• The chat is at: www.fearofflying.com/chat.shtml

You know about "Twitter" - short posts about what a person is doing right now.

 

FLITTER is short posts about what you are feeling right now. Tell us. As we read - and as you fly or prepare to fly - we will have you in mind, and your feelings in mind.

 

FLITTER is part of the SOAR Fear Of Flying Forum. You can go directly to FLITTER by using this link.

 

 

This happens when the distinction between imagination (or conjecture, which is a form of imagination) and reality is lost. If you take a two-year-old and a three-year-old and they are playing together, if the three year-old says, "Let's pretend. Let's pretend we are in the jungle and there are lions and tigers, and they are chasing us and we gotta run real fast so they don't eat us," the three year-old will enjoy the exciting imagination. But not the two-year-old, who has not yet learned to pretend. For him, if something is in the mind, it is real - period!



Two possibilities. 1. That distinction between imagination and reality was not fully developed when you were a young child, or 2. The distinction becomes lost easily.



You need to begin to entertain the idea that what is in your mind is sometimes what is real and sometimes it bears no connection with reality; in other words, to take the contents of your mind less seriously.



The whole problem with fear of flying is an ongoing battle between reality and imagination. We have a term: psychic equivalence. It means, what is in the mind is accepted - uncritically - as reality. Why is it accepted uncritically? Two possibilities: 1. You easily go into psychic equivalence because your ability to use critical thinking is pushed aside by too much emotion; 2. You have imagined disaster so many times that you have memorized that imagination. When imagination has been memorized, it loses the recognizable characteristics of imagination and takes on the "look and feel" of reality, and is hard to distinguish from reality even when you are doing critical thinking. Here, you have to increase your focus on your criticism of the contents of your mind, demanding real evidence before agreeing it is reality.

==========

 

Xanax And Ativan

 

Those who have been around here for awhile know a. Xanax and Ativan do not work and b. SOAR works. There are a few who still experiment with a bit Xanax or Ativan - even though they have done SOAR - because they don't yet trust what SOAR has built inside them.



There IS a time for Xanax or Ativan. The time is the night before flying so you can get some sleep and be well-rested. There is a "maybe" time for Xanax or Ativan. That "maybe" time is four to eight hours BEFORE your flight. And there is a time for NO XANAX AND NO ATIVAN, and that is within an hour of your flight and during your flight.

Flying tomorrow or the day after? Be ready to fly in 90 minutes with Rapid Relief.

Flying in three to ten days? Get comprehensive help with SOAR Complete Relief.

==========

Said one commentator, "Charging people to go to the toilet might
result in fewer people buying overpriced drinks on board, though - that
would serve Ryanair right."

 

You can read a story on this at this link.

 

==========

 

Buffalo Accident

 

I've been recommending anxious fliers avoid the media until there is enough information on the accident to draw a sound conclusion about what happened. Once the cause of the accident is known, you have only one "bad" thought in mind as the cause. But if you focus on the accident in the media, the media will give you several "bad" thoughts - which are all incorrect, by the way - to suffer anxiety from.

 

Though the accident investigation team will not report for months, Patrick - I believe - has an explanation of the accident that seems pretty solid. You can read it at this link.