You can’t control the plane, but you can control your fear

With Easter around the corner and summer sneaking up on us too, people who are chronically anxious about air travel may have little choice but to take to the skies. Whether a family reunion on the East Coast or a wedding just two states away, major events are often enough to spur travelers to seek help overcoming their fear of flying.

Some mental health experts focus on simple techniques, such as relaxing a day or two before departure. Others have gone high-tech, using virtual-reality simulators to re-create the flight experience and help passengers identify the sources of their anxiety. Therapists say the sessions don’t banish fears; they just teach fretful fliers how to get through a trip.

About one in six American adults fears flying, says Reid Wilson, a psychologist specializing in treating anxieties and a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine at Chapel Hill.

It’s not a simple fear, he says, because it usually encompasses several concerns. People may have fears of relinquishing control to the pilot, being in a confined space, falling, having a panic attack, leaving loved ones or dying.

“If I had someone who feared dying on the plane, I’d work on the trust [issue] and understanding [of] the industry,” he says. He would review statistics that show flying is safer than riding in a car and the mechanics of how the plane stays airborne.

In his office, Wilson teaches clients to control the racing heartbeat, the rapid and shallow breathing and other symptoms. The goal, he emphasizes, is not to prevent symptoms but to learn how to control them.

“It’s a control issue, I believe, at the root,” says Al Forgione, a Boston psychologist specializing in fear of flying. “They can’t control the plane.”

Forgione teaches clients to reframe their thoughts to: “I can’t control the situation, but I can control my reaction to it.”

That strategy is employed in a different way at Virtual Reality Medical Center, which has offices in West Los Angeles, San Diego and Palo Alto. Fearful fliers learn to control their anxiety -- while sitting in an airplane seat on a vibrating platform.

“It helps bring up things they have forgotten about during the experience,” says Brenda Wiederhold, a psychologist and executive director of the centers. She has used conventional talk therapy sessions along with virtual-reality simulation for seven years to treat fear of flying.

A simulation of air turbulence helped one woman confront her fear of death. It “created that same sense of almost terror for her, which we were able to process,” Wiederhold says.

Glen Arnold, a Los Angeles psychologist who directs a fearful-flier program called Thairapy based at the Orange County’s John Wayne Airport, tells his students to get a full-body massage the afternoon or evening before a long flight. He teaches other ways to relax, such as deep breathing, and provides information on aircraft operation to demystify the experience.

Arnold also tells fliers to avoid caffeinated cola and coffee. For snacks, he suggests trail mix -- “the kind without the M&M; candies.”

Therapists say treatment takes time -- at least a few months -- and imagination.

“Fearful fliers are also very creative people. That allows them to create dramatic mental scenarios,” Arnold says.

“Just as easily as you can create that dramatic vision, you can do the reverse and see yourself as a competent, relaxed traveler.”

Healthy Traveler appears every other week. Kathleen Doheny can be reached at kathleen doheny@earthlink.net.