I’m heading out to Red Deer, Alberta tomorrow morning and I have to admit I’m a little nervous.   I’m not a good flyer at all; in fact I absolutely hate flying.   Good thing I’m a Virtual Assistant!  I chose the right profession -no need for travelling for this girl….okay at least not frequently.  There are still those times, normally once a year when I need to get on a plane, and each time it’s the same story, a jittering pile of nerves. 

I know, I know, flying is the safest way to travel.  More people die in car crashes than in planes…I’ve heard it all before.  So why do I still have this fear of flying?    Well even if there are only 1 in 10 million people that die from a plane crash -that 1 could be me, and the thought of leaving this earth that way…well just freaks me out! 

The past few plane trips I’ve taken have been less than ideal, in fact the last one when I was heading home from Montreal in November, I thought I was a goner for sure.  The turbulence was unbelievable and I almost ended up in the lap of the guy sitting next to me.  Poor guy!   I swore then I would never get on another plane again…but here I am, getting ready to do it all over again.

And why is it that whenever you are scheduled to fly, there always seems to be a plane crash, or a malfunction or something related to a plane all over the news.  It never fails a week or so before I’m scheduled to get onto one of those things, something seems to make the news or maybe I’m just more aware of it.

I’ve been reading alot about fear of flying lately,  I wanted to really get to the bottom of why I have these fears, and why I can’t seem to fly without medicating myself. Those happy pills sure do make it easier, but it doesn’t totally eliminate the sheer terror I sometimes feel.   They just kind of subdue the reaction. For instance instead of screaming “We’re going down!” when we hit some turbulence, I’m just white knuckling it on the seat arms with a look of terror on my face.   So the pills prevent me from running down the aisles looking for my parachute or life raft, but not enough to take away the intense fear that I still feel.

So as I mentioned I’ve been doing some research on fear of flying and have come to realize that my fear is really about control.  I have absolutely no control over the flight.   I am literally putting my life in someone’s’ hands -even worse someone who I’ve never met.   I have to trust that this person knows what they are doing and will get me from point A to point B in a metal shell with wings without it falling from the sky.   And that’s really what it’s about for me.   The fact is I know nothing about what is going on.  And it’s this lack of control and the feeling of unknown that is really at the center of my fear. 

How can I fix this?  Well, I’m not sure it can be fixed at least before I get on the plane tomorrow.  But it was a good first step in realizing where this fear is originating, and now that I know this, I can try to come up with strategies to deal with this.  I mean obviously I’m not going to have the opportunity to go to dinner and get to know each of my pilots, but maybe if I can learn to trust in the unknown a little bit more. 

The bottom line is, I haven’t had any real reason NOT to trust either.  Hmmm…well there’s a thought that I will take with me on the plane tomorrow!