There is an interesting - though old - thing in psychology called Yerkes-Dodson Law. When stress hormones hit, they make us pay attention to one thing fully. When a second thing happens right away, it causes another shot of stress hormones. The second short of hormones demands that we pay 100% attention to the second thing. Conflict arises. Conflict causes anxiety, so we want to turn away. No. We have to prioritize: to look at one first, solve it. When we reach a plan of action, good. We commit to the plan of action. At the moment of commitment, a signal goes to the amygdala to stop producing the stress hormones. Then, we look at the other, solve it, produce a plan of action, commit to it, and get rid of the stress hormones. Voila. No stress hormones at all.

But when we use the old method and stuff keeps building up. Like an alcoholic who has to hit rock bottom before he or she finally decides to turn around, so does the person plagued with anxiety. The only question is whether we turn around now, by our own determination, or do we wait until there is no place else to run. Agoraphobics who end up at home may finally end up in one room, and still be anxious.

It is harder to make the decision now. But it is easier to work back to health now than it is later. I can tell you one thing; whenever I have had a fear of flying client who had become agoraphobic and worked back far enough to grapple with flying, they KNEW they they wanted to go forward toward greater awareness. None were tempted to go back where they had been. 

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Psychic Equivalence

After the special newsletter on Air France 447, some emails expressed distress. A flurry of newsletter subscription cancellations follows such reports. 

One said, "The emails about the crash make me more anxious...FYI "

Another said, "I guess this whole flight just makes me more nervous, now I wonder if the 767 I will be taking to Rome will stall and fall to sea. Everything I think will happen, could happen."

Fear of flying, at least as expressed here, is due to psychic equivalence. In psychic equivalence, what is in the mind is taken far too seriously; it is taken as real. Psychic equivalence takes place when ones own thinking is not carefully looked at, critiqued, and corrected.

Thoughts of disaster trigger the release of stress hormones which, in some individuals,  cause their ability to critique their thinking to collapse. They become unable to recognize their thinking about the situation that is causing them anxiety is not at all accurate. Notice the example above. The person first thinks - correctly - that the fact something has happened, proves it CAN happen. Then, anything that can happen MIGHT happen. Here the thinking is sliding off balance because the statement shows no appreciation how rare, and thus unlikely, such a happening is. And then, if the thing that might happen is not absolutely ruled out, it WILL happen.

As you read this, if you are cool, calm, and collected, you can see the temporary insanity in that. But when emotions arise, the distinction between imagination and reality can collapse. Use your high level thinking. Does what happens in one case in twenty-three million indicate your flight is doomed? I don't think so.

But you may reply, "But how do I know?" The answer is, you don't. The brain, it seems to me, is supposed to be a prediction device. It is supposed to figure out what will happen if we do this or that or the other thing. The brain rarely knows for sure. In most cases, it comes up with what is most likely, not what is certain. If, before you act, you must know in advance what the outcome of an act will be, there are very few things you can do.

Do not let a problem that is limited to just one model of pitot tube on one type of airliner at one airline - which has been corrected - and make it a universals problem that still exists, and is a threat on all airliners. No. If you are doing that, you need to examine the accuracy of your thinking. If you think accurately about this, there is no cause for anxiety. 

Consider what another email said. This person put the news into context. "I''m flying tomorrow and when I heard the story on the morning news, my stomach dropped. As a fearful flyer, stories on the news affect me more. And I actually work in news.  So thanks for putting it in context. My stomach is feeling a little better already"

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What Is It About Being Up High

Take a look at this in the New York Times today. It is an article about a building in Chicago that has places to stand that protrude from the building. They are up high and are made completely of glass. Visitors to the building can step inside the glass and see the city of Chicago hundreds of feet directly below what they are standing on.

Unnerving? Yes. Of course. We are genetically programmed to be doubtful about doing that. Experiments with six month-old kids have shown that when a piece of plexiglas is added as an extension to a table, though kids will crawl happily on the table, they won't go out on the plexiglas. This experiment is referred to as "visual cliff".

In a later experiment, researchers added another dimension to the experiment: the mother. That changed everything. Though toys or other temptations could not get the kids to venture out onto the plexiglas, if their mothers gave encouragement, most kids went right out there.

What if that kind of trust in mom can be built in? And what if that kind of trust in the mother is NOT built in? Like it or not, there is good reason - at least some of us versed in psychology think - to believe that whether we can venture out onto the plexglas or out over the storm in a 777 has a lot to do with mom. Some of us feel better about such a venturing out if someone is with us. But best of all, is to have a solid relationship of trust and support from mom built inside. If it is built inside, it is portable.

So here is a perfect example. Isn't being in a 777 up high over storm like the six month-old venturing out onto the plexiglas? Mom isn't there. For people who don't have trouble with flying, she doesn't need to be. She is built inside. Psychologists call it "secure attachment". That built-in security makes it possible to fly without a thought. When it isn't built-in, we can't fly no matter how logical our thoughts.

So in the SOAR program, we go back to square one. We build in what our mom should have but didn't. There really isn't any other answer. How do you build in the support you need to do this without distress? See www.fearofflying.com/relief.

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