WE CAN FEEL WHAT ANOTHER FEELS

The autonomic nervous system has two parts: one that revs us up
when facing an emergency - or imagining an emergency - and one
that is supposed to keep the first one in balance.

The first one, the one that revs us up, is totally mature at birth. As
any parent knows, an infant can - without having to be taught how -
get upset.

But the second one, the part that is supposed to counterbalance the
first, is NOT mature at birth. In fact, the part of the brain that will
serve to calm us down does not even physically exist at birth; it
starts its physical development at around eight months.

What this means is, the operation of the part of the brain - once it
develops - that counterbalances emotional upheaval, is NOT innate.
If it is to operate, it must be taught to operate.

How? Mom, without knowing it at all, teaches the infant how to
respond to emotions. And how well she teaches the infant depends
upon: 1. how well she knows how herself; 2. opportunity: she needs
the time free of distractions to teach the infant; 3. protection: she
needs to feel safe herself, if her infant is to learn to feel safe. To
teach the infant, the mother needs to tune into the infant, and to feel
what the infant feels, and then prove to the infant - based on her
own responses to the infant's feelings - that those feelings are OK,
and even if they don't feel OK at the moment, will pass, and things
will soon be OK.

Unfortunately, psychology has not - until recently - begun to under-
stand the obvious: that people can sense and feel what another person
in their presence is feelings. When I was in grad school, we were
cautioned to never tell a client that we knew what they were feeling.

Neurological research has proven that humans can and do feel what
others feel. I strongly suggest you read the following article in the
1/10/06 New York Times: Cells That Read Minds by Sandra Blakeslee.

See: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/science/10mirr.html

On a hot summer day, a monkey sat in a laboratory waiting for
researchers to return from lunch. A graduate student entered the
lab with an ice cream cone in his hand. The monkey stared at him.
When the student raised the cone to his lips, the monitor attached
to the monkey's brain sounded as the monkey observed the student
moving the cone to his mouth.

This led the researchers to discover mirror neurons, which "fire"
when a monkey sees another monkey - or a human - perform an
act; the act being performed is duplicated within the animal that
is merely observing.

Humans have mirror neurons that are more highly evolved than
any of those found in monkeys, and form the basis for our social
- and empathic - interaction. Social interaction is based on our
ability to feel what another is feelings, and grasp intuitively the
intention of another person.

One of the researchers, Dr. Rizzolatti says, "Our survival depends
on understanding the actions, intentions and emotions of others. . . .
Mirror neurons allow us to grasp the minds of others not through
conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation. By feeling, not
by thinking."

Again, what does this have to do with flight anxiety? It is via mirror
neurons that a young child learns to use the part of the autonomic
nervous system so that it counterbalances the part of the system that
revs us up. When, during early development, the mother does feel
what the infant is feeling and intuitively maintains her own emotional
balance so she is able to respond in a way that lets the infant know
she knows what the infant is feeling, and that it is - or will soon be -
alright, the infant learns to use - rather than fear - emotions.

If, instead, the mother is overwhelmed by feeling what the child is
feeling, the child learns to fear feelings.

Or, if the mother simply does not feel what the child is feeling, the
child learns that he or she is emotionally isolated; thus the meaning
of emotions is foreign and confusing, and to feel becomes risky.
Such a child tries to learn not to feel, and when forced to, as on a
flight, any feelings which arise are experienced as danger.

The disconnect between feeling and meaning opens the door for
imagination to produce terror. Though we can feel what another
feelings, when an empathic connection is not present - or when
empathic connectedness was not profound during early childhood
- we lose the meaning of emotion, and uncounterbalanced imagina-
tion runs rampant. The result can be terror.

Time and again, clients have told me they experience terror
imagining what it would be like to be on a plane that is plunging
out of control. This is uncounterbalanced imagination, for when
people actually face a life-threatening situation, the actually
distress experienced is only a tiny fraction of what the anxious
flier experiences vicariously simply by imagination. This is because,
for the person who suffers from anxiety or panic, emotion is a
foreign language. The emotion the rest of us experience as normal
is experienced by them as terror.

There is a profound disconnect between emotion and its rightful
meaning: normal emotion is experienced as terror. Though the
fearful and the anxious believe they understand emotion quite
well, it is just the opposite that is the case. Emotion should be
"user friendly". Emotion should be informative. Emotion should
provide guidance.

Instead, emotion equal terror; there is no understanding of its
meaning at all. And the fearful and anxious run from emotion
as if their life depended upon it.

What we have learned to do in treating flight anxiety is to repair
what failed to develop as it should have. We teach our clients to
feel what they feel during flight, and not be alarmed. As a result,
emotional alarms during the flight stop going off. Though they
may or may not understand the principles involved, our clients
automatically counterbalance potential alarms through empathic
connectedness which lets them sense that what they are feeling
is quite alright, and need not be upsetting in any way.

If you can benefit from learning how counterbalance disturbing
emotions, please consider the DVD set "The Control of Anxiety"
at: http://www.fearofflying.com/store.shtml

==========

Once in a while, I'm told, "I don't worry about the plane if my son
or my husband is flying, but if I get on, I know it will crash."

The idea is that it is ones own boarding the airplane that dooms it.

There are some psych theories about this. One of them is (Guntrip's)
that in certain personality types, there is a concern that one is destined
to damage others. For example, Guntrip believed some are afraid to
love because they believed their love will destory the person they love.

On the face of it, that sounds absurd. But, consider Dracula, and how
ever-popular the Dracula stories are. Perhaps many of us secretly
believe we are destructive, and that what we want will inevitably
cause suffering to others. And now come to think of it, isn't that
one of the messages our moms gave us . . . that our desires and
our behavior caused her distress, if not damage?

Another angle is the panic problem. It is not just a fear the plane
will crash; it is a fear that one will crash emotionally - not for just
a moment, but for the duration of the flight. It is generally believed
that, to get rid of panic, one needs to go someplace else . . . to
escape. Reed Wilson PhD who is a well-known phobia expert used
to work with people this way: if a person was afraid of bridges, he
would take the person perhaps a dozen steps across the bridge; they
would panic, and they together would retreat. Next day, try two
dozen steps before retreating.

Reed now does it a different way. When the person panics after a
dozen steps, THEY STAY RIGHT THERE AND WAIT for the
panic to go away naturally. That way the person learns the panic
feelings DO NOT NEED TO BE ESCAPED and will go away
naturally and it is not the retreat that gives the relief: it is just that
it goes away anyway.

But that is not generally known, and a person in panic may be
willing to try anything to get relief. In any case, the idea of being
trapped on a plane still sounds worse than death to a person who
has panic attacks.

I once had a client who got on a ferris wheel, and upon starting to
panic, tried to leap - though she knew it would kill her. The people
with her restrained her, but she said, she would rather be dead than
feel what she EXPECTED to feel; and that is a very important word.
It is not what one IS experiencing that is the problem; it is what one
EXPECTS (and thus creates an artificial experience of) that causes
the problem.

In other words, when one expects to experience terror, one begins
to imagine that which is expected. That imagination produces an
imaginary experience which is mistaken as real by the emotional
control system. The emotional control system releases hormone to
cause the flight or flight response, the response we have to real
danger. And, though we are not in danger, this response may lead
us to believe we are.

And, for persons who we not trained by their parents to take emotions
in stride, emotions themselves can become "a fate worse than death".

==========

DOES RELAXATION WORK?

When people are face-to-face with a life-threatening situation, there
is only ONE thing to confront, but when "face-to-face" with your
own mind and . . . say six of the "what ifs" you come up with, it is
the difference between drinking one beer and a six-pack.

One beer won't make you drunk; nor will one threat to your life
staring you in the face. One threat to your life gives you one shot
of stress hormones, and puts you at the perfect level (two or three
on a scale of zero to ten) to pay attention and get reved up the right
amount to deal with the threat.

But a six-pack of vividly imagined "what ifs" will give you six shots
of stress hormones and cause panic.

You can't be relaxed and anxious at the same time, but relaxation
will not prevent anxiety. As you sit there relaxed, if you start vividly
imagining something threatening, you will no longer be relaxed; you
are not supposed to be. The fight-or-flight response is supposed to
kick in when you picture a threat.

Where flight anxiety gets to be a problem is you picture one after
another threat - none of which you can do a damned thing about -
and you get more and more anxious. It would be nice if you could
stop thinking, but that's not going to happen (unless you get totally
drunk or drugged out). The real control of anxiety is control of the
mind's reaction to such thoughts.

The fear of flying programs that were started thirty years ago
depended upon the idea of relaxation being an un-vicious cycle.
Problem was, it doesn't work that way. So far as I know, all the
other fear of flying programs are still based on relaxation (plus
assurance that flying is safe).

The problem is, then, two-fold: 1. relaxation exercises do not
prevent imagination of disaster, and 2. assurance that flying is
safe doesn't stop you from wondering (and imagining about) if
your flight is the one in several million that is going to crash.

The solution for most people who are anxious about things on the
ground is control, or illusion of control. But once they get on a
plane, both their control and their illusion of control vanish.

What's the answer? I think of it as being what Tom Wolfe called
"The Right Stuff." No illusion needed. Just learn to deal with
uncertainty. Test pilots and astronauts control everything they can,
but just accept that there is still uncertainty and do what they want
to do anyway, knowing there is a chance it will kill them and a
chance it won't.

I don't want to try to provide people with enough of "The Right
Stuff" to be an astronaut, but I do want to provide enough so they
they can - without illusion - deal with the routine risks of life.

One of the problems is, people are not used to dealing with the
routine risks of life: they have the illusion of being in control.
They DEPEND on that illusion to keep anxiety at bay. They,
for example, believe they are in control when they drive; they
are only partly in control; they don't control what other drivers
do, or the trailer-truck (or guard rail, or embankment) that blocks
escape by turning right to avoid a head-on.

So, since illusion is what they use to manage anxiety, when the
illusion is removed - as it is in flying - anxiety becomes a problem.

As I see it, there is real growth in learning to let go of illusion,
and deal with life as it is.

==========

HERE ARE TWO OF THIS WEEK'S EMAILS FROM CLIENTS

Hi Capt. Tom,

Just wanted you to know - that I have just returned from my first flight
in 3 years - thanks to your course. Thinking about it at the time and
now reflecting - I really do not think I could have managed without
your course. We flew from Vancouver to Las Vegas - and thankfully
the flight was very smooth - I even closed my eyes and relaxed for a
period of time (un-thinkable - prior to the course) unfortunately the
flight back was not so great - we had turbulence for 2 hours out of the
2.5 hour flight - the pilot kept changing attitudes trying...to find us a
smoother route - to no success - all attitudes were reporting the same
bumps..so this meant the plane would start ascending and then descend-
ing - throughout the flight - very unnerving - however the only....thing
that saved me from losing my composure was your CD's - I brought
them along and popped them in my lap top. I watched over and over -
"how flying works" and I had my sticky note - if I can still read this -
it is not YET time to worry. Trust me people this simple sticky - along
with the CD's works! It saved my sanity - as in the past with this kind
of turbulence - I would have probably started crying. I just kept reading
that note over and over - I am so....thankful I signed up for this course
- I will always review all the CD's - and for sure I will never get on a
plane without them.

Sincerely, a grateful student,

==========

Hi Tom!

I just wanted to thank you so much!. After our hour counselling talk I
really felt prepared to battle the air "demons" that had plaqued me for
so long!. The flight out to Hawaii was a little bumpy, but I just remained
calm even when other passengers looked worried because I remembered
that turbulence is a normal occurance and that we were esentially flying
in Jello!!

The flight back was great and I felt no pre flight anxiety whatsoever. If
this continues on future flights I can truly say that you have given me
back my "air" legs so to speak!

Thank you so much. A tremendous help and if ever I start to feel anxious
again I will most certainly use you and your program again!

Best Regards,

==========

WANT TO TRAVEL SOMEPLACE WARM?

Start now and the results you get will be solidly in place for your trip. We
get good results in just a few days, but excellent results when you have a
couple of weeks to practice the exercises that provides automatic control
of high anxiety and makes panic impossible.

To get started, please just go to:

http://www.fearofflying.com/store.shtml

For almost everyone, the best set of DVDs to get started with is 'The Control
of Anxiety'. If you would like to talk it over first to be sure what is right for
you
please call me at 877 332-7359 or 203 258-4803. I'm available from 10 AM
until 7 PM Eastern (same as New York) time.

==========

LAST MINUTE HELP IS ALWAYS AVAILABLE

Even if you are flying TODAY (!!!) we can provide a lot of help. Don't risk not
being able to take the flight.

Just call. It will help. 877 332-7359 or 203 258-4803. Available 10 AM until
7 PM Eastern (same as New York) time.