How Hypnosis can help you overcome your fear of flying

What is Hypnosis?

To understand hypnosis, it's useful to understand your subconscious mind. This is the part of your mind that is the most powerful, containing infinite wisdom and a very deep level of intelligence. It is your untapped resource for creativity and imagination. Your subconscious mind is the seat of all your emotions and therefore directs nearly all of your behavior. For example your fear of flying is a behavior governed by your subconscious mind and can seem irrational at a conscious level. It can be difficult to override subconscious behaviors just by making conscious decisions and that's how hypnosis can then help.

Hypnosis is a safe way of accessing this natural intelligence and issuing new instructions to create seemingly miraculous changes in you, your behavior and your body. What does hypnosis feel like? You already know what hypnosis feels like, because you have experienced natural hypnotic states every day of your life, when daydreaming or driving or watching TV. These are those pleasant, dreamlike states where we "drift off". The Safe, Intentional Hypnosis we use during your sessions is entering these same, natural states deliberately and with awareness. It is a systematic method that allows you to enter these "dreamlike states" and communicate directly with your subconscious and issue new suggestions or instructions. These suggestions are tailor-made for your individual needs, and will be made for you by your hypnotherapist. All you have to do is relax and enjoy the experience!

Fear of flying. A lot of fears and phobias stem from times in our lives when we are naturally very suggestible, such as childhood. Some things can seem more threatening as a child and our subconscious mind deals with this by trying to keep us away from these threats. One way your subconscious mind does this by creating a feeling of panic or anxiety such as you may feel when boarding a plane. You are also very suggestible when in a heightened state of emotion such as fear. So if you have an unpleasant experience on an aeroplane, like severe turbulence you can become fearful and thus suggestible.

The suggestion that you subconscious mind receives is that aeroplanes represent a threat to you therefore the next time you take a flight your subconscious mind puts out feelings of panic and anxiety to try to keep you away. Even though this behaviour can seem irrational your subconscious mind still carries on reacting in the same way because it thinks it is protecting you. (The primary function of your subconscious mind is to protect you) It may be that you have not had a bad experience flying but are still afraid. This is quite usual and is probably because flying is a very unnatural thing for man to do.In hypnosis you are communicating with your subconscious mind and can therefore re-evaluate your behaviour and allow your subconscious mind to see that Aeroplanes do not represents a threat to you now. You can then adopt a more rational response and become more calm and relaxed in general.

Hypnosis - to overcome your fear of flying is a two-session course. Fee is £65 per session. Your first session is 1 & ½ hours, second session one hour approximately

Some Important Questions. It is perfectly natural that you may have some questions about hypnotherapy and I am always delighted to talk to you on the 'phone and answer any specific queries. Below are answers to some of the more common misgivings.

"Will I be asleep in hypnosis?" No. You are awake and alert, aware of everything that is happening throughout the session.

"Will I be under the hypnotist's power?" No. You are in charge. You cannot be made to do anything and you cannot be taken into hypnosis against your will. It is your experience.

"Is it safe to go into hypnosis?" Absolutely. The routine's we use are the safest in the World. You enter hypnosis via a deep relaxation technique and your exit is safe, controlled and relaxed at all times.

"What if I can't be hypnotized?" You can. Everyone can. As long as you wish to enter hypnosis, you will. It's an easy, enjoyable and thoroughly relaxing process.

Julie James C.Hyp D.Hyp C.M.H. Julie has studied Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy and Psychotherapy at the world renown Merjon School of Hypnosis in London. Julie now runs her own practices, in Dorking and also in Hove. Julie is a fully accredited member of the UK Guild of Hypnotist Examiners, the only British Hypnosis society approved to practice in the U.K., U.S.A. and Australia. Phone 01273 202768

To locate a Hypnotherapist in your particular area please visit Hypnotherapists UK Directories at: -- www.hypnotherapists-uk.co.uk and www.nrhp.co.uk

Sue McIntyre Article

Anxiety about air travel is a very common problem.  It has been estimated that in excess of 30 million people in Britain and the USA want or need to fly but remain either earthbound or terrified in the air.  Stewart Agras, an American psychiatrist and his colleagues at the University of Vermont, as far back as 1969 reported on the basis of 325 randomly selected persons that flying is, along with going to the dentist, the fourth most widespread common fear and affects 198 out of 1000 in the population – following snakes (390), heights (307) and storms (211).

In working with clients who struggle with travelling by air, I’ve found it useful to consider

• Is there a generalised anxiety disorder?
• Is there a problem with panic disorders and agoraphobia?
• Are there specific phobias such as being strapped in, sight of deep water, falling, fire, darkness etc.?
• Are there social phobias such as entering a room full of strangers, being told what to do, being judged etc?

These considerations may warrant further exploration, perhaps in the form of hypno-analysis, in order to modify or remove the underlying belief that predisposes the client to anxiety. 

These beliefs centre usually upon issues concerning acceptance, competence or control and represent a particular and persistent way of construing the world.  The first relates to fear that you or your behaviour will not be acceptable to others, the second to concerns that you are not equal to others in coping with situations and the third to feelings of being dominated by events out of your control (or being domineered by others).  Anxious flyers can often be helped to identify the source of their major concern – it might be a critical parent, teacher or friend (if acceptance is the primary issue); failed tasks in the past (when competence is the concern); or an authoritative parent or relative (when control is the major preoccupation).

Some medical conditions may also require particular precautions and clients presenting with any of the following might be well advised to consult their GP

• Blood disorders
• Cardiovascular problems
• Central nervous system disorders
• Ear, nose and throat problems
• Gastro-intestinal problems
• Metabolic problems
• Respiratory problems

In addition, air travel is contra-indicated for those with infectious diseases, those who are seriously ill and in advanced pregnancy – beyond the 35th week for long international journeys and beyond the 36th week for short journeys.

Anxiety about air travel can be explained as being due to the faulty appraisal of flying as a threat, which in turn produces changes in thoughts, feelings, bodily reactions and behaviour.  Symptoms are the body’s way of dealing with threats and danger and behavioural responses involves either fight, flight (escape), freeze or faint as adaptive defences.

Eliciting from the client specific problem areas can be useful in matching symptoms and techniques.  Common difficulties involve no or little knowledge about how planes fly, uncomfortable body symptoms and irrational ideas and negative thoughts about flying.  Ignorance of the principles of flight is probably the easiest to remedy with such information readily available via the Internet or public library.  An excellent book entitled ‘Taking the Rear out of Flying’ by Maurice Yaffe devotes an entire chapter to this subject.  Bodily symptoms and worrying thoughts both lend themselves to hypnotherapeutic interventions.

Defusing worrying thoughts

 Since people can drift in and out of an hypnotic state quite spontaneously throughout the day and because we know that the presence of an emotion is likely to enhance an hypnotic suggestion, it makes sense to take particular note of what people are saying to themselves – their internal dialogue and the images they create to complement this.  Combined with anxious thoughts associated with flying for example, internal dialogue along the lines of “I will ruin my family’s holiday because I am terrified of the flight” is dangerously counter-productive.  It is necessary for the client to become aware of their thought processes so that they can challenge and re-frame them.

Automatic thoughts have several distinguishing features from other kinds of cognitions, which make them easier to identity: 

• They occur spontaneously
• They are idiosyncratic to each person
• They are difficult to switch off
• They often lead to similar thoughts
• They are believed regardless of how irrational (i.e. bypass conscious critical facilities)
• And they are hardly ever noticed – so are rarely challenged or questioned.
• They are generally formulated in terms of absolute statements and ideas and lead one to expect the worst.
• They tend to appear in abbreviated form – words, phrases and images – and confirm the labelling of flying as a threat dangerous to self or aircraft or both – for example “flight tomorrow ……panicky last time….turbulence…crashing…who would take care of the children?”

Uncritical acceptance of automatic thoughts is an excellent formula for feeding anxiety, for such narrowing of perception excludes any possibility of alternative considerations.  This cognitive ‘tunnel vision’ involves selectively attending to only one set of clues (negative ones!) from a much larger range often manifesting in distorted thinking – such as

1. Catastrophising – assuming the worst situation will happen given any possibility for an undesirable outcome (e.g. one change in engine tone means your numbers up!).
2. Selective abstraction – that is selecting information that fits in with your preconceived ideas (i.e. picking out reports of aircraft accidents from the newspaper and dismissing the hundreds of successful take-offs and landings that happen every day) to prove the point that flying is dangerous.
3. Polarised thinking – interpreting events in dichotomous terms (e.g. unless a flight can be absolutely guaranteed safe, it must be dangerous.

The shared belief amongst anxious flyers is that something terrible is going to happen over which they have no control.  Beck and Emery suggest that three questions need to be posed to facilitate a restructuring of distorted thinking errors.  These are

1. What is the evidence upon which your beliefs are based?
2. Is there an alternative way of construing the situation?
3. What are the consequences, EVEN IF they happen?

Peter A Bakal M.D. (A Reframing Approach for Flight Phobia) points out how airlines unintentionally feed distorted thinking and condition people to fear flying by using expressions such as “terminal” for the airport building, “departure lounge” and the “last and final call” for the boarding call.  One of the first messages given on the plane is how to cope with a crash and how to use oxygen in case of an emergency.  Anxious flyers need little help to create a picture – they arrive at the “terminal”, are asked if the place they are going is their “final destination” and are told this is the “last and final call” for flight ………”terminating at Christchurch airport”.

Bakal’s technique involves reframing the negative suggestions prevalent in flight terminology, Ericksonian metaphor-type suggestion therapy followed by future pacing (visualising a successful flight).  He reported excellent results with a series of 21 patients followed up for three years.

There are many stress-reduction and relaxation-type audio CDs available on the market which may help to support a comfortable flight. I produce a range of these myself which you can view at www.helpmyselfhypnosis.com Affirmations may have a useful role to play here too – read ‘Creative Visualization’ by Shakti Gawain and ‘You can Heal Your Life’ by Louise Hay.

Uncomfortable body symptoms such as muscle tension, palpitations, sweating, high blood pressure, light-headedness, tingling sensations and nausea may respond to a range of techniques available to the hypnotherapist.  To a greater or lesser extent, progressive muscle relaxation, diaphragmatic breathing, autogenic training and biofeedback will help although diaphragmatic breathing will only have a limited influence on high blood pressure and biofeedback is unlikely to help directly with light-headedness, tingling sensations and nausea.  These are all techniques that clients can learn to apply for themselves, which has the added advantage of implying a sense of control.

1. Progressive Muscle Relaxation – may lessen the experience of distressing symptoms.  There are possible contra-indications for sufferers of arthritis, fibrositis and atherosclerosis.

2. Diaphragmatic Breathing – important during air travel because the air becomes thinner outside the aircraft as you climb away from the earth’s surface.  At altitude the cabin is pressurised to the equivalent of 5-6,000 feet above sea level, which means that there is less oxygen that you are probably used to but importantly, there is always plenty for everyone’s needs.  You would not ordinarily feel the difference unless you breathed rapidly and shallowly, which is what happens when you get anxious.  Diaphragmatic breathing will enable you to move more air with less effort and thereby compensate for the reduced pressure.

3. Autogenic Training – defined as a systematic set of exercises developed in Berlin earlier this century by two physicians, Johannes Schultz and Wolfgang Luthe.  Basically self-hypnosis initiated by verbal cues to relax but in contrast to progressive and deep muscle relaxation, it involves no direct instructions to tense and relax muscles.

4. Biofeedback Methods – involve the use of instrumentation to learn voluntary control over the automatic nervous system.  There are three basic stages

• AWARENESS that the response is maladaptive (i.e. not productive) and the realisation that particular thoughts as well as bodily events can influence this.
• CONTROL of the response using the external signal as indication of progress and
• Learning to TRANSFER the control developed into general life situations as well as travelling by plane.

Biofeedback can be used to validate and monitor progress and to discover whether progressive muscle relaxation exercises, diaphragmatic breathing exercises, autogenic training or cognitive techniques best facilitate the relaxation process.

Of course, regular exercise is an effective way of producing both bodily and mental relaxation.  It provides a means of reducing muscle tension, general physiological arousal and helps to empty the mind of stressful preoccupations.

Practical Hints for Air Travellers

1. Drink non-carbonated drinks – gases expand at altitude and carbon dioxide may reduce the availability of oxygen.  However, if you do hyperventilate, then breathing over a carbonated drink is sensible.
2. Avoid drinking alcohol – alcohol lowers the oxygen in your bloodstream and makes it more difficult for you to replace it.  It also has double the effect that id does on the ground – i.e. makes you tipsy at altitude much more quickly than the same amount would at sea level.
3. In addition to carbonated drinks and alcohol, it makes sense to avoid beans and curries that may cause gas to expand in your abdomen.  This cannot readily escape and may cause discomfort – not to mention flatulence when gas is trapped in the stomach or large intestine!
4. All airports and planes are now non-smoking of course but it would help to avoid smoking both before and after a flight.  This is because carbon monoxide produced from smoking reduces the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood.  If you must smoke, try to cut down at least, for peripheral blood vessels are constricted due to this, which lowers oxygen rate even further.
5. Use the Valsalva manoeuvre (close off the air supply to your nose with one hand and blow strongly against the pressure until you feel air passing through your Eustachian tubes – the pathway that connects ears and throat), swallow, yawn, move your lower jaw from side to side or suck a sweet to reduce ‘popping’ sensations in the ears and equalise the pressure between the middle ear and the atmosphere.

 Sue McIntyre Dip.Adv.Hyp.  Dip.Pers.Dev.  Cert.Couns.

Sue has been in private practice offering hypnotherapy, stress management and counselling in Somerset, South West UK since 1989.  For personal appointments and more information, please visit www.theconsultingrooms.co.uk   Sue also produces a range of self-hypnosis CDs and MP3 downloads which are available worldwide via www.helpmyselfhypnosis.com

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