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Anticipatory Anxiety Is Not Flight Anxiety
Having one does not mean you are going to have the other. I think people worry, when they have anticipatory anxiety that it means they will have flight anxiety -- it doesn't.
So, just use the 5,4,3,2,1. You do have absolute control over anticipatory anxiety when you use it.
I think people don't use it, though they know it will work, because they want the anticipatory anxiety to go away on its own to give them confidence that the flight anxiety won't be a problem. One has nothing to do with the other. So, just use the 5,4,3,2,1.
Anticipatory anxiety, which is mostly about turning over control to someone, ends when you meet the captain and feel OK about the captain. When you meet the captain, the flight anxiety automatic control will kick in.
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'If You Had Told Me I Would Ever Sleep On An Airplane, I Would Have Thought You A Con Artist'
Dear Capt. Tom,
I sent this email to you over a month ago, and a lot has happened in my life since then that has prevented me from really getting into what you wrote in response. You are more than welcome to use my original email in your newsletter if you think it will help others.
I have thought a lot about the content of your response. I so wish that I could take the time to write you about all the things it's made me think in the past couple of months, but my life doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon. In a nutshell, I've been to the east coast on a press deadline, helped two friends of mine recover
from their respective heart bypasses, and am gearing up for yet another east-coast trip this weekend. I am looking forward to next month when things, at least for now on the surface, seem as if they'll slow down enough to catch my breath. The old adage: Life is what happens while you're busy making plans. And sometimes that's
bad. But sometimes that's good, too.
I did want to say a couple of things, though. One is that in my experience, I have turned to pilots for an assurance of the likely outcome of our flight, and not so much, I don't think anyway, as a
result of feelings of abandonment, though, having said that, I DO know myself well enough to know my single biggest fear aside from fear is being abandoned. So I'm sure it's all mixed in there
somewhere. Meeting the pilots, however, is my way of hearing the voice of reason when I don't trust my own. I am learning to trust me, however.
Cases in point: I wanted nothing more than to go to North Carolina from California back in July. It was for an event that was tied to one of the more difficult experiences of my life some 35 years ago; it promised to be a healing event that I could not miss. That I would not miss. For that reason, I was able to put the 'arbitrary point of
no return' about getting on that flight to NC in place very early on and to be so resigned to it that I had not a moment's anxiety about it. Not even up to and including boarding the airplane. It was the most uncanny thing in the world (for me). To have been so debilitated by my fear of flying, to have spent 20 years inside the grip of
agoraphobia and panic attacks, to have spent a decade recovering from anxiety and maintaining a certain level of peace in my life, to actually have approached that flight with nearly a zero level of apprehension is something I am still reeling from.
That negative voice inside my head couldn't even find space; I had made up my mind: I was getting on that airplane come hell or high water. I was going to the east coast -- or at least I would die trying. I was going to experience a desperately needed healing event, and then whatever came after that would be icing on the cake. And so I went. And so I got on that airplane. And so I flew first to Atlanta and then to Charlotte, NC. I watched a movie on my DVD player. I had lunch. I slept, if you can believe that. I did. And soundly.
The NC event was all and more than I expected it would be. And then it was time to go home. I boarded the MD-80 in Charlotte to Atlanta and looked out the window the whole way there. From Atlanta to Sacramento on that 757, well, you won't believe this part of the story: I was, of course, you might imagine, exhausted emotionally.
When I boarded the longer-duration flight home, I pulled up my blanket and my pillow and dozed against the window while I waited for boarding to finish and push-back. The thing I remember next was waking to a loud noise. I awoke enough to realize -- Capt. Tom, I can't believe I'm about to tell you this -- that the noise I was
hearing was take-off roll -- AND THEN I WENT BACK TO SLEEP.
During takeoff.
I've got tears in my eyes even now telling you that. If you had told me I would ever sleep on an airplane, I would have thought you a con artist. If you had promised me I'd sleep on takeoff, I would have thought YOU needed therapy. But I did it, Capt Tom. I slept through takeoff.
I woke for lunch and went back to sleep till landing. I cannot believe that I -- after 20 years of panic attacks and five years of fighting this fear of flying -- can actually and honestly tell you what I just experienced on an airliner. And all thanks to you. Because, you see, Capt., I wouldn't have gotten on that airplane six months ago had I not had you reprogramming me.
And yet my story didn't end there. When I got home, unfortunately, I learned that a friend of mine in Portland, OR, who has no family, suffered a heart attack and needed a quadruple bypass (she's recovering now, thank you). There was no question about it. I repacked a bag, boarded a 737 to Portland from Sacramento and flew up to see her. Anticipatory anxiety: about a 1, if that. On the way home? Zero.
But my story doesn't end there, either. I had met someone special in North Carolina, someone who was part of the healing I had gone all that way for. He invited me to San Francisco for dinner with him on the spur of the moment, and bought me a ticket on a propeller airplane from my hometown to the big city -- and I actually accepted it. I had the time of my life, walking the streets of San Francisco late at night, admiring architecture and the lit Golden Gate Bridge, and riding a cable car.
When I flew home on that little airplane, I did have one moment where my anxiety level hit about 3. It was when I allowed that little voice in the back of my head to tell me I had made a mistake flying on a propeller-driven airplane. When I fought it off using your techniques and my recent past experiences, the rest of the ride was incredible: My family said they had never heard me talk before about all the things I could see on the ground from the air because when I usually flew I wouldn't look; I'd just hold onto dear life the entire way and pray for the drugs to kick in.
I listened to a Neil Diamond song on the way home, one he wrote for his album 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull,' about flying, about living life to the fullest. I looked out the window at what I could see of the machine: the reflection of the fuselage in the engine, its wing, and I heard Diamond's words:
'There... on a distant shore
By the wings of dreams
Through an open door...
You may find him.'
The 'him' is your strength, your soul, the essence of yourself unencumbered by fear.
And, yes, for now, I have found him.
I can look at airplanes as ends in themselves or I can look at them as means to ends. As means to dreams. Because, in my lifetime, without fail, despite all the fear and the crying and the incapacitating anxiety, that's all they have ever been: the wings of dreams.
Thank you for listening. And thank you so very much for all your help.
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