4 Ways to Ease Flight Anxiety

In this day and age, anxiety over flying is no joke. Especially with the way the media is televising airplane crashes and hijacking, can you really blame a person for being scared of flying? Although I’m no stranger to flying and have been doing it frequently since I was a little kid, for the first time ever these past couple of months I realized that I was scared of my upcoming trip to Europe. All those horror stories and news coverage had gotten to my head and I was suddenly asking myself “what did I get myself into?!”. Well, guess what? I’m going on a plane next week and even though I’m still scared, I know for a fact that I’m not going to let something like anxiety get in the way of an awesome trip. Neither should you! So here are 5 methods to combating anxiety that also works well for more specific situations such as flying.

Focus On the Good – Train your mind to see the good in these kinds of situations. Traveling should be exciting and adventurous and in order to experience that, you have to go through a flight. But who cares when you have so many amazing things to do afterwards! Think of all the sites you’re going to visit, the photos you’ll take, and the stories you’ll be able to tell your friends when you get back. Go as far as bringing a notepad and pen with you and write down all these good things so you can go back and look at it whenever you’re feeling anxious.

Distract Yourself – Whenever I feel nervous, it’s usually because I have time to let my mind wander and over-think. You can avoid this from happening by distracting yourself with comforting things such as watching your favorite movie or reading a good book. Just make sure to bring a lot of distractions with you if it’s a long flight! 

Mentally Practice – The day before the flight, sit in a comfortable spot in your home and close your eyes. Imagine yourself on the plane and everything going smoothly. Run through the entire process in your head from going through security to arriving safely at your destination. I find that the more I think positively about this scenario, the more calm I feel when it’s time to actually go through with it.

Breathing and Counting -Typically when a person is anxious about something, they’re also not breathing correctly. Yet I found that whenever I began concentrating on my breathing, I get even more nervous! In order to combat this problem, I typically count in my head all the way to a 100. Not only does it bore the heck out of me but it slowly makes you relax, breathe normal again, and eases tense muscles.

When all else fails, write down this quote and keep it with you at your worse times: “You must do everything that frightens you. Everything. I’m not talking about risking your life, but everything else. Think about fear, decide right now how you’re going to deal with fear, because fear is going to be the great issue in your life, I promise you. Fear will be the fuel for all your success, and the root cause of all your failures, and the underlying dilemma in every story you tell yourself about yourself. And the only chance you’ll have against fear? Follow it. Steer by it. Don’t think of fear as the villain, think of fear as your pathfinder…”

I hope this post helps in some sort of way! Thanks for reading,

-Ruya