How I conquered my fear of flight

I used to be calm flyer. Neither movies nor disaster documentaries used to make me feel anxious about getting into a plane. My first time on board was such a happy event and I felt excited like a little girl, even though I knew nothing about how planes work - for it me it was like taking a bus, but up in the air, loads of fun! Until that one flight.
Nothing terrible happened, it was a regular flight from Stockholm to Kaunas, no engine failure, no bad weather conditions, no emergency landing like some "lucky" passengers get to experience every now and then. Just some severe turbulence. I was 22 at that time, but I still thought that planes can simple "fall" from the sky, so this turbulence scared the shit out of me. I have never felt so scared in my life. Hearing the pilots say "Levels, levels!" didn't help either - how the hell would they allow such clueless people like me hear a phrase like that, it was equal to "Mayday!" in my head! Also, my boyfriend talked about plane crashes all the way pulling my leg and the turbulence coincidental happened after he said "Landing is the most crucial moment of the flight". Good timing. Needless to say I was pretty shaken after the flight and the moment I put my foot on the ground, was a moment of an euphoric relief. Somehow I felt like I escaped something terrible, though it was nowhere near that. But tell it to my weird ass brain.

Me and my boyfriend were on vacations with an awesome travel plan to visit Spain and Portugal. It included us taking 4 more flights and I almost felt like I'm ready to say no to our travels and stay on the ground. A flight to Barcelona was terrible, I was tensed and cried a lot, until my boyfriend gave me his mp3 player to listen to some music and it helped a bit. I started obsessively reading about how planes are made, how they work, why the previous accidents happened. Unfortunately it didn't help much, especially reading about the crashes and their victims and watching the videos. It only got me more fearful, even though I knew much more about the technical side of it. The last flight out of those 4 I mentioned, was a pure torture, 4 hours of terror, and tension, listening and overanalysing every sound, steward's faces... I had no mp3 player to comfort myself and couldn't fall asleep after a long sleepless night at the Faro airport, waiting for the early morning flight back to Stockholm.
In August I had two tickets to Lithuania, which I bought few months before I got fearful. I couldn't imagine myself getting on the plane again, so I got ferry tickets instead. Instead of getting to Lithuania in 1h10min, I spent 19h on the boat + 4h in the bus (not counting the hours I had to wait for it). I was struggling with a thought that even though I'm passionate about seeing the world, I will never be able to travel so far. And it was pretty devastating.
Eight months later I had to choose between visiting my family in Lithuania, which would mean taking the plane (ferry would take way too much time, and I only had a week) and staying in my comfort zone, but not getting a chance to see them and celebrate Easter together. So I chose to fly, no matter how terrible it felt. But I came up with some strategy, built from all the articles I read and what I myself suspected could help me. And it worked. I didn't feel as anxious during the flight. I was quite calm taking the flight back. IT TOTALLY WORKED!

What I did was:

1) Having my iPod with me. I listened to my favorite music quite loudly during the flight, to isolate myself from the other sounds on the plane. Not hearing anything = not overanalysing.
2) Playing an involving game during the flight. The combination of music and solving puzzles totally occupied my mind.
3) Relaxing my muscles. Tensed body automatically send a signal to the brain, that something is wrong, there's some threat - run for your life! Fear is brain's response to life threatening event, that's what kept our ancestors alive in wild, dangerous times and still serves us in many situation. By relaxing my muscles, I'm sending a message to my brain - everything's ok, I'm relaxed here. And fear subsides. It works magic.

My last two flights made me proud of myself. We were landing through a rain cloud which felt endless and were shaking the plane and I just sat there, feeling ok, while some guy beside me was sweating.
I haven't got rid of my fear 100 %, because I still have dreams where I'm sitting in a plane and suddenly the lights go off and my guts jump from a sudden dive down. And everything we take off I tell myself  "Ok, bring it on!!". But it's pretty much under control. Last time I was even able to turn the music off and talk to someone.
A good thing is to look at flightradar24.com and see how many flights there are at the current time in the world. A looooot, it's ridiculous. Now how many end up crashing?

And, by the way - planes are awesome.






Take care and keep your fears on a leash,
Justina