during our sleep.  There may be no danger, but we are ready in case there is.

Yes, we experience these physical sensations in some cases of real danger.  But just as often, we are exposed to real danger and experience no physical sensations at all.  Many times when driving cars come toward you at 50 M.P.H. and pass by with a spacing of only a few feet.  Some of these cars are driven by people impaired by alcohol or drugs.  Almost every time you get in a car, you place yourself in genuine danger.  But you have done this so many times, you are desensitized.  Though you are in real danger, your alarm does not
produce the physical sensations of fear.

Fear Is Like A Smoke Detector

Fear - like a smoke detector alarm in your house - goes off automatically. You can not prevent it unless - unwisely - you disconnect it.

There are people who masquerade as fearless.  They may convince us there is something is wrong with us.  Many people we work with have been the victim of such deceit.  They have been made to believe they are weak because they experience fear’s physical sensations.  They have been taught that they have a character defect.  To try to be like the “fearless” claim to be, we may seek to rid ourselves of fear’s physical sensations.  This is no solution.  Your most superhuman efforts will not control fear’s automatic signals.

Fear’s automatic feelings can not be simply “disconnected.”  Even if it were possible, it would be unwise.  Though there are times when fear is a nuisance, there are also times fear is needed to alert us to a situation which demands action.

Regardless of how disturbing these sensations are, you need to learn not to try to control them.  You need to learn not to try to suppress them, nor to deny them.  Not because you might succeed and actually “disconnect” them, but because this is wasting efforts trying to do something impossible.

Later on in the SOAR Course you will understand they what you suffer from is not these uncontrollable automatic feelings.  Suffering comes primarily due to trying to control uncontrollable automatic feelings.

Some “Senior Information”

If you have been trying to ignore, suppress, deny, or block fear, you need to reverse your orientation.  You need to maximize awareness of the physical sensations associated with fear.  To begin with, in order to reverse habits, you will need to actively seek maximum awareness of the physical sensations.  Later on, you can simply allow these feelings to be.

Non-automatic Thoughts And Feelings Follow The Automatic Ones

Suffering comes primarily from the non-automatic thoughts and feelings which follow automatic feelings.  The thoughts and feelings which follow CAN be managed and controlled.  This means the primary source of suffering due to fear can be relieved.

How We Begin

How do we deal with these sensations?  What is the first step?  The first
step is to make several distinctions.

Awareness Is Key

It will take some time and concentration of your awareness.  So, we want you now to begin observing in minute detail every sensation and every though you have during the experience of fear.  The purpose of this is to begin making it possible for you to notice that there is a distinction between the automatic sensations that occur instantly and the thoughts that follow and themselves cause additional feelings.

To do this, you will need to turn around your orientation from trying to
avoid, trying to ignore, trying to block the physical sensations of fear and
focus your attention powerfully on every nuance, on every slight anxiety,
every suggestion of fear or anxiety, on the earliest, tiniest signal of fear
or anxiety.

Fear and Danger Are Not The Same Thing

Danger is the potential for harm exists.  Fear is a constellation of sensations in your body as your body prepares itself in case YOU INTELLECTUALLY determine potential for harm indeed exists.

A Feeling Is Inadequate As Proof Of Danger. 

You can be in danger and feel no fear whatsoever.  You can be absolutely safe and yet be gripped with terror.

You cannot depend upon feeling.  Feeling is inadequate to determine actual potential for harm.  Though feeling may have been adequate thousands of years ago in a primitive world, feeling is not even close to adequate in our sophisticated modern world.

Disregard The Kind Of Flying You Wouldn’t Be Involved In

Right from this point, begin making a distinction between flight in the United States and flight in countries which do not provide up-to-date aviation services.  Some accidents which occur in third-world countries could not happen in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia or Japan.

A distinction will allow you to understand that, although you can read of crashes every day, the flights you are preparing yourself for involve an entirely different form of aviation.

For example, most of us travel in automobiles.  What effect would it have on our travel by car to learn of a crash at the Indianapolis 500?  A race car crash does not lead us to believe our own car is dangerous.  Why?  We draw a distinction between race cars and the cars we use.  Similarly, no air crash should cause you any concern unless it is a crash of an airline you would ordinarily choose which was operating in a country where you would ordinarily fly.

There is no significant connection between amateur pilots flying small propeller-drive airplanes and profession pilots flying jet-liners . . . Other than both are called airplanes, and both are operated in the air by people called pilots.  There is nothing about a crash by an amateur pilot that should lead you to connect risk to flying an airliner piloted by a professional pilot.

Airline Flying Is A Minor Risk

It takes a book larger than the Manhattan telephone directory to list the flights that take place in the U. S. every day.  Yet, years go by without a single fatality on any established major airline.

During the SOAR Course you will make distinctions between established major U. S. airlines and other operations.  Many new operations have sprung up since deregulation of the airline industry.  Some of these new “airlines” are sound, and some are not.  But the safety record of the major U. S. airlines - and most foreign airlines - is magnificent.

Less professional operations should be placed in a separate category in your thinking.  Yet, even when all airline operations are lumped together, flying is still far safer than driving.  In the 70’s flying across the country thirty times was less risky than driving just once.  Today, it is even safer.

If something fails on your car, you can simply get out.  Since that is not possible on a plane, we speculate that planes are more dangerous.  They are not.

If something fails on a car, it stops running.  But if something fails on an airliner, it keeps running.  A back-up system takes over for every possible failure.  There are even back-ups for the back-up systems.

The Safety Of “Third Generation Airliners”

In its thirty years of operation, there has only been one fatal crash of a 747 in the U.S.  The design work done on the 747 took aircraft engineering to a new higher standard.  As a result of this new standard and the ability these third generations airliners to be landed automatically - removing the possibility of pilot error - there have been no accidents or fatalities with the 757, 767, 777 or the Airbus 319 (and higher numbers).

You are safer while flying these airliners than you are while sleeping at home in your own bed.

The Basis For SOAR

SOAR is based on how pilots and race drivers deal with enormous risk, flying supersonic jet fighter aircraft and driving race cars.  Once you learn the secrets of dealing with enormous risk, you will be able to deal with the minor risk of airline flight.

SOAR’s basis was not discovered flying airliners.  The risk is far too small.  We will always have physical sensations associated with the unfamiliar and the unknown.  The feelings you have when boarding an airliner can be very much like the feelings an astronaut has when boarding a rocket.

What we are teaching is what Tom Wolfe called “The Right Stuff,” the ability of astronauts and jet fighter pilots to operate knowing that there is a potential for disaster in what they have chosen to do.  They make an assessment of risk potential and make a choice to do it or not.  If they
choose to do it, they embrace whatever fear exists while doing it as just a part of the whole experience.  This embrace of risk and fear - the “Right Stuff” - allows pilots and astronauts to operate in the most efficient way to maintain their safety, free of risk that they will be overwhelmed by fear.

Everyone has this ability, but it does not become developed in most of us in the ordinary course of life.  In SOAR we do not seek to make astronauts or fighter pilots out of you, but to develop this very same quality - this somewhat dormant ability you already have - to embrace and integrate the risks that everyone needs to face when life is well lived.

Many people avoid common minor risks.  To face a minor risk after years of avoidance requires more “Right Stuff” than an astronaut needs when being shot off into space.  What you are doing is downright heroic!

Congratulate yourself for having the willingness to face this.  You have demonstrated - by having started this quest - exactly what Emerson says courage is: “equality to the problem before us.”

3.  What Causes Fear Of Flying.

Vulnerability to fear of flying can stem from a lack of something we call “self-soothing.”  When the young child starts to walk, and to explore the world, mishaps occur.  The child falls or bumps into something.  The child rushes back to mom for soothing.  If mom is consistently available to provide soothing followed by encouraging the child to try again, her soothing techniques get built into the child’s memory until the child can soothe himself or herself by recalling and imagining mom’s actions.

You can see toddlers “practicing” this by soothing their dolls. In time, self-soothing becomes automatic and operates unconsciously.  Things that might upset us get neutralized unconsciously by the self-soothing operating automatically.

Two things can go wrong.  One: good self-soothing was not built in; or, two: a good supply was built in but later events damaged it.

Good self-soothing is transportable and genuinely owned by the individual. Some moms supply loads of self-soothing but only through a psychological umbilical cord.  When one ventures from home, the cord - like a rubber band - gets stretched, and threatens to break and result in panic.

Some families teach children that safe and unsafe are - not relative - but absolutes.  This is an oversimplification.  Nothing we do - or nothing we avoid doing - guarantees absolutely safety.

Thus, things we do routinely - even though they have some risk - get put in the “absolutely safe” category because they never killed us.  Things we don’t do routinely?  Well we aren’t sure.  So, without being absolutely sure, since there is no intermediate category (but only safe and unsafe), that activity has to be placed in the “unsafe” category.

We do this without really being aware of it, and unaware of it, we don’t examine this black-and-white thinking.  We need to.

If we have been - aware of not - putting things into these absolute categories, when something does go wrong (such as the death of someone special) it throws us for a loop.  We thought everything was going to work out.  Now we find it is a lie.  That kind of trauma can damage self-soothing which is placed on a foundation of absolute safety and unsafety.

When a seemingly reliable supply of self-soothing is tied to these absolute categories, the death or serious injury exposes these belief that “everything is going to work out fine” is a lie, a house of cards we have been depending upon.

This can damage self-soothing in a general way so that anxiety can arise about virtually everything.

Or, a bad flight or being mugged can damage self-soothing in a more limited way so that one avoids flying in similar conditions or certain street situations.

If self-soothing is not transportable, problems arise when going out into the world on our own. Leaving home separates us from our source of soothing.  Stress increases in the teens and twenties as we venture from home.  We handle the anxiety by maintaining the option - if panic threatens - to turn around and head toward home.  Just knowing we have the option can prevent panic and anxiety.

Anything that blocks this option is a threat.  Fear of flying presents a dual problem.  It blocks our option - if anxiety arises - to head home; the pilot is not going to respond if we change our mind.

But it is worse than that, we have stretched that umbilical cord that is connected to non-transportable self-soothing both horizontally and vertically.

Now that you can see how guarantees of safety, or assurance of safety may not hold up, how is it some people don’t have this problem.

Research by Allan Schore indicates that the area that provides “executive control” of emotions is the right pre-frontal orbito cortex.  This area is supposed to develop between birth and eighteen months.  The physical development of this area depends upon stimulation.  Stimulation causes blood flow in the area which causes that part of the brain to physically increase in size.

What kind of stimulation is needed?  The infant needs a mother (or whoever plays the role of mother) who is consistently available and consistently attuned to the child’s feelings and use eye-to-eye contact to signal to the infant that the mother knows what the child is feeling.

To a great extent, our identity is our feelings.  The infant seems to believe its identity is its feeling.  And if its feelings exist in relationship to the mother in a way that the child feels felt and thus feels understood, the child develops within a context of safety.  After all, mom is pretty much all-powerful to the infant, so safety depends upon mom knowing - and caring about - and responding to - the infant’s feelings.

If, on the other hand, the infant’s feelings are not met in this way by the mother, even if the child is well taken care of, the development of the right prefrontal cortex may not be optimal.

We need this area of the brain as adults to regulate our emotions.  But without the right kind of attuned stimulation early in life, that part of the brain may not be physically developed as well as we might wish.

4.  How Fear Of Flying Develops And How It Can Be Gotten Rid Of

High anxiety levels are the result of a rapid sequence of worries, none of which alone would cause high anxiety.  One single thought, no matter how awful, will produce high anxiety.

A troublesome thought sequence develops over time as you collect more and more things to worry about.  These are often based on the mistaken belief that you were in danger during flights you took when you were not at all.  Other sources include information - often misinformation - in the media.  Hollywood contributes to the collection, generally with things that are impossible, but - not being a pilot - how would you know?  One particularly difficult thought is what it was like for some person on a doomed flight. What people really experience when doomed, it is not what you imagine.

But you have your own personal file folder entitled “disastrous things that could happen to me if I fly.”  Once several ideas have accumulated there, one thought can come to mind, cause anxiety, and trigger another thought, which causes more anxiety, etc.

The sum total of anxiety can reach a high, but tolerable level.

But, when the anxiety-producing sequence has been allowed to run again and again and again, the sequence of fear focus points transforms itself from a rapid-firing sequence which produces high but tolerable anxiety to a group of anxiety-producing thoughts which fire as an intolerable panic-producing unit.

Fortunately, the Strengthening Exercise which you will learn in The Control of Anxiety DVDs disassembles this unit so the whole collection of thoughts stops firing in unison.

The Strengthening Exercise also prevents the anxiety build-up that originally was the problem.

This means that with sufficient practice of the Strengthening Exercise before you
fly, you can not only prevent panic but return to the mild levels of  anxiety that went unnoticed back before flying was identified as a problem.

However, the level of anxiety that once went unnoticed will be noticed.  Thus, there can be worry that even this mild and once unnoticed anxiety may turn at any moment into panic as it used to prior to learning and practicing the Strengthening Exercise.

Anticipatory anxiety may persist until you have done enough post-Strengthening Exercise flying to develop confidence and reliance on the change.

In the meantime, use the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Relaxation Exercise to manage anticipatory anxiety as it arises.  It can also be used when in flight as a backup to the Strengthening Exercise, or if you have not yet learned the Strengthening Exercise.

5. Seven Levels Of Arousal

7. flooding

6. agitation/excitement

5. alert processing

4. alert not-processing

3. drowsy

2. active sleep

1. deep sleep

This gives you a sort of road map of where you want to be when flying. You want to be in level 5, alert processing. This is the level at which you have maximum use of your cognitive abilities, and can focus you mind anywhere you want to. In level 6, you cannot focus your mind at will because something is pulling it like a magnet. In level 7, you have so much going on that you can’t process it and panic can take place.

The mistake people make is trying to stay unaware, trying to not think about what they are experiencing; or in other words, they try to stay in level 4, alert not-processing. That doesn’t work because when you don’t process what is coming in and through your mind, it builds up and runs you up to level 7, flooding. It is like charging things on your credit card but doing it without being aware of it. When the bill comes, you may feel panic.

Stay in level 5. The strengthening exercises is designed to automatically help you stay in level 5 where your cognitive abilities are at their peak.

6. TAKE ALONG CAPT TOM’S PHONE NUMBERS

In the US and Canada, toll free (877) 332-7359. Outside, (203) 258-4803.

SOAR PRE-FLIGHT CHECKLIST

Consideration Checklist

• List your options: to fly, to drive, to take the train, or to stay home.
• Organize each option as a set; list the desirable and the undesirable

  features of each option.

• List the best and the worst result that could happen in each option.
• List the best and the worst feelings that could happen in each option.
• These steps lead to a sense of which option is in your best interest.
• Make a tentative commitment to the option that is in your best interest.

Tentative Commitment Checklist

• Are you willing to risk encountering every feeling?
• Are you willing to risk encountering every result?
• If so, consider yourself tentatively committed.

Absolute Commitment Checklist

• List your secret “ways out”. What could occur which could melt your

  resolve? (such as not sleeping the night before, news of an accident,

  weather you may mistakenly think is risky, or worry about turbulence)

• Are you doing this no matter what – even if it kills you?
• Is your commitment so absolute that your being on that flight is as

  certain as if you were already on board with the door closed?

• When you notice anxiety disappear, you have moved into the APNR
  (Abstract Point Of No Return).

• Expect to have to redo this. Even seemingly absolute commitment

  may vanish and need to be redone.

Non-Absolute Commitment Checklist

• Anticipatory anxiety comes from giving up control to a person with

  whom you have – as yet – no caring and responsive relationship.

• Anticipatory anxiety vanishes upon meeting, and becoming confident

  about, your captain.

• Your commitment to fly is tentative and is to be firmed up one way

  or the other only after boarding and meeting the captain.

• Your commitment is to board and to meet the captain – not to fly.

Day Of Flight Checklist

• Wake up according to your plan. Tension? Do 5,4,3,2,1 if needed.
• Monitor continuously for first indications of tension. Use 5,4,3,2,1.
• Before leaving home, satisfy yourself that preparations are complete.
• Leave early to allow a leisurely drive. Notice scenery during drive.

Take With You Checklist

• Magazines, puzzles, video game, letter of introduction copies, MP3.
• Stay occupied visually with the real (”what is”) rather than the

  imaginary (”what if”).

• Paper and pen for writing down any thought that causes anxiety.

  Include it in your next Strengthening Exercise practice session.

• A sticky note saying, “If I can read this, it is not yet time to worry,”

  to stick on the seat in front of you (for turbulence).

• Luggage, carry ons, money, credit cards, identification, passport

  if applicable, ticket or e-ticket info, my phone numbers.

Airport Checklist

• Check in early. Check all baggage. Carry on only essential items.
• Bring in full experience of all sounds, sights, smells, feelings of the
  airport and terminal environment.

• Stop and sit down or stand in one spot. Take in everything. Tell

  yourself what you see and hear.

• For each anxiety thought, make up two non-threatening explanations:
  one reasonable and one absurd.

• Focus just on sounds. Identify sounds you can. Note your tension level.
• Shift to hear the sounds as just vibrations. Listen to them as you listen

  to music. Note a possible lowering of your tension level.

• Focus just on things you see. Identify the things you can.

  Note your tension level.

• Shift to seeing them as shapes, forms, colors.
• Look at them as if they were shapes in an abstract painting. Note a

  possible lowering of your tension level.

Boarding Checklist

• Ask Gate Agent to board first by presenting letter of introduction.
• Observe from boarding lounge window what is outside the jetway.

  When later in the jetway, use your imagination to picture things you

  are now seeing outside the jetway.

• Notice whether the jetway is uphill, downhill, or level, so you will

  know what to expect when inside it.

• This is the worst part of the flight because everything is ahead of

  you and the Strengthening Exercise has not yet kicked in.

• Strategy: tell yourself that if you “bail out” you will do it AFTER

  meeting the captain IF you don’t feel better by then.

• USE THE 5,4,3,2,1.
• If Gate Agent will not board you first, stand at the jetway entry.

  Go on immediately at the start of the first boarding announcement.

• Touch the side of plane. Prove how solid, strong and firm it is.
  Find a flight attendant not directing passengers to their seats. Ask

  that the letter be taken to the captain while you wait there.

SOAR FLIGHT CHECKLIST

Preparation Checklist

• Monitor your experience. Scan your body for physical sensations and

  tension. If you notice any, use the 5,4,3,2,1 exercise to focus on what

  is real (”what is”) around you rather than imaginary (”what if”).

• Instead of making feelings your “enemy” and something to fight off,
  recognize them as just what they are: feelings that result from thoughts.

• Ask yourself if there is any solid indisputable evidence that the thought
  accurately represents reality. Recognize thoughts that lack the solid

  indisputable evidence as just what they are: thoughts.

• The feelings caused by thoughts which are not based on solid evidence

  mean nothing at all. Fear based on imagination means nothing at all

  about any actual danger.

• For each anxiety thought, make up two non-threatening explanations:

  one reasonable and one absurd.

Door Closure Checklist

• Prep yourself for the door closing: visualize you – yourself – closing

  the door. Describe scene to yourself.

Takeoff Checklist

• Accept that when the engine revs up, it will stir a response, just as a

  crescendo in music stirs a response.

• Accept that acceleration – which needs to happen – will press you back

  in your seat.

• Track increase in speed by wiggling toes more rapidly as speed increases.
• Watch outside and attempt to predict when the nose will rise.
• Notice liftoff. Since you are well past V-1, you have it made, so you can

  relax now.

• Listen for a thump indicating the gear is up followed by less wind noise

  as the gear doors close.

• Expect power changes and corresponding lightness and heaviness as

  the plane stair-steps during climb.

• Accept that there will need to be turns which require the plane to bank.
  Banking is safe.

• Flip through magazine ads – if needed – to keep visual thinking real.

Turbulence Checklist

• Turbulence is natural, routine and never a problem for the airplane.
• The airplane never falls but may feel like that due to motion in the thick

  (due to speed) jell-o-like air.

• Post a note on the seatback in front of you: “If I can read this, it is not

  yet time to worry.”

Descent And Landing Checklist

• Accept that there may be stair-stepping during descent.
• Accept that large power changes are required to change speed and
  accommodate gear and flap extension.

• A noise similar to a blender is associated with flap extension.
• An increase in wind noise – and possibly a thump – are associated

  with gear extension. You might hear a sound like water flowing through

  pipes, which
  is hydraulic fluid going through pipes to move the gear.

• Feel a vibration? The speed brakes are being used, the flap setting

  is being changed, or the flaps are at the maximum extension for landing.

• Landing guidance is electronic. Plane can be landed automatically.

For everything needed on the plane, there is a main system, a standby system,
a backup system and an emergency system.

Warning systems are active to warn the pilots of any possible mistake.

You are safer on a modern jetliner than sleeping in your own bed at night.

Enjoy your flights.

Call If You Need To: (877) 332-7359, or (203) 258-4803

Here are some tips on fine tuning the “Strengthening Exercise”.

Strengthening Exercise Phase Two

Originally in Phase Two of the Strengthening Exercise (the second part of the Exercise where we deal with terrible things you fear may happen), I had the volunteer clients imagine some other person was imagining the plane in trouble.

Since then I found that using cartoon characters is even better, because when terrible things happen to cartoon characters, we just laugh at it.

Make up your list of awful things you worry might happen. Break each one down into its tiniest elements.

Very high levels of anxiety and panic attacks come from – not just one awful thought – but one after another. Several thoughts can appear to be just one thought. For example, plunging. What appears to be one awful thought is actually several:

• the plane in an unusual position,
• feeling like you are falling,
• things flying around the cabin,
• people screaming,
• thinking you are about to die,
• what will your loved ones feel,
• what will they do.

The thought “plunging” is seven (or more) thoughts. Each can trigger 20% of the stress hormone needed to cause panic. It only takes five thoughts to reach panic. Here there are more than five, but they appear to be only one.

You must break such thoughts (”crashing”, “plunging”, “being killed”) down into tiny parts. Don’t let feelings stop you from doing this important piece of work. You must break any such thought down for the Strengthening Exercise to give you the protection you want.

Practice the exercise to link every flying thought with a feeling you get when really connecting with another person. That feeling, when it is linked to a flying thought, keeps the flying thought from causing stress hormone release.

Count your list of awful things after you have broken them down into the smallest elements. And make a then list of an equal number of cartoon characters and super heroes you are familiar with so you can use a different cartoon character or super hero for each thing you are afraid might happen.

Other Phase Two Cartoon Examples

Linus Leaving The Earth

Leaving the earth removes us from things that help us feel safe and secure. Imagine Linus on a plane with his security blanket. He sees the earth get farther and farther away, but he knows it is OK because his feeling of being connected with his mom is enhanced by feeling the softness of his security blanket, and the scent of his mother, as he snuggles with it.Suddenly Lucy grabs it. The cartoonist draws a picture over Linus’ head in which Linus imagines himself having a panic attack. Fortunately, a flight attendant takes the blanket away from Lucy and gives it back to Linus, and he feels reconnected. Take yourself immediately to your own feeling of being connected in the positive experience.

Snoopy Plunging

Snoopy is on his doghouse pretending he is flying his Sopwith Camel, and suddenly it is riddled with bullet holes because the Red Baron is after him. Snoopy worries his doghouse will plunge out of control. Imagine his doghouse plunging, . . . and immediately refocus fully on the positive image and the warm connected feeling.

Snoopy With The Door Closing

There are some other things you could use Snoopy for. Remember how it feels when the door closes? What if Snoopy was in some other dog’s doghouse, and the door closed . . .

Another Dog In Control

. . . and the OTHER dog was flying the doghouse?

Lucy In Turbulence

Imagine Lucy sitting on a plane. Everything is fine, but she is imagining there is turbulence and other people are screaming (because they don’t know turbulence is irrelevant), . . . and immediately back to the positive image and the warm feeling.

Spiderman With Claustrophobia

Spiderman is caught in a web on an airplane and feels claustrophobic because he can get out of neither. Since he can’t get out of the plane, he can’t throw a web around it and rescue from a mechanical failure.

Tweetie Pie Caged

Imagine Tweetie Pie terrified because her control has been taken away. She is enclosed in an airplane. Though she can fly, she can’t fly free of it.

The Green Lantern Forgetting To Focus On Staying In The Air

Green Lantern flies with his magic ring – which keeps him aloft through his sheer force of will. If something interferes with his concentration, he’d drop like a stone. So he sits in the plane gripping the armrests, trying to maintain his concentration, to hold the plane in the air. He sees other passengers are not doing the same, and thinks, “Don’t they understand what’s about to happen!!!”

Iron Man And Mechanical Failure

Iron Man flies using a suit of armor that requires a team of highly trained technicians to maintain. He knows if someone sabotaged his jet boots, he wouldn’t be able to stay in the air. He imagines someone not fixing something on the plane, and it won’t stay in the air.

Storm Flies Into A Storm

Storm (from the X-Men) is able to slip between the winds. If the weather is bad, though she’ll have a rocky time of it. If there’s a tornado, she’s as helpless as anyone else. Yet, she always survives.

Harry Potter Imagines “What If”

Harry Potter is an expert flier, but if an enemy hits him with the right spell at the wrong time, he’ll be jolted off his broom, and crash onto the quidditch pitch. Since he knows that, he imagines his plane could be jolted if “anything” happens, he doesn’t picture the back-up systems saving him, but something always does.

Strengthening Exercise Phase Three Enhancement

In the last part of the Exercise where we work on the feelings that come in high anxiety or panic (rapid breathing, rapid heartbeat, etc) have those things happen to a cartoon character or super hero.

Rapid Heartbeat

The emotional control system revs up the heart to get you ready to run or fight.Imagine Clark Kent is seated confidently on a plane knowing if anything goes wrong, he can become Superman and save the plane. Suddenly he feels weak. “Someone on this plane has Kriptonite on them; I’m losing my powers.”

Clark Kent realizes he can’t turn into Superman, and starts to panic. The cartoonist draws him with exclamations marks on his chest and curved lines beside his chest to show his heart is pounding. Immediately, refocuse on your positive memory and feelings.

Rapid or Difficult Breathing

The emotional control system increases the natural breathing rate. But multiple “hits” of stress hormones may make breathing so rapid that it becomes difficult.Imagine Popeye on a plane sitting next to Olive Oil. Popeye is macho and doesn’t want Oilive to know he is anxious, so he decides to sneak a hand into his pocket and get a can of spinach. When he does, he finds there is no spinach. Suddenly he can’t breathe. The cartoonist could represent that by his fist around his skinny neck. Popeye says, “Olive, I can’t breathe!” Immediately back to the positive image
and the warm feeling.

Hot and Sweaty, Cold and Clammy

The emotional control system pre-cools the body to get it ready for running or fighting.Imagine Sponge Bob on a plane. See drops of water coming off him. Immediately go to the positive image and the warm feeling.

Disorientation; Unreal or Surreal Feelings

Imagine Scooby Doo in a kennel in the cargo compartment. It is dark, and Scooby Doo can’t see what is going on. He is puzzled by the noises and motions, and he is totally alone.To represent his confusion, picture him – as he usually is depicted – with
spirals above his head to indicate that things seem unreal, or surreal . . . and immediately back to the positive image and the warm feeling.

Tension In The Body

Imagine Bruce Banner is on a plane and starts to get anxious. He starts to feel body tension. This starts to turn him into the Incredible Hulk. So you see Bruce Banner turning green and his body expanding under the tension, his shirt popping open. Return quickly to the positive, warm feelings.

Another Cartoon About Feeling In The Body

A client writes, “In addition to rapid heart beat, I get this sinking, dropping
feeling in my chest, so I thought of Itchy and Scratchy from the Simpsons.
In case you’re not familiar, Itchy (a mouse) often lures Scratchy (a cat)
into some horribly vividly gratuitously violent situation - for example, some-
how reaching into Scratchy’s chest, grabbing his heart, throwing it onto the
ground and stomping on it would not be uncharacteristic.

If You Have Trouble Making The Exercise Real Enough

Try drawing some cartoon-like images of the plane crashing, or of panic, or whatever you need in Phase Two. Don’t be afraid to do this. You might think that drawing these images would have a negative effect, cementing them too much in your imagination. Believe me, there are already cemented there; turning them into cartoon-like drawings lightens them up.

None of the drawing you do keeps you from, when you run a practice session, of doing the sequence in a “hit and run” way, to train your mind to do exactly the same, and to do it automatically.

The sequence still takes place in practice, and takes place easier, aided by the drawn images.

In the Strengthening Exercise, we teach ourselves to quickly go there and to go away, a sequence that becomes a habit, and then becomes a sequences which will take place unconsciously when on the airplane.

A Comprehensive Cartoon Sequence

A client writes, “After practicing the strengthening exercises I now envision a fully loaded airplane – loaded with cartoon characters that is! It is in full color and quite entertaining Olive oil is wringing her hands, Tweety Pie is in a full sweat , Mr. Magoo is totally oblivious to the fact that the O2 masks have just dropped down, etc. Oh yes –the Lion from Oz is there for courage and Dorothy for my worries about death, saying” we’re not in Kansas any more” !!!! It is great to have imagination when it is used in the proper way !!!!”

Is The Strengthening Exercise Working?

You can’t tell by imagining a flight. Why? Because the Strengthening Exercise changes what happens when something comes from outside, goes by the amygdala, and on into our awareness. What we are doing is changing the amygdala’s response to something coming from outside. When you try to imagine your upcoming flight, you are not dealing with something coming from the outside. So you can’t test the Exercise that way.

How can you test it? Try watching some video at www.flightlevel350.com before you do further practice of the Strengthening Exercise. Note the videos you watch, and write down how to find them again. Write down your feelings as you watch. Use a “zero to ten” scale. After you have practiced the Strengthening Exercise a few times, go back to www.flightlevel350.com and look at the same videos. Write down your feelings again “zero to ten”. This way you can track your progress.

Anticipatory Anxiety Is Different Than Flight Anxiety

The anticipatory anxiety you may feel now is no indication that anything is wrong with your practice of the Strengthening Exercise. There are some advanced ways to dealing with anticipatory anxiety such as the Abstract Point Of No Return taught in “Psychology of Flight Anxiety”. But if you haven’t mastered that, use the 5,4,3,2,1 when you feel edgy and expect it to disappear once you meet the captain. That is when the Strengthening Exercise kicks in.

One More Thing

Now that you have gotten the idea about using cartoon characters, fine tune it one more step. Instead of having the bad thing actually happening to the cartoon character, have the cartoon character sitting on the plane, and everything be fine. Put the bad thing in the “balloon” (the cloud-shaped thing over the cartoon character’s head; this is where cartoonist draws what the cartoon character is thinking or imagining).

What does this accomplish? It shows that there are two things going on: 1. everything is fine, and 2. there is imagination that things are not fine.

This is a perfect duplication of what happens to you on the plane. Everything is fine, but you imagine it isn’t. By setting up the dual nature of the experience in the Strengthening Exercise, it can help you – yourself – keep that dual nature of the flight experience in mind when you fly. My hope is that when you imagine something bad, you will at the exact same time be aware that it is only imagination and everything is fine.

Anticipatory Anxiety
We broke the code of flight anxiety years ago. For years now, we have been able to help anyone and everyone fly without high anxiety or panic. But anticipatory anxiety is still troublesome in some cases.

I hope bringing you up-to-date on what we know about anticipatory anxiety will help you better deal with it.

The two kinds of anxiety are so different that I sometimes think there should be two difference courses, one for flight anxiety and a different one for anticipatory anxiety.

The Two Anxieties Are Unrelated

There is a real problem with thinking of the two types as related. Why? Because when a person has learned and practiced the Strengthening Exercise, he or she will be able to fly without high anxiety or panic. We have learned how to control that automatically.

But when a person who is completely ready to fly anxiety-free has anticipatory anxiety before the flight, it is so easy for them to think the anticipatory anxiety means the flight will be awful.

That is not true. No matter how much anticipatory anxiety a person has, it does not mean there will be any anxiety on the flight.

What Causes Anticipatory Anxiety?

It’s more than one thing. If we focus on just one part of the anticipatory anxiety problem, we may get only partial relief. So let’s look at all the possible causes.

1. The Belief That Being Relaxed - Instead Of Being On Guard - Tempts Fate.

Freud said the problem with trauma is, the first time we experience trauma, since we never had one before, it comes as it “out of the blue”. So what do we do? We always “look to the blue”. We believe always expecting something to go wrong keeps things from going wrong.

Our first trauma happened when we were young when our ability to use logic was limited. This faulty belief is based on the best logic available to us at the time. Yet, the belief persists, and continues to dominate us, because we have not examined the logic upon which that belief was founded.

Until we do, we will continue to feel greater anxiety when starting to feel confident about flying. Whenever we notice we are NOT having anticipatory anxiety, THAT can worry us. So we keep it going.

I’m going to go into a longer exploration of this cause at the end of this article.

2. Doubt That The Course Will Work?

The Strengthening Exercise - which is learned in “The Control of Anxiety” - is designed to stop high anxiety, claustrophobia and panic during flight. But the Exercise doesn’t “kick in” UNTIL you are on the plane. This can leave you, as the flight gets closer, worrying, “will it kick in?”

The Strengthening Exercise will work. It is as simple as this. If you went to the supermarket and took the label off a can of cat food and pasted it on a can of tuna, when you check out, as that can goes by the scanner, what is the scanner going to say: “Cat Food; fifty cents” no matter what is in the can.

What else CAN the scanner say? All it does is look at the bar code.

We have a device like that in the brain. It’s called the amygdala. That’s the part of the brain  that causes us to feel anxiety. It causes us to feel anxiety be releasing adrenalin into the brain and the body. How does it know when to do this? Well, the amygdala isn’t very smart. It doesn’t do any thinking at all.

Just like the scanner at the supermarket does NOT look inside the can to see what is there, the amygdala does not look at the thought. It just reads the label.

If your flying thoughts are labeled “danger”, that is what the amygdala reads. When it reads that, it releases the adrenalin which “revs” you up. Too many thoughts with too may danger labels will cause too much adrenalin and result in high anxiety or even panic.

All we need to do to stop that is change the labels on your flying thoughts. Then, the amygdala lets thoughts about flying go by without setting off any alarms.

Once you have done proper practice of the Strengthening Exercise, the amygdala is going to read the labels on flying thoughts as “no big deal”, you are just NOT going to have a problem during the flight.

Just as sure as the scanner at the supermarket is going to register that re-labeled can as cat food, the scanner in your mind is going to register re-labeled flying thoughts as no big deal.

Keep in mind, to make the Strengthening Exercise work, you have to do your homework. Every thought has to be relabeled. It takes a few practice sessions to make the new labels stick. Once you have done proper practice, there is no way to have high anxiety or panic on the flight.

3. If I Have This Much Anxiety Now, Maybe I’ll Have More On The Flight.

It doesn’t work that way. Once you have done the preparation with the Strengthening Exercise, the anxiety you get on the flight is less than the anxiety you get in anticipation.

This means, the amount of anxiety you are getting in anticipation is NOT indicative of the amount of anxiety you will get during the flight.

What goes on in advance of the flight is worse than what goes on during the flight.

Then, after you have done a few flights, and know from your own experience the Strengthening Exercise prevents high anxiety and panic, you don’t need to have anxiety about anxiety.

Re-label the flying thoughts and the anxiety will not come.

4. Stepping Into The Unknown.

We know we don’t know the outcome of the flight in advance. Anticipatory anxiety depends, in part, on what we expect.

You’ve driving your car hundreds if not thousands of times. You have gotten good results; when you get in your car that’s what you expect.

Every time you drive 5.4 urban miles, that is equal in risk of fatality to a trip from New York to Tokyo.

Think how many times you have driving 5.4 miles. That’s how many flights you could have taken with the same risk. Driving worked out OK. So why not flying?

Based on experience with driving, you expect good results. Based on experience flying, pilots expect good results. Pilots fly day in and day out. Year in and year old. And nothing happens. It’s boring. Our friends who are pilots fly day in and day out, year in and year out, and nothing happens to them either. I flew for Pan Am and United for thirty years. I know literally hundreds of pilots and hundreds of flight attendants, and I know no one who every got even scratched in an accident.

So naturally, when I get on an airliner, I expect good results. Just like you do whenever you get in your car to drive 5.4 miles. It’s all the same

5. Thinking There Is No Way Out.

There is a dolphin show at the aquarium in Mystic CT. When I saw the show,  the trainer told us the most difficult trick to get a dolphin to do is to jump through a hula hoop.  Why? Dolphins are air-breathing mammals, and, they can’t swim backwards. If a dolphin is encircled in a tight space, it will drown. It’s brain is genetically wired to tell it never to be completely encircled by anything. Even a harmless hula hoop violates the genetic coding in a dolphin.

Like the dolphin, we - too - perhaps by nature - want to have a way out.
We look at flying like the dolphin looks at a hula hoop.

With flying, though it LOOKS - visually - like there is no way out, there is an ENGINEERING way out.

Since you can’t SEE the engineering ways out, you need to imagine them. You need to know, as a pilot knows - that for everything that we know of that could ever go wrong, there is a backup system, and a backup for that. Though we don’t have a way out that you can see with your eye, there is always a way out you can see in your mind’s eye. Picture the pilot’s manual.

We have been flying airplanes for over one hundred years. Whenever there has been an accident, the cause has been investigated, and something has been done to make sure that can’t happen again.

That means, for something to go wrong these days, it has to  be something that hasn’t happened in one hundred years of aviation. That’s why accidents are so incredibly rare.
It is because we have ENGINEERING ways out. All the engineering ways out are in the manual.

Picture this. In a car, if someone comes at you, you turn the wheel. In an airplane, if something goes wrong, you turn to the manual. Anything that can go wrong is in the manual.

Pilots feel in control, not just because they have the wheel in their hands, but because they have a way out for everything that anyone can foresee ever going wrong.

6. What About The  Pilot?

If a doctor makes a serious mistake, the patient may not survive. But the doctor does continues to practice. If a lawyer makes a serious mistake, the client may go to jail, but the lawyer doesn’t. The lawyer continues to practice.

If a pilot makes a serious mistake, does he or she get to continue to practice? No. If a pilot makes a serious mistake, he or she is six feet under.

So, if you want to know whether a doctor or a lawyer is good or not, you ask about their reputation. But if you want to know whether a pilot is good or not, you just have to notice whether you can see the pilot, or not. If you can see the pilot, you know he or she is a good one. The ones who weren’t good are six feet under.

It takes a professional board to stop an incompetent doctor or lawyer. You can’t always depend on professional boards to do the right thing. But you can depend on gravity. It doesn’t take a professional board to stop an incompetent pilot. Gravity will do it.

It takes years of flying before any established airline will consider a pilot’s job application. The airlines want to be sure pilots have been well-tested by gravity before letting them fly an airliner.

So the answer to your question about does the pilot know what he or she is doing? If you can see the pilot, you know the pilot is a good one.

When you fly, board early. Ask a flight attendant to go up to the cockpit and ask the captain if you can come in and say hello.

7. When Does Anticipatory Anxiety End?

Anticipatory anxiety ends when the biggest thing causing anticipatory anxiety ends . . . anxiety about the wisdom of giving up control to another person.

Some of us find it really hard to give up control. I don’t think we wired up that way at birth. Instead, I think distrust comes from experiences where others betrayed our trust, and did not act in our best interest.

Mark Twain said, Once a cat jumps on a hot stove, it will never jump on a hot stove again . . . or a cold one.

Once we have had experiences where our trust was betrayed, it is emotionally difficult to trust; it is difficult to give up control.

Think of the times you have trusted someone with your life, or with your well-being, or with your heart, and been betrayed. We learn, many of us, that we must never trust. . . that what we must do is take care of ourselves and never ever put ourselves in the hands of others.

And yet, all human relationships are about - to some extent - doing that. As tiny children, we are completely at the mercy of our parents, and those of us who didn’t have perfect experiences with our parents, naturally, have anxiety about trust.

8. The Flight Is Like An Arranged Marriage.

Imagine you are talking to someone and you say to them, “I’m getting married tomorrow.” And they say, “Oh congratulations?  Who are you getting married to?” And you reply, “I don’t know. It’s being arranged by my parents.”

It would be crazy NOT to have anticipatory anxiety. But it ends if you are the bride and the groom turns out to look like Brad Pitt!

That is why anticipatory anxiety goes away when you meet the captain. You find our your captain is not a reckless maniac but a person you sense can be trusted completely.

For anticipatory anxiety to go away, you need to get a gut level feeling about this person as being real, as being competent, and as caring that the plane gets there. You need to recognize that this captain has been doing this for years and can handle this job. He or she wants to get back to family and loved ones just as you do.

Until you meet the captain, it is like just throwing all caution to the wind, like playing Russian Roulette, like taking an awful chance with your life. And if you feel you must do this, it would be crazy not to be anxious about it.

But once you meet the captain, all that changes. Now you know this person cares as much about getting there safely as you do. And you know this person knows how to get you back to the ground safely. That is when anticipatory anxiety is over.

At that point anticipatory anxiety is finished. The Strengthening Exercise which you learned and practiced now kicks in to deal with the flying part.

So, when you have anticipatory anxiety, the thing that makes sense to do is just ignore it because there is nothing you can do about it.

See, you are dealing with anxiety like what  the outcome will be of marrying someone tomorrow at random, or of having an operation and having your life in the hands of someone you don’t even know.

9. A Strategy For Dealing With Anticipatory Anxiety.

Since anticipatory anxiety won’t go away until you meet the captain, avoid it by not making the decision until you meet the captain.

Go to the airport. Go to the boarding lounge. Get on the plane. Meet the captain, And THEN decide. Then decide if this feels right to you.

How POSSIBLY could it feel right to you until then.

How POSSIBLY could if feel right to marry someone you haven’t met.

How POSSIBLY could it feel right to have surgery without meeting the doctor and talking it over with the doctor.

So how POSSIBLY could it feel right to decide to fly with someone until you have met them.

10. An Advanced Strategy For Dealing With Anticipatory Anxiety.

This is advanced; it is not for everybody. Let’s see if this is for you or not.

The first concept I want to direct you to is the idea that the mind is not supposed to be at peace. Many people believe the goal is having no conflict. We are supposed to have conflict, and it is up to us to decide, moment-by-moment, considering the many conflicting ideas and impulses and desires we have, what to do. People who are mature are aware of their conflicts and make decisions based on their goals and priorities. People who are immature spend their time unproductively simply trying to avoid awareness of conflict.

Anticipatory anxiety is about conflict: that’s pretty obvious when you think about it: the conflict is you want to fly and you don’t want to fly. How can you resolve the conflict?

Here’s how.

Consider: what is the very worst that can happen on your flight? Well, you could get on, the plane could take off, and climb up to cruise altitude and - though I can’t imagine how it would happen - I’m sure you can imagine the plane plunging, and you can imagine going through terror, with people screaming, and  things flying around, and then . . . it’s over. You are dead.

And while we are on the subject, it is not being dead that is so awful, . . . it is GETTING dead, going through that terror first.

As someone posted on the message board, yes I know flying is hundreds of times safer than driving, but if I crash my car, it doesn’t fall 30,000 feet first.

It is the terror that is the problem. Terror is the worst thing that can happen on your flight.

Consider next: what’s the best it could be? You get on the plane, they upgrade you to first class. You find yourself sitting next to your favorite celebrity, and is delighted by your wit and charm. The plane takes off and you hardly notice it. Cruise is perfect - not a ripple. The plane glides down to touchdown as smooth as silk, and you get off, and actually find you luggage made it, too.

You have considered the best and the worst. You could hope for a perfect flight: it isn’t going to happen. You could dread the worst flight from hell with terror and death; it isn’t going to happen. Neither of those is going to happen. You know that and I know that. It is - instead - going to be someplace in the middle, someplace between those extremes.

There is only one question remaining: are you going to do it or not? Here is your opportunity to make the choice to fly, and further, to make that choice a commitment to fly . . . and here is the kicker . . . no matter what, even if it kills you.

THAT, is the thing that makes all the difference . . . no matter what, even if it kills you . . .
it is as certain - now - three days before your flight - that you will be in your seat on that plane when  the door closes - as if you were on it right now. You will allow NOTHING to stop you from being on that plane when the door closes.

You can take it to the bank. It is carved in stone . . . a done deal. Why? Because you say so. . . because you have made an irrevocable commitment to do that flight, no matter what.

An amazing thing happens. That part of you that has been doing numbers on you to find some excuse, some way out, of taking that flight, gives up. Conflict disappears because one part of you gives up. You feel unified. You feel peace. Anxiety vanishes.

For as long as that commitment - that unconditional commitment to fly no matter what -persists, anxiety cannot get a leg to stand on.

But, as your flight gets closer, the commitment will lapse. Anxiety will come back. You will need to make the commitment again. But remember; paradox. You can’t DO this commitment thing to make anxiety go away. You make this commitment out of you own personal ability to make a commitment and keep it. Anxiety going away is only a by-product of your determination.

If you try to commit in order to get relief, it won’t work. This commitment has to come out of the essence of who you are. Not everyone has that essence; as I said, . . . this is not for everyone. This is for people who have a sense of personal power, people who know they have the power to make things happen.

You will need to search for the hidden strategies you may have to sneak out of the commitment. . . such as, Yes, I’ll do it no matter what, but if I don’t sleep well  the night before then . . . no. That won’t work. Or, the weather doesn’t look good. Or, there was a crash on the news. Or there was something that might be an omen. Look for your secret “ways out”. Recognize them, and re-commit.

Once again, this is not for everyone. If you are just looking for relief, it’s not for you. If you are really committed to personal grown, then APNR is for you.

11. There’s Always The 5-4-3-2-1

It anticipatory anxiety gets big, turn to the 5-4-3-2-1 for a break. Rationally, you know it is OK to fly. Emotionally, give yourself a 5-4-3-2-1 break and continue giving yourself 5-4-3-2-1 breaks until the anticipatory anxiety ends when you meet the captain.

12. The Final Previously Missing Piece In The Anticipatory Anxiety Puzzle

Timeline Compression

When considering an upcoming flight, a massive error is easily made without any awareness of error at all.

It is natural to want to consider the flight. It is natural to wonder how we will feel. It is natural to think that even though we did fine our last flight, this one may be different and something may cause overwhelm.

When trying to make an assessment of an upcoming flight, we try to imagine what the flight will be like. Though the flight duration may be hours, when we use imagination, we take all the things that we think could or would happen in those hours and jam every one of them into one moment of intense imagination.

As a result, all the stress hormones that the flight would spread out over hours becomes concentrated into just one moment of anticipation.

As a kid, I took the magnifying glass my grandmother used for reading out in the yard. It was a nice summer day. The sun felt good on my skin. But that sunshine, when focused by the magnifying glass onto a piece of paper, quickly burned a hole in the paper.

The same thing happens with the intense focus caused by time compression. You take what would happen in hours and compress it into seconds. Emotionally, you get “burned”. It is the same as if I said to myself, “If I try to get a sun tan, my skin will catch on fire.” That is the  mistake people make when they anticipate what a flight will be like and focus all the events of the entire flight into one intense moment of imagination.

When you try to anticipate an upcoming flight, if you allow time compression to take place, your estimate of what will happen on the flight will be grossly inaccurate.

Some years ago, I went with a friend out onto a balcony that overlooks St. Mark’s Plaza in Venice. Here are two photos from the balcony:

http://www.humancargo.net/gallery/venice/set_a/img/crop0020.jpg

http://www.greatmirror.com/images/medium/007563.jpg

When I surveyed the view, I saw the plaza, the sidewalk cafes, the pigeons, people walking, more buildings at the far end, the rooftops of Venice, the harbor to the left, and another church on the other side of the harbor. I looked at these things one at a time.

But I learned from my friend’s reaction — overwhelm — that while some  take in such a view item by item, others take in all the items at once; and when all those items are taken in at once (rather than one by one) it is overwhelming.

This can teach us a great deal about anticipatory anxiety. The ‘events’ (such as take off, climb, cruise, descent, and landing) that take place on a  two-hour flight are  spaced over two hours of time. Thus, if these events are experienced when they occur, they are experienced with several minutes of spacing between them. But when one ponders an upcoming one hour flight, one doesn’t take two hours to ponder the flight. Instead, the events of the two-hour flight are compressed into just a few seconds of  time.

Let’s imagine that each one of these five events causes a stress hormone release. The stress hormone from  the first event is burned off before the second event  takes place. And the stress hormone from the second event is burned off before the third even takes place.

But when pondering an upcoming flight, the experience of each of these five events is compressed in time from an hour to just a few seconds. If each causes a stress hormone release,  the five shots of stress hormone are released within a timespan — not of an hour but — of a few seconds and the result can be a high level of  anxiety.

Taking a flight is like  eating a Big Mac. You do it bite by bite. You ‘process’ each bite separate from any other bite by chewing it up, and then swallowing it. But when thinking of an upcoming flight, it can be like trying to swallow a Big Mac whole.

It is impossible to accurately simulate the experience of a two-hour flight by pondering it in a time span of two seconds; inevitably the experience of anticipating the flight will be inaccurate.

If you sat down and conceived of the flight, moment by moment, spreading all the events over two hours, you can  see how that would cause no stress at all.

I’m trying to establish for you how inaccurate consideration of an upcoming flight can be, and how that inaccurate consideration can cause great (and inaccurate) stress.  Do you make car payments or mortgage payments? What if you got a bill demanding that, instead of paying a monthly installment, you were told to pay the entire balance! That would be shocking.

In an effort to determine ones readiness for a flight, when one tries to imagine what the flight will be like, inevitably  the flight is compressed in time, and stress hormones are released which lead the person to believe the flight will be as stressful as is the time-compressed imagination of the flight.

Reality — will not overwhelm you. Overwhelm takes place only when you  imaginarily compress the events of several hours into the space of a few seconds.
As the ‘Free Video’ says (take a look if you haven’t seen it at http://www.fearofflying.com), one drink won’t make you drunk. Nor will five drinks spaced out over several hours. But five drinks, one right after another, will overwhelm you.

You simply need to understand that anticipatory anxiety is inescapable when you allow time compression to take place. Is there any way to avoid time compression and thus to make an accurate estimation of what you will feel on your upcoming flight? One way would involve setting a timer, and worrying about one thing only until the timer when off thirty minutes later, and then worry about a second thing, etc. That would give you an accurate way to estimate how you will feel when you fly.

Or, you could set a timer, and then imagine just one single moment on your previous flight. And then, when the timer when off thirty minutes later, imagine one different single moment, etc.

But neither you — nor I — is likely to go to the trouble to do that. What can we do that is practical? Simply understand that:

• when you use imagination to estimate how you will feel on the flight,
• you inevitably compress time when you make this estimate, and
• the estimate will inevitably be inaccurate due to time compression, so
• understand the anxiety you feel means nothing, and
• does not reflect what you will feel on the flight when time is not compressed

Then, simply do  the 5-4-3-2-1 to dump the anxiety.

13. More On The Belief That Being Relaxed - Instead Of Being On Guard - Tempts Fate.

Consider this from a client who said the audio course had done wonders for her DURING the flight, but that her anticipatory anxiety is “deep-rooted”.

She wrote: ” . . .  I cannot let go of this fear, as it has become such a huge part of myself.  Everytime I feel more relaxed about flying, my subconscious imposes on myself that I just have to be scared.  I feel that not been scared of flying is abnormal for myself. . . .  my mind sort of instructs me to be scared and does not let me relax, even if I apply logic . . . . I don’t know if you have encountered such a problem before, with other fearful flyers but I was wondering if you had any suggestions for a cure!! ”

I wrote back as follows:

This is definitely a known problem. In fact, Freud wrote about it, and what he said is interesting. He said, the problem with trauma is, the first time you have one, since you never had one before, it comes as if “out of the blue”.

Since it completely unexpected, and since it is something you didn’t even know existed, it hits you hard in two ways. One is, you feel you can’t handle it. You can’t just go  through life knowing that at any moment, trauma could hit. What do you do? You EXPECT it. By expecting it, you are — sort of — ready for it. You are “braced” for it.

The other way is also interesting: something happened that you didn’t even know existed. What does that tell you about the world? Can the world be trusted? Apparently not. What does that tell you about yourself? Can you be trusted to know how to live? Apparently not.

So it sets up a massive insecurity. What do we do about it? Well, already we have decided to expect disaster at every turn. But is that the best we can do? What if we get scientific? Let’s consider cause and effect. Maybe if we can figure out what caused the trauma, we can find a way to keep it from happening again.

So, to investigate cause and effect, we ask, “What was going on JUST before the trauma hit? Let’s see . . . Hmm . . .  I was relaxed. Yes, and I was happy, and I was completely unaware that anything could go wrong. Ah, hah! That’s it! Being relaxed and happy and unaware anything can go wrong CAUSES disaster. Stop doing it!”

And guess what. You stop being happy, you stop being relaxed, and you stay aware that something can go wrong. IF YOU CONTINUE TO LIVE (which you have), you have PROOF that it works. (Of course if you stay unhappy, tense and anxious and die, then you “know” it didn’t work, but people who find that out are not around to tell us it didn’t work.)

The dogs next door are inside a radio controlled fence; the property has an antenna wire around it and if the dogs get too close, the radio on their collar triggers them to get an electrical shock. So they don’t run off the property.

But they still chase cars. When a car starts to drive by, and of course, you and I know they car has no intention of stopping, the dogs race to the front of the property and start barking. The do this as the car is approaching, as the car is getting closer. So they get even more agitated. They bark more ferociously. By now the car is alongside the property. It keeps going. It is no longer getting closer. It looks like it is working. And yes, indeed, the car goes on up the road, keeps going farther and farther from the property as the dogs continue barking until the car had gone out of sight.

They are proud. They chased the car away. It works every time. So does being anxious.

What the dogs do makes perfect sense to them. And it makes perfect sense, in some way, to you, too. But why? Because though trauma does happen to children prior to the age of five, we don’t remember the facts surrounding the trauma. So it isn’t until about the age of five or six that we have that first trauma (it isn’t the first; it is just the first REMEMBERED trauma) and turn to the logic that a five-year has available to him or her, to try to deal with the problem.

When we finally develop better logic (if we do), most of us don’t re-examine the strategy. One reason we don’t re-examine it is, it works.

And now, even though you hear me say it is the logic of a five-year old, you are afraid NOT to use it. As you say, it is deep-rooted. But consider how and why it is deep-rooted. By using this strategy for years, you have made an extreme investment in the form of happiness relinquished in the interest of safety (or the illusion of safety). You have made a heroic and dedicated investment by maintaining a constant vigil.

Barking at disaster has become your very identity. To give up the strategy would mean having to redefine who you are. You would have to begin to realize that you do not control disaster by staying anxious. You would have to realize that you are not a hero who has kept yourself safe through this self-sacrifice. It is not just your life that is at stake; your very identity — who you are — who you conceive of yourself as — is at stake. Even if giving up the strategy doesn’t cause a physical disaster, it threatens a psychological disaster: loss of self. If that doesn’t translate well, think of what we have heard that in some cultures, people cannot lose “face”. It’s the same thing. Your sense of self would be damaged, or so it appears, if you were to fully recognize that something you have stood for and dedicated yourself to is worthless.

It is tempting to continue this identity. You can continue it. The dogs next door certainly will. But our dog has a different identity; she never chases cars. Why? Because she was never given an electric fence in which to run off her leash and chase away the threatening cars. When our dog goes out, she is with my wife, and is on a leash. My wife never showed the dog any fear of cars. My wife didn’t bark at them. My wife didn’t chase them away. So our dog, at this point, even if let off the leash would not chase the cars, nor even bark at them.

The dogs next door are heroes who, every day, protect our neighbor from cars. They stand vigil. They are dedicated. And no car has ever dared to come upon the property and crash into our neighbor’s house.

This of course makes perfect sense. And yet, it does not instantly change your emotional reaction to protecting yourself from disaster. It is so hard to give up something that has served you so well, though the service is 100% illusion. Or is it. Is there any time when expecting disaster has ACTUALLY saved you? If there is, if there has been even one time when expecting disaster has saved you, then maybe it is better to keep doing what you are doing.

So, if there is just one time when you have saved yourself (or even believe you did), it will be all but impossible to change what you are doing. No matter how much you want to relax and be happy, as soon as you do, you become afraid that to be relaxed and happy will mean your death.

It really is going to be important to decide if you want to take the chance. If you do, use the Strengthening Exercise. Put some cartoon character on a plane, and have them start to relax and start thinking nothing can go wrong. Then, have them become become alarmed that THEY HAVE CAUSED disaster.

And similarly, put a cartoon character on a plane, and have them be completely relaxed. Then, have them become terrified that their being relaxed may cause a disaster.

But also, put a cartoon character on the plane, and have them worry that by their being worried, it may telepathically be transmitted to the pilots and cause the pilots to make a terrible mistake.

And then, put a cartoon charater on the plane, and — upon relaxaing — become alarmed and start worrying.

And then, put a cartoon character on the plane and have them worry that their own independent worry is not sufficient. EVERYONE should worry. To avoid a disaster, other passengers need to be alarmed, so the cartoon character runs up and down the aisle screaming to everyone, “Worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry, worry”.

In each case, take your focus immediately back to a soothing moment in which you felt the empathic connectedness with another person.

I’m also reminded of a pilot I knew in the Air Force named Leo Thorsness. Leo was the cockiest guy I ever met. He was always up to a challenge of anyone about anything. The amazing thing was, Leo always won. If the challenge was an argument, he would always turn out to be right. If it involved sports, Leo always won. It wasn’t just that Leo was cocky; he earned the right to be.

He was sent to Viet Nam where he flew F-105s on missions in which his plane was used as bait. He would allow his plane to be picked up on radar by a missile site; he would continue until the site launched a missile at him. As soon as the missile was launched, he would use the signal from the site which guided the missile at him to home in on the radar site, and fire a missile of his own at the radar site. The “game” was to get his missile to destroy the radar site before the radar site’s missile reached him. If he could destroy the radar site, then the radar site could no longer guide the missile and Leo would “win”, in other words, destroy the site and get to survive. If Leo “lost”, he would fail to get the radar site before the radar site’s missile got him.

You can see some info on Leo if you search the web. Here a link about Leo’s appearance on a PBS program called “American Valor”.

PBS did a program called “ American Valor” which included Leo’s story and an interview with him .

Anyway, I heard that Leo had gotten shot down, and — since no one saw a parachute — it was believed he had died. It was odd that, somehow, I simply didn’t believe it. I guess it was because, in my experience, Leo always won. I had this irrational believe that  “nobody could get Leo”. Six years later,