To join in please go to www.fearofflying.com/chat.shtml. You can also find there a transcript of a recent chat.



==========



Where Politics -- Not Safety -- Is "Job One"



The FAA, for years, has said that its number one priority is finding a solution to lower or to eliminate the possibility of a collision on the ground due to what is termed "runway incursion". Errors can be made by pilots or by controllers that cause an airplane to stray onto a runway being used by another plane which is taking off or landing.



The FAA has been completely useless in finding a solution for its number one priority according to New Jersey Senator Lautenberg as you can see from the article and video at this link.



Another article is at this link.



And an incident at JFK Airport has gotten senator Schumer into the action to demand the FAA install state-of-the art technology at JFK. See this link.



This is a good thing. The FAA needs to be forced to act. Write your own representatives in Congress or the White House demanding solid measures to increase safety NOW rather than in reaction to an accident.



==========



Accepting That Safety Is Relative



What do you do in the face of information about the problems at the airports? First, take notice that these problems are not new. I have been writing about them for years. The FAA, again for years, has been saying it is their number one priority. Yet, the FAA has done next to nothing. Perhaps what they have done is worse than nothing, because they can point to ineffective measures to mislead the public that something effective is being done.



There is a problem. How big is the problem? Big enough that real action should be taken. And yet, we have gotten by for years without an accident.



Then, when there is an accident, I get emails expressing concern that the
person's ability to fly has suffered a setback. But it doesn't  take an
accident. But merely an incident -- like those written about above -- can lead a person to experience terror at
the thought of taking an upcoming flight.



It could seem that aviation is the problem. Sure, aviation could be
safer. But it is already amazingly safe. Of all the things you could be
doing on a given day, being on a modern jetliner is one of the safest.
When you stop doing your ordinary daily routine and get on a jetliner,
you have made yourself safer.



Why, then, does such fear develop?



Extremely rare events in which there is disaster, or near disaster, are
not the problem. The problem is that anxiety pushes an anxious person's
thinking so hard that anything short of absolute safety looks like
absolute disaster.



Anxiety cannot be alleviated so long as a person continues to fit everything into one of two boxes:

• one being "safe" and


• the other being "disaster".
  
  

This kind of thinking is something we need to outgrow. About two-thirds
of the population does outgrow this, and about one-third does not.




Here is how we THINK it works.



When a two-year old and a three year-old play "pretend", such as
imagining they are explorers a jungle with lions and tigers and snakes,
a well-developed three year-old will be able to maintain --
simultaneously -- two modes of thinking:

• one is the imagination-connected mode (pretending to be seeing lions and tigers and snakes) and


• the reality-connected mode.

A normal two year-old cannot maintain reality and imagination
simultaneously. As the two year-old gets into  imagination-connected
thinking, reality-connected thinking is lost. The two year-old loses
track that imagination is not real. The imagined lions and tigers and
snakes become real. The two year-old runs off in terror looking for
mom. Meanwhile, the normally developed three year-old will continue
playing as planned.



Typically, the mother will comfort the two year-old and scold the three
year-old for frightening the two year-old. The three year-old will not
understand, and protest that he or she did nothing  to frighten the two
year-old. And, from the three year-olds point of view, nothing was done
which should frighten anyone.



That is how pilots feel about passengers. Pilot can't understand why
anything done during the flight should have frightened anyone. It was
imagination, not reality, that cause the fear. But it is more than
that. It is not just fear, but fear which -- like for the two year-old
-- became reality. The passenger didn't just fear the plane would
plunge; the passenger felt the plane plunge.



Everyone knows -- logically -- that the chance of disaster is
(according to stats from the past twenty-five years) about one in
five-million. Just as a well-developed three year-old can do mental
multi-tasking that holds onto imagination and reality at the same time,
we adults need to maintain -- simultaneously -- the awareness that
there are two parts of this fraction:

• one, and
  
  


• five-million.
  
  

But when anxiety pushes too hard, the two parts of the fraction cannot be held in the mind. How much anxiety does it take? For a person who is adept at considering many factors at once in solving a problem, it takes a lot of anxiety. But for a person who grew up in a family where thinking was absolute (right versus wrong, good versus evil, friend versus foe, safe versus dangerous), it takes little anxiety to lose the ability to think in relative terms.



In any case, when anxiety pushes hard enough, if the ability to simultaneously do reality-based thinking together with imagination-based thinking is not strong, this multi-tasking ability can disappear. When it vanishes, the mind can look at only one thing at a time.



When the person looks at the five-million part of the fraction, there is no problem. But when the person shifts to imagine the "one" the part of the fraction, there is a problem. The "one" part is the disaster part. Imagination of the disaster -- if vivid -- can cause the amygdala to react, and to release stress hormones. Stress hormones cause rapid heartbeat, increased breathing rate, and tension in the body. They also make it more difficult to think except about one thing: the thing that seems to be causing the danger. That thing is the "one" part of the fraction, the rest of which is no longer in mind.



It becomes difficult to remember that this is "just pretend". What was imagined shifts and becomes reality. This is just the same as what happens when the two year-old plays pretend about lions and tigers. Imagination causes feelings. The feelings cause the two year-old to forget this is "just pretend". The two year-old loses all awareness that what is going on is imagination.




Reality and imagination merge.



Let's come up with something to
call what results from the merger of reality and imagination. Let's
call it "realmagination". It is neither imagination nor reality, as
both have merged into a single mode of thinking.



In
psychology, when realmagination becomes established in a fixed way in
ones mind, we have another name for it. It is called "psychic
equivalence", meaning what is held in the mind - no matter what it is
and no matter how far fetched it is -- becomes equivalent to reality
for the person whose mind it is in. And, once a person's thinking moves
into psychic equivalence, no amount of evidence or logic makes any
difference. The person's mind is locked up and completely impervious.



Psychic Equivalence At Work



On Sunday, a client called saying she had flying from Atlanta to
Mobile in a CRJ, and there was only one pilot. Alarmed, she called the
airline and asked if there were supposed to be one or two pilots on the
CRJ. My client says the airline told her "one". So she called me in
alarm because she was supposed to fly the CRJ back from Mobile to
Atlanta and was terrified of what would happen if the "one" pilot had a
heart attack.



I told her there were two pilots. She said the airline told her there
was only one. I told her that was not correct. She persisted, saying
that she saw only one, and the airline told here it was only one. This
went on for some time. So, finally, I told her - keep in mind that this
is a client I work with weekly on non-flying issues and I know her very
well, and she has a sense of humor -- "OK, get on the plane, and go up
to the cockpit and look, and if you count only one pilot, get off. And
when you get off, go directly to a psychiatrist because if you see just
one, you are nuts!" I called her back on her cell phone later, and she
agreed that there were, indeed, two and that she was fine.



The point really is this: when psychic equivalence takes over, nothing
can change the person's mind. Even though this is a client I have seen
as a therapist, on and off, over a period of several years, she simply
did not believe me once a stranger on the phone told her there was only
one pilot on the CRJ.



The power of psychic equivalence can hijack your mind. How? There are
two sides to the cause. The first is, how strong is the person's
ability to engage the fact that safety is relative rather than
absolute, or simply "safe" and "dangerous". The second is the amount of
anxiety present. With a lot of anxiety, almost anyone could be pushed
into absolute thinking. But if the ability to think relativistically
and abstractly is not well-developed, it takes relatively little
anxiety to move from reality to imagination, and from imagination of
disaster to realmagination that what is in the mind is real.



Vulnerability To Psychic Equivalence



Some theorists believe the ability to think outside of absolute terms
develops when a person is not clearly trained as a young child to
recognize that the child's mind is not the ONLY mind. (Another aberrant
form is when the child is taught that the mother's mind is the only
mind.)



Here is an example. When a young child tells his mother that he is
afraid of something that is not real, the mother needs to say something
like, "I understand that you are afraid to go to sleep, and that YOU
think there is a tiger under you bed, but I have looked under the bed
and I don't see one under there, so if YOU think you see one and I
DON'T see one, what do you think about that?"



That makes it clear to the child that there are two minds at work here.
On the other hand, if the mother says, "Oh, you poor baby; that tiger
under your bed is making you afraid," there is nothing said to indicate
that there are two minds, as the mother give no indication that she has
a mind which holds a different view.



A Vicious Cycle



When the phenomenon of separate minds is not established in ones mind, anxiety develops two ways:

• anxiety causes psychic equivalence to override reality. Then, anxiety -- or worse -- caused by psychic equivalence causes more anxiety;

• separate mindedness, itself, is threatening and causes anxiety, which -- in turn -- leads to psychic equivalence.

A child can be taught that his or her mind can't be counted on if
parents tell the child he or she is crazy. Then, simply to use the mind
as a separate person causes anxiety. That anxiety then causes the
somewhat damaged ability to think accurately to drop into psychic
equivalency. It is not at all uncommon for parents to severely
criticize children who show any sign of having a separate mind. For
such parents, separate minds are a threat. A separate mind could lead
to having different values, or what the parent regards as no values at
all. Growing up in any family which does not welcome the existence of
separate minds and the expression of separate minds will inevitably
lead its children to have difficulty with anxiety.



My suggestion is to begin entertaining the idea that there really are
separate minds and the existence of separate minds is not NECESSARILY a
threat. Yes, separate minds can be threatening, when they engage in threats, or they
lead to efforts to control. People who cannot tolerate separate
mindedness can be dangerous, and when in positions of authority or of
power, they are dangerous.

• Find and interact with people who are not threatened by separate mindedness.

• Find and interact with people who use empathy -- not fear of punishment by the law or punishment by God -- as their reason for being human and acting in an ethical and moral way.

• Find and interact with people who think in relative rather than absolute terms. The lives of people who think in absolute terms (right versus wrong, safe versus disaster) are ruled by fear; they infect others with their fear.
  
  

Over time, the ability to recognize and appreciate a multiplicity of minds and a multiplicity of views can develop.



In the meantime, what can you do about anxiety when flying?



==========



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==========




Fraudulent Emails



Each day I receive several emails that appear to be from a bank (but are not), from PayPal (but are not), etc. What you may find interesting is that I receive emails like this one:



Subject: Your password has been updated

From: webmaster@fearofflying.com



Dear tom,



You have successfully updated the password of your Fearofflying account.



If you did not authorize this change please contact Fearofflying customer service at: (and then it gives an email address at fearofflying.com which does not exist, but if you click on it, it installs a virus in your computer).



Obviously I didn't send this email to myself. There is no such thing as a "Fearofflying account." And, we never send out emails from "webmaster".



There is no point in my attempting to contact the scam artists who do this and asking them not to. After all, their attempt to deceive is based on trying to mimic a trustworthy organization.



What I would like to ask you to do is to understand that scam artists are out there trying to exploit your trust of us. If you look at these emails carefully, you will understand they are a scam and do not come from us.



You might be tempted to "unsubscribe" from the newsletter because of these scams, but doing that will not get rid of the scam emails. Why? Because since we are not sending them, unsubscribing with us does not unsubscribe you from the con artist.



Just recognize that when you get an email saying "Thank you for using Fearofflying. The Fearofflying Support Team" that it is the scam artists "signature" -- not ours.