In fact, we flew back. My father had purchased a round-trip ticket, so he couldn’t change his plans just because I was worried. To my surprise, I don’t remember anything about the flight home. But what I do know is that for the next 20 years, every flight I took was a nightmare. The fear I experienced while flying was unlike anything I had ever felt before. I was out of control, crying, having trouble breathing, and shaking.
Between the ages of 15 and 23, I traveled extensively throughout Europe, left my home country and lived in Ireland, and only flew on a plane three times. Many of the complicated trips I devised to avoid planes included traveling by train from Paris to St. Petersburg, which took three days. I travel back and forth between Ireland and France several times a year using ferries, trains and buses. And I drove my little Fiat hundreds of miles through Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, and France.
Then, when I was 23, I met my Canadian partner, who lived in the mountains of British Columbia, an ocean and a continent away from me. Transatlantic train and bus service is current, so we had to take a flight.
Even though I averaged 6-10 flights a year (mainly between Canada and France) for over 10 years, my fear never went away. Medication, breathing control, worry stones, nothing helped. The kind travelers sitting next to me held my hand and whispered reassurances, but they always asked, “Is this your first flight?” and I always answered, “No. , I always do that.” Their expressions said it all. This girl is a masochist.
The fact that I started working for a travel magazine at age 27 made my fears even more inconvenient and absurd.
In 2018, at age 32, I finally sought the help I needed. A few days after arriving in Canada after spending some time in France, I opened my laptop, searched for a registered psychologist who practices hypnotherapy, and scheduled an appointment. I had had enough and was ready to change the way I lived.
Judging by what I read about ex-smokers talking about hypnosis, I imagined that a few hypnotherapy sessions would cure me completely. Of course, it didn’t work out that way, because psychology isn’t magic. I went to therapy because of my fear of flying, but what my psychologist and I explored in the 15 or so sessions we had together went beyond that fear. This is because the fear of flying does not exist on its own in the mind, but is connected to other experiences and memories, all of which react to each other. All of them need to be addressed.
They underwent a total of three hypnotherapy sessions and an equal number of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) sessions. The hypnotherapy was recorded so I could practice it alone at home or on a plane. No matter how ridiculous it felt, I did it. Because, yes, you can self-hypnotize.
Therapeutic hypnosis is much less theatrical than most of us imagine. There are no pocket watches swinging from side to side, and no one is rattling like a chicken. During the hypnotherapy session, all I had to do was sit comfortably, close my eyes, and listen to the therapist. She had a script tailored to my needs and she delivered it slowly and quietly. During hypnosis, I never fell asleep, I was always aware of what was happening, but I felt disconnected from the world in a very subtle way, as if I was inside a soap bubble. felt. It certainly wasn’t scary and I didn’t feel like I was losing control of my situation.
The results of all this work were not immediate and not 100% positive. Some flights were good and some were bad, but I felt very different. Thanks to therapy, I was able to make some much needed big changes and was ultimately able to live a better life with less anxiety.
It took me about three years after my last therapy session to feel comfortable being in the air. It may seem like a long time, but it was worth the wait. I can sit through a 10-hour flight with intermittent turbulence without crying, shaking, or hyperventilating, and I don’t need help from my seatmate or flight attendant to calm down. You can also ride the cable car, which I didn’t think I would be able to do.
Overcoming the fear of flying requires a lot of discomfort and a lot of money, but first and foremost it requires a willingness to change and face multiple fears. But if I, one of the most insecure flyers ever in the world, did it, you can do it too. 
