Holidays Compound Turbulence for Fearful Fliers : Phobias: Joyous season can be fraught with trepidation for plane passengers who feel forced to make Christmastime trips.

It may be the season to be jolly, but it didn’t seem like it in the waiting rooms at John Wayne Airport.

One woman’s hands were clenched so tightly that they were turning pale. Another woman was trying to doze but continued glancing nervously around the room. A man was concentrating on a magazine but hadn’t turned a page for nearly five minutes. Many others were chewing gum intensely.

Glen H. Arnold recognizes these symptoms. He is a social worker and counselor at UCI Medical Center who specializes in combatting the anxieties of flying demonstrated in holiday-packed airports around the country. Holiday flying may be the most stressful of all, he says.

“Someone afraid of flying can conceal his fears from friends and minimize them to family members. It’s easy to justify a car trip to Yosemite rather than flying to New York for vacation.

“But the holidays bring lots of social obligations and pressures. You get invited places,” Arnold said.

“And there are plenty of people in Southern California who are drawn back to the East or Midwest, by guilt feelings, to see elderly parents and families for the holidays. It may be the only time they ever consent to fly, because there’s no way to beg off.”

The anxiety starts, Arnold said, as soon as you make your reservations; an undercurrent of stress that is easy to deny at first. But the nervousness builds as the days lead up to departure, and you go sleepless the night before.

That morning you forgo breakfast, ensuring that your stomach will be empty and ticklish. You arrive at the airport and start drinking coffee and smoking, which sets your nerves to jangling.

You feel irritable. Your companion, who knows nothing of your fear of flying, has been reading travel brochures and says, “Hey, they have an aerial tram there. Let’s try it.” Your stomach knots.

You head for the bar and find it amazingly crowded for this time of morning. Two drinks, and you are a little tipsy, but just as nervous--and now your stomach is angry.

You head for the waiting room and see the metal detectors blocking your way, ready to buzz and demand explanations. But you pass through, the first of several transitions that make it more difficult to back out.

They call the flight, you walk to the plane, you take your seat, and then they do the most symbolic and terrifying act of the flight: They close the door! Now it will require an act of excruciating embarrassment in order to back out, and few of the fearful do it. Now there are four or five hours of stress and anxiety ahead.

A 1987 Gallup poll found that 48% of airline passengers are at least occasionally afraid. Arnold estimates that for more than two-thirds of them, the anxiety stems from more than merely being on an airliner in flight.

“Guilt in family relationships takes people to places they don’t want to be,” he said. “This can manifest itself as anxiety and fear.

“Also, when we feel guilt, we shop for punishment. You subject yourself to anxiety and fear during a flight, and when you arrive, you’re worn out, but you feel relief. You’ve paid your dues.

“Perhaps a person feels vulnerable in a relationship or at work. He can, without realizing it, transfer that feeling of vulnerability to an airplane going through turbulence.

“And you can use fear of flying as a weapon in a family power struggle. She can use her flying problem to frustrate his plans, and he can spring plans on her at the last minute to cause the maximum anxiety.”

Those whose fears are based on misinformation are easier to help, Arnold said. Their mental images of flying can be adjusted toward reality, he said.

A person who views an airliner as being precariously high with nothing between it and the ground can be helped to view air as a powerful force, as substantial as the water that buoys a ship. The plane can be viewed as protective rather than confining. And, they can be reminded, air crashes are less likely than car or train crashes.

“People always behave appropriately based on what they think is true,” Arnold said. “People’s perceptions can be shifted.”

In either case, Arnold said, fearful fliers can learn to at least tolerate flying with less discomfort by not expecting flights to be utterly trouble-free and by not expecting their anxieties to disappear all at once.

“There are strategies that can be learned and practiced. If you are 10% more comfortable on your next flight than on your last one, you’re on your way,” he said.