Fear of Flying: Three Treatment Options for This Common Phobia

Sportscaster and former coach John Madden has a fear of flying. If this big tough guy is afraid of flying then anyone can be. Fear of flying for Madden is especially difficult because he has to go all over the country to broadcast football games. He has made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear by outfitting and traveling in a very luxurious motor home. However, this isn’t an option for most of us and some of us would like to go where a motor home can’t like Hawaii, Europe, Antarctica.

Fear of flying or aviophobia affects an estimated 20 million Americans so if you have a fear of flying, you have lots of company. It is more difficult to treat than some simple phobias because it includes many fears such as:

Panic attacks
  Weather
  Closed in spaces
  Heights 
  Turbulence
  Crowds 
  Takeoffs
  Landings 
  Flying over water 
  Embarrassing self
  Being trapped 
  Trusting pilots 
  Being out of control 
  Crashing 
  Trusting the integrity of the plane

Note that fear of crashing is only one fear and it is probably not the greatest fear. A person who fears flying can be given all the statistics about how safe flying really is and he will still fear flying even though he does not fear driving which is much more dangerous. The basic fear seems to be a fear of being trapped and out of control. People who have fear of flying are often very imaginative and a trait that is usually positive gets them into trouble when flying. They imagine themselves screaming, crying and “crazy”; they see the bottom of the plane drop away beneath their feet; they imagine that the man across the aisle is an armed terrorist. People with fear of flying have an inability to manage their own imaginations.

Avoiding flying adds to the phobia by so does forcing oneself to fly and white knuckling it. The person who fears flying is between a rock and a hard place.