Feeding the fear of flying
2009-07-16 14:20
My husband is afraid of flying. It gets worse every time he takes to the air. He breaks out into a clammy sweat, goes pale and grasps at my hands. The poor guy loves to travel, and frequently has to for work, but hates getting there.
There's something about phobias that grow with you as you age. I used to climb cliffs and abseil down them. Now I get nervous on escalators that overlook open spaces. Glass lifts bother me immensely. And in high buildings with panoramic views, I stay as far away from the windows as possible.
Fortunately, the fear of heights doesn’t need to be confronted that often. I can tell myself "stop being silly" when the escalator thing is threatening to derail me, but other than that, life doesn’t often require me to be in high places.
There also aren't too many reports of people falling off of escalators or high buildings, except under extraordinary circumstances, so I don't have too much information to fuel my fear. On the other hand, in the current aviation climate, planes seem to be falling out of the sky every week, so, my poor husband has ever more evidence to back up his terror.
He knows, objectively, that as Superman says, "It's still the safest way to travel." But there's no logical argument that will bring him down from his sense of panic as the engines start screaming.
He's read all the literature about how you mustn't allow yourself to picture yourself in your own airplane disaster movie. He's tried homoeopathic medication and the more hardcore allopathic stuff - the most effective one was valium, but he was too out of it to be much use when we were safely back down on the ground at the other end.
The funny thing is that he's not too bad when he's on a small plane. We've flown to all sorts of exotic locations in little twin-props, with a clear view of the pilot, and that seems to keep him calm. He thinks it has something to do with the fact that he's a control freak, so seeing that the pilot is in control helps him to feel safe.
We even read that some airlines were considering putting on one radio channel a live feed from the cockpit, so that nervous fliers could listen to their calm voices chatting about the weather. My husband liked that idea, but I felt sorry for the pilots, who would have to refrain from swearing and talking about the risqué things that they’d been doing in whatever exotic destination they were departing.
My husband pointed out that radio DJs and people who work in open plan offices also have to watch the content of their dialogue when they're at work, so there should be nothing wrong with the same restrictions being placed on pilots, for the ease of mind of their passengers. He has a point.
And now, with the recent upsurge in airplane disasters, I'm sure his phobia will be even more desperate than ever before.
- Georgina Guedes is a freelance journalist. She hopes her brain never makes the connection between heights and flying.
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