Saturday, May 2, 2009

Aerophobia?

I have this vivid memory of my mom and me flying to Oklahoma. I was about 8 or 9 and had only been on an airplane a handful of times. I remember being really excited. At some point during the flight we started to experience some turbulence. I thought this was the greatest thing ever! It made the flight so much more fun! The turbulence got so bad at one point that my soda slid off of my tray and landed in my mother lap. She was not happy about that and seemed even less pleased with the bumpy ride we were having. As I think back on it now, I realize that my little nine year old brain could not process the idea that turbulence, it rare cases, could lead to disaster. My mother, from the look on her face, did.

As I have begun to use air travel more and more I have developed a fear of it more and more. I'm not sure why this is, but it seems as though it is getting worse not better. I have never even had so much as a minor mechanical problem on an airplane that I have been on so I am not sure where this fear is stemming from.

Paul and I are flying to Switzerland at the end of May and I am seriously dreading the flight. On more than one occasion the anxiety of the impending flight has made me want to cancel the trip completely. At times I have an overwhelming fear that something is going to go wrong. At other times, I laugh at myself for being so silly.

6 comments:

PunkyPickett said...

Probably on a much smaller scale, but I too have grown more worried about flying. Actually, it's really when Ben flies without me that I get truly nervous. Which is weird, because if we're on a plane together I'm not scared. I guess I'm more worried about losing him than dying myself.

Bag said...

I have had similar worries before, but recently found out that there are around 60,000 commercial flights each day in the United States alone, and maybe 1-2 crashes per year. I had no idea that many planes were in the air each day. Do you guys worry when you are in the car? Because you are like 30x more likely to die in a car accident than an airline accident. I looked up data:
1 in 6800 will die in a car crash
1 in 1.6m will die in an airplane crash
I understand the fears but when you look at the math, it really makes no sense to worry. There are much more likely things you can worry about.

TheGraveWolf said...

WAAAAAAY more likely to die from bursting a blood vessel in your brain when the little snack packs don't have the pre-ripped section so they easily open. What's that about???

81Trucolors said...

At one time I began to develop an irrational fear of cold water. One thing that helped was changing my thought patterns. If I started feeling anxious I would force myself to smile and instead think about something fun about the water (water wings, etc.).

Maybe you can instead think about how awesome the trip will be.

KermyFrag said...

Just for the record: An air france plane crashed into the ocean three days after we landed in Germany and whilst in Germany another plane crashed flying from Moracco?

Anyways, I received these overwhelming feelings out of no where and then to have two commercial planes crash within weeks of our flight... something to think about!

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