“There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so” Hamlet

What you think is how you feel. How you feel will determine how you behave. This concept is the basis of CBT, the therapy that is most likely to help you to overcome your fear of flying. How do our minds sort out the things that we think are good or bad, what we like or what we dislike? How do our minds work?

• Where you learn something is where you will recall it

• The mind distorts unfamiliar information

• Thinking the same thoughts reinforces them

It is now accepted (World Fear of Flying Conference Montreal 2007) that to overcome a fear of flying one of the best methods is thought re-structuring. This is not as sinister as it first sounds. To say and accept that an aircraft descends rather than saying an aircraft plummets is ‘thought re-structuring’. At anxiousflyers.com we promote the idea that the best re-structuring is the one that you believe in and the one that works for you…in fact the one that uses the words, ideas and thoughts that belong to you. That’s why we don’t support quick fixes and instant cures.First though it is important to understand how we process information that become thoughts and feelings. Because a fear of flying is learned it can be unlearned. When our brain receives any information at all, we first make sense of it by comparing it with information that we have already stored. We try a ‘best fit’ match and if it looks similar we convert it into something the same, and put it in one of our many memory stores. It’s like putting something into a file on our PC. For example, when we hear someone laugh we identify this by comparing what we hear and see with information in our long-term memory. If we get an immediate and suitable match we confirm that what we thought we saw and heard is in fact true. When we are unsure about information our brain searches our long-term memory for something that is a close match and then if necessary modifies the incoming information to make it fit the ‘pattern’ or ‘mental model’ that we have in our head. Naturally we store many ‘mental models’ about flying, especially if we have a fear of it. It is very difficult to ‘delete’ this information or put it into the recycle bin, because finding it reminds us of it, so we delete it and restore it at the same time. Remember every negative thought that you have about flying is stored in your brain’s long term memory and eventually infects every other thought. This is like a virus infecting your PC’s hard drive and programs.

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Here’s a simple illustration of how difficult it is to change the things we ‘believe’ are true. If we listen to radio programs where a competition asks us to identify a voice from a short extract of speech we trawl our long term memory, putting together the various clues to find the answer. However a very interesting effect occurs once we have come to a conclusion; it becomes very hard to change our mind and rethink from the beginning again. We are normally stuck with that first answer and then we justify it by finding information to support of view. Rarely are we able to change our mind, we’re almost always stuck with the first answer.

However hard we try we can’t shake off that first idea. Exactly the same things happen when a fearful flyer thinks about flying. If your first thought is in the ‘bad’ category it’s hard to dislodge the thought. Unfamiliar, unexpected and uncomfortable information that we receive in flight will be routed to the ‘fear’ category in your memory because it’s the one you’ve got open and ready to use when you go flying.

Worse than that, the thoughts will be available for immediate recall as soon as you are unsettled. And each time this happens you reinforce and promote their position in your memory. The file gets bigger and bigger and instead of being on a memory stick…it gets onto the hard drive like a virus…harder to get rid of than avoiding it in the first place. These become learned ‘facts’ but they can be unlearned; your responses have become your learned behaviour. That’s why it’s so important to replace misunderstandings with facts and to replace myths with reality to flush out and restock our long term memory. A clean slate is vital before applying other remedies. That’s why we promote knowledge and understanding as the basis for overcoming your fear of flying. And that’s why it’s essential to have a  plan. Please go to this link to help you overcome your fear of flying