Early in life, we all live in a world -- a vastly oversimplified world -- of certainty. To the young child, everything is oversimplified. It is either good or bad. It is either right or wrong. It is either safe or unsafe. As we grow, we come to understand that the world is not so simple, and that it contains uncertainties. If our parents have given us an ability to face uncertainties with reasonable calm, we are OK with the world being more complex. We are OK with probabilities instead of certainties.

But if our parents could not teach us how to calm ourselves, this more complicated world causes us more anxiety than we can handle. Some people slide back into the less complicated world, and limit their relationships to people who also are developmentally arrested. Others, find -- though their internal strength to deal with uncertainty is limited -- they can deal with the world as it is when calmed by others, and when in control.

When these underpinnings of our ability to regulate emotions are pulled out from under us, we can lose our ability to regulate emotions. When that happens we are pulled from the uncertain world of probability toward the primitive world of oversimplified certainty.

How do we lose these these underpinnings? Flight takes them away. When we are lifted off the ground by the airliner, we lose the calming connection to others, and we lose our ability to control. Unable to regulate our emotions, we slip back into that oversimplified world of 'safe' and 'unsafe'. Unfortunately, instead of falling into the 'safe' half of the 'safe versus unsafe' world, we fall into the 'unsafe' half of it.

This creates a crisis. We want out of the 'unsafe' half of the 'safe versus unsafe' world. Unfortunately, the only answer we see at the moment is assurance of absolute safety.

And, unfortunately, we can't get there from here. We have become psychologically primitive again. We want certainty. Nothing short of absolute safety will do. As we approach an upcoming flight, we want certainty that it will not crash. Though the chances of it crashing are incredibly small, that isn't good enough.

Anticipatory anxiety is an ongoing search for certainty which finds none. Unable to regulate our emotions enough to deal with the one chance in several million of a crash, we seek a way to get rid of the one in several million. Seeking certainty, we try our hand at being a fortune teller. Seeking certainty, we try positive thinking. Seeking certainty, we pray. Seeking certainty, we try to be intellectual and try to figure out that nothing can happen.

It is an utter and complete waste of life. Why? There is no way to tell the actual future other than by living it. Since life is only lived in the present, to focus on the future destroys the only life we have. If we get stuck in anxiety and engage in anticipation as a way to try to get relief, life never takes place at all.

Instead of living, we focus our imagination on future moments. If we can successfully predict the future, we will establish -- and return to -- certainty. If we can only become comfortable about the future, then we will be free to live. Assured that the future moment in mind is good, we plan to go ahead and experience it. But, of course, when the time comes to experience it, we are focusing on some other future moment.

If you have the DVDs, you may remember the '1000 moment life'. Briefly, it is a fable about a little animal that lives in the ground. It is going to live a total of 1000 moments. But it doesn't know that. So, every moment, it pops up its head and says, 'Is this the last moment of my life? Am I about to perish? Or is it safe for me to go out and sun myself? And the answer is, he doesn't know. So, insecure and frightened, he zips back underground to the dark. The next moment, he does the same thing, and the same thing happens. This goes on for 998 moments.

Finally, on the 999th moment, he goes up and looks around, and again asks, 'Is this the last moment of my life? Am I about to perish?' And finally God answers and says, 'Yes'. The little creature says, 'Oh thank God; now I can relax and enjoy my life' Then, the 1000th moment arrives, and he is dead.

Of the 1000 moments of his life, he only got to live one, always looking to the future, and never living, . . . until there was no future. Then, knowing there was no future to worry about, he finally relaxed for a single moment, and then, in the next moment: dead.

Similarly, the Tristan and Isolda story: they drink a 'death potion' and then realize this is the last moment they are going to be alive. All their fears of the future vanish, because there isn't going to be one. They look at each other, and fall madly in love. They spend this last moment of their lives together in a night of passion. They -- amazingly -- wake up the next morning and realize the death potion was a fake. They again are overtaken by anxiety about life, and fall out of love.

Life simply doesn't get lived when it is no adventure and all control. As Helen Keller said, 'Life is a great adventure or it is nothing.'

What we found in developing the SOAR Program is that what works with fear of flying is to experience flying -- not as you imagine it to be -- but as it is. Imagination is the problem, but only when you believe it is really what is happening. When you move from imagination-believed-to-be-reality to reality, flying problems vanish.

The key is getting underpinnings that will not fail you when you fly. That is what you get with the Strengthening Exercise which is taught in the 'Control Of Anxiety' DVDs or CDs.

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* Anticipatory Anxiety

* Childhood Fear Of Flying

* Fine Tuning The Strengthening Exercise

* How Flying Works

* How To Use Letter Of Introduction

* Psychology Of Flight Anxiety

* SOAR Flight Checklist

* The Control Of Anxiety

* The Strengthening Exercise




* 'Plastic Ted' On Turbulence

* A Hole In The Soul

* Abstract Point Of No Return

* Anxiety About Airport Security

* Believing The Stupid Amygdala

* Buzzwords That Screen The Problem

* Capt Tom's Top Ten Tips

* Choosing An Airline

* Choosing An Airline Wisely

* Cue-Controlled Deep Muscle Relaxation

* Dealing With Long Flights

* Deep-Rooted Anticipatory Anxiety

* Flight Familiarization Transcript

* Free Will?

* In-Person Courses

* Letting Go Of Control: Acceptance To Accept Help

* Moving Past Absolutes

* Omens?

* Panic Without Triggers?

* Persistent Anxiety About Turbulence

* Reality Testing And Risk Assessment

* Seven Levels of Arousal

* Small Jet Airliners

* The 5-HTT Gene

* The Hand Of Fatima

* The Mind's 'Bar Code Reader'

* The Movie In Your Mind

* The Social Referencing Exercise

* Though Safe, Why Does Turbulence Cause Distress

* Trust, Betrayal, And Flight Anxiety

* Turbulence, High Places and Propriocepion

* Useful Web Sites On Aviation

* We Can Feel What Another Is Feeling

* What I Should Feel When I Fly?

* What Is Flight Anxiety All About Anyway?

* What Should I Feel When I Fly?

* Wrong About Turbulence?