Today I’m going to tell you how to overcome fear of flying quickly with one strategy that has brought more benefits in my life since I’ve been putting it into practice, Mindfulness.
Mindfulness is nothing other than the intentional act of failing to live on autopilot and becoming aware that you are alive, here and failing to live on autopilot and becoming aware that you are alive, here and now.
To change using acceptance as a principle on which all change must be based and to flow towards what you want by listening to the signals that the world puts around you.
The Mindfulness has behind it a whole philosophy of life-based on not wanting to reach so many sites and start enjoying travel.
In living life as a dance from which we can make a work of art with its dance.
Maybe inspire others with their music, experience their variations and record their performance so that they can enjoy it as many people as possible.that they can enjoy it as many people as possible.
A philosophy based on meditation that life can be really wonderful when you stop wanting to have everything under control and allow it to live through you.
Life can be really wonderful when you stop wanting to have everything under control and let it live through you.
In addition, meditation, more specifically, Mindfulness, is an excellent way to face your fears.
Because fears are like the monster under the bed and when you look into their eyes realizing what they really are, they stop frightening you so much.
How to overcome fear of flying quickly?
I have to confess that until not long ago I panicked the airplanes, to the point of spending entire flights crying because of the anxiety that being so many meters above the ground caused me.
I know very clearly what is the origin of that fear: a storm that made my flight back from Morocco to Madrid become something like a nightmare (or at least that’s how I lived it) due to turbulence and a landing force in Bilbao (before that it was the sea of happy watching the clouds from above).
As I love to travel and stop taking airplanes was not an option for me, I took out my arsenal of psychological techniques and decided to try to apply them to myself.
The relaxation techniques did not work because my anxiety level was increasing too fast.
Trying to cut my catastrophic thoughts, neutralizing the mental images of airplanes falling empicado and focusing on something else showed some efficiency that immediately crumbled as soon as there was any minimum turbulence (when I say minimum is minimal).
Trying to rationalize did not work either because, although I already knew that the chances of the plane falling were minimal, that did not reassure me even a little.
The worst thing was not only that my fear did not diminish but on the contrary, it increased progressively to the point that just entering the airport already generated some anxiety.
Fear when you do not control it and it is he who begins to control you have that curious virtue of expanding and generalizing.
From the psychological point of view, I understood very well what was happening, but that did not help me to solve it either.
The following things were happening:
1 # I was taking short flights (of a maximum of two hours) so I did not have time for my anxiety to be reduced throughout the flight enough to overcome that fear of flying.
Also in the landings there is usually more movement so I got off the most activated flight so that the mental association airplane-anxiety was strengthened more and more.
The curve of anxiety has this form.
Anxiety is a physiological response that is not naturally prepared to stay too long in the body so if you let it follow its natural course it ends up disappearing.
To the extent you leave the situation or the problematic place when the curve has come to an end (or at least to quite low) your brain is weakening the connection situation – anxiety until it is finally disappear.
In fact, the techniques of controlled exposure that psychologists use in clinical practice are based on just what I am telling you.
That means that if you spend enough time in a situation that produces anxiety without feeding it with catastrophic thoughts it ends up disappearing.
2 # Not only was she taking flights too short for the anxiety to disappear naturally but also feeding her with her favorite food, catastrophic thoughts, anticipations, and mental images so that it could take much longer for my body it will run out and disappear.
And … surprise!
Although I can not tell you that the fear disappeared completely from one day to the next, it did progressively lose its intensity.
When you sit down with your fear, you look into his eyes and observe him as he is, you discover that it is nothing more than a set of physiological reactions, thoughts (words, letters and sounds to which you give a meaning) and of motor behaviors (tremors, etc.).
When you reduce the fear of what it really is, your fear stops giving you so much fear.
How to fight anxiety
Therefore I can say that to the extent that I did not allow fear to dominate my life, I continued to take flights and used the right strategy that panic was reduced to discomfort and restlessness decreasing more and more those unpleasant sensations and allowing me to enjoy again travel by airplane..
After telling you my personal experience I want to give you a script so you can follow my steps and use Mindfulness to overcome the fear of flying or to overcome any fear that is preventing you from living life with the fullness you deserve.
1 # Do not try not to be afraid
A very common mistake we make when we are afraid is to try to eradicate it, to avoid feeling it and as I have already commented in a previous article, the only way to make a real change is from acceptance.
So accept that you are afraid and do not try to eliminate it. Just say to yourself “Go, it’s fine I’m scared, it’s nothing else, I’m just afraid”
2 # Live your fear
Besides accepting that fear is there, I’m going to ask you to try to live it fully. That is to say, try to observe what that fear consists of, feel how your heart beats, how your hands get cold and how an annoying feeling of pressure in the chest or stomach appears.
They are the physical sensations of the emotion of fear. They are annoying but not dangerous, so allow them to be there, allow them to accompany you. Nothing happens.
3 # Surrender to uncertainty, trust in life
Trying to tell yourself “Nothing happens” “Everything will be fine” may not reassure you at all. And it is also a lie.
Nobody can guarantee you that nothing will really happen and that everything will turn out well.
And this can unleash in your mind a very undesirable internal debate.
Something kind:
– Quiet, nothing will happen, accidents on flights are minimal. It is the safest transport.
– Already, but recently I saw on television that a pilot stamped the plane on purpose, another that exploded and a couple that is not yet known to have been theirs.
– That’s almost impossible to happen!
– It’s unlikely, but not impossible.
– Well, that’s very difficult.
– But what if it happens? The people who happened to them were as likely as me.
So if you want to avoid this kind of conversation with yourself, do not try to convince yourself of anything.
Yes, although it is not likely, it is possible that the plane has an accident so you will have to have faith and trust in life so that does not happen.
Another tool to overcome the fear of flying
Although Mindfulness has been the key strategies that have helped me overcome the fear of airplanes, there is another tool that has helped me a lot and that I want to share with you.
Minimize uncertainty
As we just said, uncertainty is part of life and you will have no choice but to accept it, learn to live with it and why not learn to enjoy it?
However, it is true that the uncertainty in most cases is directly related to fear. The more uncertainty, the more fear you have.
So a good tool to overcome the fear of flying is to try to reduce to the maximum the uncertainty that it produces.
For that, I recommend a very good and completely free course designed specifically to overcome the fear of flying in which among other things you will learn how an airplane works, why it is such a safe means as well as the reason why they are carried out too much. movements and the little danger they have.
I hope that the article has been really interesting and that you use these strategies not only to overcome the fear of flying but to overcome any fear that is interfering with your quality of life.
