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Losing A Feather
Over the weekend, my kids visited. It was a beautiful day so we decided to eat on the patio. As I swept leaves from the patio, I found a beautiful red feather which must have belonged to a male cardinal. It was interesting that my initial response was not "poor bird; how is he going to fly without this feather," but "what a beautiful feather". Why? Because we all know birds have so many feathers that if a bird loses one, it simply isn't a problem. I doubt if the bird even noticed it.
And yet so many people believe if the slightest thing happens to an airliner, it spells disaster. It isn't true. Losing a feather is no problem for a cardinal. Losing a system of any kind is no problem for an airliner.
The reason is the same in both cases; because there are plenty more.
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The Thousand Moment Life
The Following Is Posted On The Message Board.
See: http://p223.ezboard.com/ffearofflying74562frm1.showMessage?topicID=7372.topic.
. . . I am getting married next weekend and we are going to Vegas for our honeymoon. Well, I simply cannot fly and she is not happy about it. . . . Well, 5.5 hours flying is certainly convenient compared to 3 days in a train or a car. I know if one of my friends had to fly, I would tell them not to worry and that it will all be OK. I am convinced that I am going to crash.
Let's face it.. there is a 50% chance the plane will make it. That isnt good enough for me. . . . All that matters is MY flight. I dont care if your flight was good and his was great and hers was wonderful. That doesn't make mine safe. If you want to go by statistics, that makes mine more likely to crash because most of the last few thousand haven't.
I was about to book the flight earlier and saw . . . it was a 757. . . . How the hell is that heavy thing going to stay in the air? . . .
I think, in detail, of what the final moments of a plane crash would be like. People crying, praying, pleading, begging to live. . . . .
I hate the argument that air travel is safer than cars. That is absurd to me. Does anybody really ever freak out and have to take Xanex because they have to drive into town? The real question should be: What is the percentage of survivors in a plane crash vs. a car crash? I guarantee 100% of the plane crash victims will die and maybe 2% of auto accident victims will die. I would rather be in a car crash any day. If the plane crashes, it is over. finished. No one can help. I wouldn't worry if I died in a plane crash if it hit the ground and I was crushed like a fly by a swatter. MY fear is that I may not die instantly. . . and I will slowly bleed to death painfully gasping for air.
. . . . No seminar or therapy session will help me. My mind is too strong for that. The chance of a crash will always be there no matter how much tells me I will be fine. Watching a movie, reading, talking nor anything else can divert my attention away from the possibility of crashing at any moment. Actually, the more comfortable I get, the more worried I get because my guard will be down and that is when it will happen.
Why can't there be an anesthesiologist on flights who can put you under and wake you up when it is all over? If the plane crashes, you will never know.
My Reply:
A 50% chance the plane will make it? How about a 99.999994% chance? That is a bit more real. But the problem is dealing with the 00.000006% percent chance of disaster.
When the left brain considers this, no problem; the left brain can do fractions and percentages, and sees this as not worth thinking about and goes on about its business.
Meanwhile, the right brain has taken up the same questions, and when it looks at the 00.000006% chance, it looks at it as a complete "picture" of a crash. The right brain simply looks at everything as a whole. So the way the right brain works, the 00.000006% chance is translated into 100%, and that causes stress hormones to be released because the interconnectedness between the left brain and the right brain is not balancing things out.
Once the stress hormones hit, you not only see the crash, but you also feel the same sensations as in genuine danger.
Put the two together (seeing and feeling) and it becomes real to you, and this makes it seem that getting on a plane equals death.
That is what makes it "feel" like it will be your flight. Obviously you know there is something wrong with the logic here, but when you are filled with stress hormones, you can't get loose from the feelings that override your left brain's clear view of the situation. Your left brain could make it clear to you that you are safer on a plane than doing your daily routine, because every time you drive 5.4 miles, that is equal to a flight in terms -- not of an accident but -- of fatality. And you do that all the time and nothing happens.
Logic says flying is OK. But what do you do about the feelings?
Just order "The Control of Anxiety" at http://www.fearofflying.com/store.shtml.
That will let you get automatic control of the feelings so you can see clearly. Just as a person who has had too much beer doesn't see things clearly, a person who has too much adrenalin can't see clearly either. The only way out of this is to control the adrenalin, and to do so automatically.
That lets you just get on the plane and fly and not have to do anything. Being knocked out isn't possible, nor is being knocked out needed.
Also, you have the idea that because other flights have not crashed, that makes yours more likely to. That isn't true. If you start flipping a coin, no matter how many times in a row you get "heads", that does not make you "due" for "tails".
Why? Because the coin has no memory. Every toss is completely new and what happened in the past has no bearing. I know this is difficult for many to understand. I was a statistics major in grad school, and it was a concept all of us had some trouble with to begin with, even in grad school. It just seems it should be some other way, and of course, that's why people keep getting ripped off in Las Vegas!
Whether there is a crash or not is not due to chance. Safety is due to good training, engineering and maintenance. Accidents are due to human, engineering, or maintenance error. So when there are no crashes, it means things are working well, and that is an indication that the mechanisms are in place to make things work well, and thus, they will continue to.
Now, about "People crying, praying, pleading, begging to live." Where does that fear come from? It does not come from nowhere. And it does not come from your own experience flying, but I am sure is does come from your own experience someplace.
All of us remember the emotions we had from age zero to five though we don't remember the events. Those emotions are still with us 24/7, but we try, and usually succeed, at keeping them at bay in our own internal "Pandora's Box". And as long as we are in control (or have the illusion we are in control), we can keep that stuff shut up in the "Box".
But when we think of not having control, we are afraid the contents will jump out and overwhelm us. That is what a panic attack is! It is a form of vivid recall of some early childhood emotional memory of being totally abandoned!
Allan Schore's research at UCLA has shown that when very young children are put to bed to "cry it out", when they appear to be asleep, they are not asleep but in a state of dissociated terror.
That has happened to most of us, and certainly -- I believe -- to all of us who suffer from anxiety.
We do have a way to fix this. You don't need to suffer. Get Control of Anxiety and get a handle on this so anxiety doesn't limit your life.
It is not that your mind is so strong! Weakness often masquerades as strength. You are completely deceiving yourself with that very statement. What is strong is your determination not to every again feel those feelings of total abandonment.
And to fulfill your determination, you must stay in control.
Guess what? You will never be able to get enough control to stay out of it. It will catch up with you without being on a plane, because no one has absolute control.
And anything less than absolute control will not keep anxiety at bay.
Until you get a handle on this, your whole life -- not just your life in an airplane -- is going to be obsessed with control. You will find the need -- not just on an airplane -- to have an anesthesiologist knock you out when thing are not within your absolute control.
What you will ultimately run into is, as you said, be put under, and waked up with it is over.
We have an exercise in the SOAR Course called "The Thousand Moment Life". It asks you to imagine some little animal that lives in a hole in the ground. Every few moments it pops its head up and looks around to ask, "Is this it? Is this the last moment of my life?"
Well, we ask you to imagine this little critter has a life that lasts 1000 moments. So for the first 998 moments, he pops his head up and checks to see if he is absolutely safe. He asks, "Is this it?" He can't be sure he is absolutely safe. He gets anxiety, and goes back down into his hole where he is as safe as he can get (though even there, he isn't safe, so he is anxious there, too).
Finally, in moment number 999, he pops his head out and says, "Is this it? Is this the last moment of my life?" And he realizes, "Yes, it is; this IS the last moment of my life!" And so he said, "Ahhhhh, at last I can relax and enjoy life."
And then moment 1000 comes and he is dead.
The moral of the story is, this creature could have had 1000 good moments in his life if he had had the courage to face life on life's terms. Instead, due to his efforts to avoid anxiety, he only gets one moment to enjoy life, and then he dies.
It's your choice: a full life, or just one anxiety-free moment before the curtain drops.
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"I Still Can Hardly Believe It"
Capt. Tom, this is another THANK YOU for SOAR. Last week I flew Seattle-San Jose (and back!) with no problems. We even hit some pretty good bumps approaching Washington on the return flight and I just settled into my seat and enjoyed the "rocking chair." Actually the cloud formations were so astonishing that I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
No meds, no booze. Didn't even do any of the exercises, before or during. All I really did was remember to anticipate the sensations associated with takeoff and ascent, since that still is not totally comfortable (maybe a 0.5 out of 10 on the anxiety scale!). But I hardly even had to invoke any of that because it's all starting to feel normal and familiar.
I can safely say that, again, I love flying - just as I did before the FOF hit in 1978. I still can hardly believe it. I grounded myself for 10 years before I discovered SOAR and during that time I believed I would NEVER fly again.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
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Southwest Seating
Southwest is experimenting with assigned seating at some airports. Their system at present is to assign people to groups, A, B, or C for boarding if they check in online within 24 hours of their flight. People who check online first get group A. Strategy: go online exactly 24 hours before your flight and get yourself in group A.
Here is an article about Southwest seating: http://www.usatoday.com/money/biztravel/2006-06-21-southwest-usat_x.htm.
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Britain Begins Relaxing Restrictions On Liquids
Unable to get the rest of the EU to go along, Britain has begun to relax its restrictions. It appears Britain and the EU will ultimately agree only to restrictions on large amounts of liquids.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d8acccda-4358-11db-9574-0000779e2340.html.
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Isn't This Great!
Just after midnight last Friday morning, I got an email from Capt. M. Nawawi of Malaysia Airlines, as follows:
Dear Tom,
Your above member is now on my flt from SYD-KUL.
I'll speak to her and take care of her.
Rgds.
Capt. M. Nawawi
MH122, 15 Sep.06
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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Device
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It is so heartwarming to know that many captains are completely ready to do whatever they can to let you know how "at home" they are in the airliner and in the air anywhere in the world.
And when you meet them before your flight, that "at home" confidence is consciously or unconsciously passed along to you.
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Medications Don't Do The Job
The following is from an article in the New York Times 9/18/06 by psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman, M.D. on flight anxiety.
"If you think you can outsmart your phobia with anti-anxiety medications like Valium and Klonopin, forget about it; they might numb you during an acute panic attack, but they will not erase your phobia. In fact, they could get in the way of therapy because they impede new learning, which is the essence of curing phobias."
"To kick a travel phobia, you have to fight fire with fire; you have to tolerate some anxiety to get rid of it. No shortcuts."
For full article, see: http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/09/18/business/businessspecial2/18phobia.html.
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How Much Does The Plane Really Move Up And Down?.
Pilots use a pressure altimeter to judge altitude when flying. When navigation across the ocean was being done the old fashioned way with a human navigator rather than a computerized navigation system now in use, such as GPWS, or inertial nav, we used a radar altimeter to measure actual altitude above the ocean.
The radar altimeter's transmitter sent a radar signal down. The signal bounced back off the surface of the ocean and was received by the radar altimeter's receiver. The time it took from the time the signal to make the round trip was measured, and translated into actual altitude.
Meanwhile, the airliner's autopilot was maintaining an altitude measured on a pressure altimeter, which is nothing more than a pressure guage calibrated -- not in pounds per square inch -- but at the altitude that particular pressure approximates.
The altitude indicated by the pressure altimeter is not exact. But since all airliners use the same device, its way of measuring altitute works to keep us separate from each other.
And when landing, we switch to a radar altimeter which does give accurate information if the weather is poor.
In turbulence, where air of different speeds, pressures, densities and temperatures is mixing, the altimeter shows the altitude changing even though it really changing little if any. It is entirely possible for the pressure altimeter to show a loss of altitude of 10, or 100, or even more (or a rise in altitude of 10, or 100, or more) and the plane has moved only a fraction of an inch, or . . . possibly not at all.
In the worst turbulence, the change in altitude is too small to be read on the radar altimeter; meanwhile, the pressure altimeter may show variations of ten to twenty feet, variations which are not happening; they are just just fluctuations in atmospheric pressure.
When in turbulence in a large plane, we switch to "turb mode" on the autopilot. You might think that would intensify the action of the autopilot. It does the opposite. We don't want the autopilot to chase false altitude changes the pressure altimeter is sensing.
Is Your Emotional Altimeter Going Up And Down And Giving False Indications Of Danger?
Want Automatic Control?
SOAR teaches "The Strengthening Exercise" which provides automatic control.
- SOAR is not just another fear of flying program offering relaxation and reassurance
- SOAR is advanced help and succeeds with the most extreme cases of flight anxiety
- SOAR was developed through twenty-five years of research, study, and experience
Which Way Fits You Best?
- The Guaranteed SOAR Video Course on DVD
- Learn the cause and how to fix it in 'Psychology of Flight Anxiety'
- Understand amazing backup systems that make flying safe in 'How Flying Works'
- Get automatic control of the feelings when you fly with 'Control of Anxiety'
- Take a virtual test flight of your new skills in 'At The Airport'
- The Guaranteed SOAR Audio Course on MP3
- Hear lessons on the web site - or download them to your computer or iPod
- Download the 'Take Me Along' audio tracks to your iPod or laptop
- It's like having your own pilot sitting there with you
Complete and comprehensive. Ten DVDs (appx. ten hours). View it on the internet as soon as you place your order. Your DVDs are shipped to your door by FEDEX or Priority Mail.
See guarantee and order at: http://www.fearofflying.com/store.shtml.
The same complete information as in the Video Course but condensed into five hours of audio. Plus one important extra: 'Take Me Along' audio tracks to use during the flight.
I'll explain everything that is happening - as it happens - so you will know everything is normal on the flight.
See guarantee and order here: Read More Now!
- A Counseling Session
A session customized to your exact needs. I'm both an airline captain and a licensed therapist. I can help you based on success with over six-thousand clients in the past twenty-five years. The fee for a twenty-minute session covering the basics is $60.00, payable by MasterCard, Visa or American Express. Everything can be covered in forty to sixty minutes (fee prorated to time used).
Available 10 AM to 7 PM Eastern (New York) time. Outside the U.S. or Canada call: 203-258-4803.
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Not Ready To Order The Entire Program?
At least learn "The Strengthening Exercise". Order "The Control of Anxiety" ($195.00 on video; $49.95 on audio) at: http://www.fearofflying.com/store.shtml.
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