How hypnotherapy can help you overcome a fear of flying

In May 2024, more than 70 passengers were injured when their Singapore Airlines flight experienced ‘extreme’ turbulence. For anyone with a fear of flying, reading those headlines must have been terrifying. 

Fear of flying, also known as flying anxiety, flying phobia, flight phobia, aviophobia, and aerophobia, can be an extremely debilitating condition. 

It can lead to physical symptoms, from making people feel anxious to nausea, but this deep-seated fear can also have a mental health impact. 

Anxiety and fear associated with aviophobia can prevent people from enjoying travel: from a family holiday to solo explorations. 

It can also have negative consequences for their working lives, including missed opportunities to succeed or progress up the promotion ladder. The fear of getting on a plane can become so paralysing, that it could even lead to depression.   

It doesn’t have to be this way. Hypnotherapy is a proven, successful way to help people deal with and overcome their fear associated with flying. 

What is aviophobia or fear of flying?

It might surprise you to learn that, in spite of what we read in the headlines, air travel is one of the safest ways to get from A to B. 

Despite that, the fear of flying is one of the UK’s most common phobias. A staggering 10% of the population, possibly more, say having to fly makes them feel anxious. 

While many people who have a fear of flying will go to great lengths to avoid using air travel, sometimes they are left with no other choice. Those who have a fear of flying find their anxiety levels really spiking just before take off. 

Their fear doesn’t pass once they are in the air, as unwanted, anxious thoughts about engine failure, the plane crashing or being stressed about an airplane’s enclosed spaces can make enjoying a flight completely impossible. 

Some people’s fear about having to fly means they can’t even get onto the plane in the first place. Just the thought of booking a plane ticket, or going to an airport amid bad weather can trigger what is known as anticipatory anxiety. 

It can result in everything from a churning stomach to significant distress and, in some cases full-blown panic attacks. 

But where does a fear of flying come from?

Fear of flying and other anxiety disorders

Fear of flying is classed as a specific phobia: an intense, irrational fear about something that in reality, poses almost no danger. However, there are a few reasons why someone could develop aviophobia. 

For some, it is a learned fear and may be linked to a childhood incident. Perhaps their parents or siblings were nervous about flying, or they experienced a bout of turbulence or bad weather during a summer holiday flight and witnessed other passengers’ significant distress. 

An underlying anxiety or sense of dread about flying could also be exacerbated by events in the past: a well-documented airplane accident for example could spark anticipatory anxiety. 

Research suggests that fear linked to flying can also increase after certain milestone life events, such as having children.  

The need to avoid flying because of fear can also manifest itself as part of another anxiety disorder, such as claustrophobia or generalised anxiety disorder.

Whatever the reason for not wanting to get on a flight, the fear generated by the subconscious mind will feel all too real, and may be difficult to talk  about.  

Panic attacks and palpitations: fear of flying symptoms

Flight anxiety can cause sufferers to enter something of a fear ‘doom loop’ in their conscious mind, imagining flying disasters such as plane crashes, before flying or even during a flight. 

Their fear may also make sufferers think they could pose a danger in the middle of a flight by losing control, having a panic attack and trying to open the airplane door. 

The vastly increased stress levels prompted by the fear of flying can result in physical symptoms including: 

  • chills
  • dizziness and lightheadedness
  • excessive sweating 
  • nausea
  • hyperventilation
  • blurred vision
  • trembling

To minimise these symptoms, someone with a fear of flying may well do everything they can to prevent getting on a plane. 

Fears about flying can hold people back in many ways: severely restricting their ability to get about. 

Their insistence on car travel could harm their relationships with family and friends, whilst efforts to avoid air travel may ease their fear, but could well end up limiting their career choices. 

Those limitations, sparked by an irrational fear, could become utterly debilitating, potentially leading to depressive thoughts and a downward spiral that may be hard to recover from. 

There are a few ways that people can overcome their fear of flying. 

A flying course and other aviophobia treatments

For some people, booking a flying course is a good way to overcome their fear of flying, either by getting in a real plane or using virtual reality technology. Both work in the same way as exposure therapy. 

By experiencing the issue that is causing you to feel scared or have panic attacks in a measured way, you learn to control your fears and anxious feelings about it. 

Cognitive behavioural therapy or relaxation therapy can ease the anxiety prompted by a fear of flying, while anti-anxiety medication can also help control the phobia. 

In successful cases, the worry about flying in a plane subsides, the panic attacks ease, and people are able to fly without any anxiety. 

There are, of course, downsides. Taking a flying course on the face of it can be a great idea, but it can also be prohibitively expensive, while talk therapy and medication aren’t suitable for everyone. 

Luckily, there is another way, one that is a proven, successful treatment for a fear of flying: hypnotherapy. 

Hypnotherapy for fear of flying

My Solution Focused Hypnotherapy is a combination of modern psychotherapy methods and hypnosis. It is a most effective way to help people for a range of conditions. 

Hypnotherapy is known to have a lasting treatment for people with phobias including a fear of flying. 

That is because unlike ‘external’ therapies such as a flying course, hypnotherapy works on a subconscious level, and tackles the fear at the source. 

A client with a fear of flying, who had never undergone hypnotherapy before and was not quite sure what to expect, was able to travel on a plane with no ill-effects after just three sessions. 

Another client, who described themselves as “a chronic overthinker”was cynical about hypnotherapy, but flew to the US after I helped them conquer their fear of flying.  

What to expect during a hypnotherapy session 

During each session, I use relaxation techniques to make clients feel comfortable, and place them in a trance-like state. 

This is a totally safe and natural state of mind, similar to daydreaming. There’s no loss of control with this form of hypnosis, if you want to come out of the trance state, you simply open your eyes. 

Once my patients feel safe and calm, I am able to introduce tools and suggestions into the unconscious mind that will help them overcome their flying phobia, and bring about lasting, positive change. 

Hypnotherapy treatment is often used to help reduce the anxiety and stress associated with debilitating phobias, including the fear of flying. 

The Fast Phobia Cure 

I use the tried-and-tested fast phobia cure or rewind technique to help people overcome their fear of flying in just three sessions. Developed by Richard Bandler, one of the founders of neuro linguistic programming, it helps break the patterns our unconscious mind associates with things it regards as dangerous, whether they are in fact dangerous or not. 

You can call on my techniques if you get scared by turbulence whilst flying, helping keep your feelings of being afraid under control and minimising the likelihood of having a panic attack while flying. 

Before you know it, you will be able to get on with your life and do all the things your fear of flying prevented: taking holidays abroad or jetting around the country for work. 

A client recently contacted me to say how my sessions and anxiety coping tips helped them fly to the US and back. 

“I just wanted to be in touch to say I’ve returned from my trip from the US! I’m so grateful for the sessions with you and the tips I’ve learnt for coping with anxiety. They really made a huge difference, in fact for most of the flight I felt calm enough to sleep/eat/watch TV! There was a bit of turbulence and takeoff/landing were still a worry but deep breathing and the anchoring technique made it so much more manageable.I feel really excited about the holidays ahead of me.”

Book me as your clinical hypnotherapist 

Before your hypnotherapy treatment for fear of flying begins, I will conduct a free, initial consultation via Zoom, which you can book here

It gives me a chance to get to know you and find out what you’re hoping to achieve via hypnosis, including learning to cope with any fear associated with flying.

My hypnotherapy sessions happen on Thursdays at Salus Wellness Clinics in Cambridge and on Fridays at Coach House Health Care, Trumpington, Cambridge. 

Contact me

For a chat about your fear of flying and how hypnosis and hypnotherapy can stop it negatively impacting your life, you can email me at sevarin@lifeflowhypnotherapy.co.uk, call 07359 188625, or fill in this contact form.

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