Dear Therapist:

My wife has always been afraid of flying. The last time she flew, around a year and a half ago, there was some turbulence mid-flight and she got hysterical and wasn't able to calm down until we landed (thankfully this was on the way home). We have a family bar mitzvah on the west coast at the end of the month and she is already very apprehensive about going. I have tried to talk with her about the safety of flying but that just gets her upset. I would appreciate any techniques or suggestions that you have to help make this easier.

Response:

With anxiety in general, and with phobias in particular, logically explaining why fears are not warranted is usually not very effective.  Among the reasons for this is the fact that the person is most often well aware of the fact that her anxiety is not logical, and she has likely tried telling herself many times exactly what you’re trying to tell her.  Despite this, the anxiety persists. 

Although we all feel certain levels of stress, anxiety by definition is emotional.  Think of this in terms of levels of stress vs. anxiety.  On a scale from 1-100 (where 1 represents no stress/anxiety and 100 reflects the highest possible level of stress/anxiety), if a particular stressor should logically rate a 20, but your stress level is 60, your “effective anxiety” is 40—the difference between the “normal” stress level and your actual stress level.  This means that two thirds of the stress is emotional.  This anxiety will not respond to logical reasoning because it is not logical.

There are various techniques that can help your wife to reduce her fear, including identification of the original source of the fear and its subsequent reinforcement.  A simpler strategy is to help your wife to focus on the emotional aspect of her fear.  This means abandoning your instinct to explain why there’s nothing to be afraid of; focus instead on what she is afraid of.  For instance, allow her to recognize her fear that the plane will take a downward plunge, causing it to break apart, leading to a crash, etc.  This will allow her to begin to correct her emotional assumptions with facts, like the existence of air pockets, the expertise of aviation engineers, and the miniscule possibility of a crash.  If she can acknowledge her specific fears (despite their illogic) and begin to challenge them intellectually, this can help to decrease her fear.

-Yehuda Lieberman, LCSW

  psychotherapist in private practice

 Brooklyn, NY

 author of Self-Esteem: A Primer

 www.ylcsw.com

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