At this time of year thoughts turn to planning summer holidays, especially if the weather has been rather cool and unsettled. It is the time when day dreams of sun-kissed beaches, exciting and exotic destinations with guaranteed great weather and no need for raincoats and umbrellas have everyone planning a well-earned break.
For quite a number of people, getting away isn’t quite so easy and even though they find holiday advertisements really tempting, their fear of flying prevents any thoughts of planning a holiday abroad. A fear of flying is thought to affect 30% of the population to varying degrees and this figure has increased in the last ten years. Whilst some people experience mild anxiety from the moment they board an aircraft until they walk back down the steps. At the other end of the spectrum are those who really struggle even seeing an aircraft or the mere thought of air travel, experiencing nausea or severe panic attacks.
Even though the flight time to most European destinations is less than three hours, for someone with aviophobia, (the medical term for a flying phobia), a holiday in a foreign country is just a dream. If this is you the great news is that with a little help your dream can come true. Treatment to cure your phobia can be very successful. The late David Bowie did not travel by air for much of his early career until having treatment in the 1980s.
These statistics can alleviate your fear and help you to control it –
* Flying is the safest form of transport in the world. Four billion people travel by air each
year.
* The chance of survival in a plane crash is 95%, (it’s just that they don’t make the news).
* If the number of fatalities caused by air crashes is a tiny fraction of those caused by road
accidents.
* The odds of being killed in a car crash are 1:5,000 compared to the odds of being killed
in an air crash which are 1:11,000,000.
* You are at least 50 times more likely to be struck by lightning and three more times likely
to become the President of the United States.
And possible solutions…
Most people who have a fear are told to ‘face the fear’, but this has varying degrees of success. The problem is that to face the fear, you have to build yourself up and try and deal with and conquer your fear, but without any guarantees.
Some airlines run special fear of flying courses for people with aerophobia giving them the chance to familiarise themselves with the different parts of the aircraft and watch the safety procedures being carried out. The idea behind these courses is that fear can often be triggered by the unknown, so making aircraft and how they work more familiar will make people with aerophobia feel safer.
Hypnotherapy has proved very successful in treating aerophobia as it doesn’t involve facing your fear in any way. And it doesn’t just help overcome the fear for one flight (like anxiety medication), but for always. Hypnotherapy is very different from stage hypnosis and is used by phobia treatment specialists to treat a variety of phobias including fear of flying. Hypnotherapy is an alternative treatment that looks at the root of the problem and then successfully removes your anxieties, leaving you free to read as many travel articles as you want and for you to enjoy your travel dreams coming true.