The first video begins with a welcome to the program by Capt. Tom Bunn, LCSW who discusses the human spirit and how when even when we are unsure that something will work...we try anyway. This program is used by countless people who don't think it will work for them. I feel very much the same way but am quickly reminded that I'm not alone, and am, instead, in exactly the right place with these videos.
Capt. Bunn makes it clear from the get go that flying is not an unsafe thing to do even though, because I'm watching the video, I likely believe otherwise. He says that if it was 1945 and I thought flying was unsafe, I'd be right. Planes were different then. Navigation was primitive. He goes on to say that unfortunately, Hollywood produces movies that are based on the kind of accidents that could happen in 1945 which simply don't happen today.
Let's do some statistics...Capt. Bunn shows that in 1945 if you were to go from New York to LA, that whether you drove or flew, your chances of being in a fatal accident were EQUAL. But then reframes this to make it clear that even in 1945, airline travel was no more dangerous than driving. He then moves on to the 1970s and shares how planes were no 3 times safer than in 1945, so this means you could fly from New York to Los Angeles 33 times or drive once and have exactly the same risk of a fatal accident. He states that if this was 1970 and I thought flying was unsafe, I would have been wrong. He moves on to the 1980s where the odds increased more. In the 1980s, one could fly from New York to Los Angeles 104 times or drive once to have the same risk of a fatal accident. Then the 21st statistics arrive and Capt. Bunn states that it is safer for a person to be on a modern day airliner than sleeping in their own bed! :o He points out the Boeing 757, 767, 777, and the Airbus 319 and higher are accident free in the United States. And while these planes remain accident free, people on the ground continue to have fatal accidents every day just going about their normal day. Natural disasters happen...but we all know those things are fairly rare...what's even more rare, apparently, are plane accidents.
Ah...but wait Capt. Bunn! I'll be flying a 737! Ha Ha! Got ya there! And now my brain is spinning about this fact and how I'm not going to be on one of those planes listed above that are accident free in the U.S. Again...insight into the human brain on fear!
And then he states that he can give all the statistics in the world and a person with a fear of flying will likely still not FEEL safe and that we have to deal with those feelings, not just be given statistics.
And then this is where he gets into my counselor brain. He discusses how when certain feelings are not developed between the ages of 1 and 3, we start trying to control our feelings by controlling the things around us. And we lose the ability to control our surroundings we can panic. Wait? How does he know me so well?? Can he see me through the video???? ;)
Capt Bunn goes on to say that when you begin to panic on a plane, you can't regroup by regaining control, nor can you leave. Those with a fear of flying often feel that flying should be different but it's not flying that needs to change, FLYING IS SAFE. It is our ability to deal with our feelings that needs work. Both the feelings that come when one thinks about flying and the ones that come when one is actually on a flight.
After a quick summary, we move on to the next chapter which discusses the premise of the course which is to be able to experience flying JUST AS IT IS. Capt. Bunn said if the fearful flyer was in the cockpit, you'd have less trouble because you could see what is happening. There would be no imagination and imagination is always the problem. When you feel a bump, you can imagine the worst case scenario. The brain reaction to an imaginary threat causes the same physical reactions as it does to an actual threat. Um...childbirth class anyone?? Not as though I've ever taught this same idea to hundreds of people in a childbirth class! :o
Capt. Bunn states that the problem with flying is always something that one tries to add or subtract from the natural experience of flying. One may add imagination or subtract basically everything...you try to subtract turbulence or sounds or any number of normal flying experiences. In essence, trying to feel nothing is exhausting and rarely works. This adding and subtracting causes 100% of the problems with flying! Again...how does he know me so well?
The program's goal is to rehabilitate the anxious flyer's ability to experience flying JUST AS IT IS. Or as I would say...to be mindful...in this moment. Dang. Hit another spot for me! :/ I'm all about mindfulness. Can I really do it on a plane...30,000 feet in the air??? Capt. Bunn says I can... And he seems to know me well... So, I guess I'll keep going with this...
A bump can be felt as just a bump, not impending disaster. A noise is simply a noise and nothing more. Sigh...again...how many times have I taught this same idea in a childbirth class??? Non Focused Awareness anyone??
If one tries to subtract everything and seems capable of doing so, even the tiniest thing that gets through the filter causes undue stress and snowballs and causes the flyer to suffer. Suffer. How many times have I discussed the difference between pain in labor and suffering in labor? But suffer...that's how I feel on a plane. As though I am suffering every single minute because I am most definitely trying to subtract everything and then adding imagination to everything that gets through my subtraction filter. Capt. Bunn states that in this scenario, the tiniest bump causes the imagination to believe the plane is going to plummet. The tiniest sound causes the imagination to tell stories of what the sound means and how it likely is something terrible. We're just 11 minutes into the first of 11 videos people...and already Capt. Bunn has me pegged! And if there is an entire program like this...I can't be the only one who feels this way. Somehow, as backwards as that is, this gives me some comfort.
"ALL OUR DIFFICULTIES WITH FLYING ARE SELF-INFLICTED" says Capt. Bunn.
He goes on to discuss how many people he has talked to who have experienced terrible flight after terrible flight with many stories of what happened on the flight. He explains that as an airline pilot he flew about 400,000 miles a year and never had any terrible flights. And he realized these are the exact same flights. He's in the cockpit having a pleasant flight and the flyers are in the cabin. The flyers are going to go tell their friends and family about their horrible experience while he was going to tell his friends and family that it was another normal flight. ~ Sigh ~ Another comparison for me. I often discuss how different my experience at a birth is from that of the parents or grandparents or friends and family who love this person but don't understand the birth process. Exact same analogy here when it comes to flying. Capt. Bunn says people have told him their plane dropped 100 feet or even 10,000 feet but he says the only place that happened was in their imagination. When you can see what's going on, reality limits your experience. When you can't see what's going on, you can experience as far as the imagination will take you. Next, emotional control centers are triggered and potentially lead to terror and panic.
This takes us into Lesson 3 which is called Fear - The Necessary Emotion
We are supposed to have fear. This is a necessary emotion.
The Boeing Company did a study and found that 18.1% of people have a true fear of flying...they WILL NOT fly. Period. 16% have anxiety when they fly. This means that 1 out of 3 people feel similarly to how I feel about flying. When it comes to the other 2 out of 3...some believe they have no fear...some believe fear is weak so tell themselves they have no fear...some may simply have fear of other things rather than flying.
Capt. Bunn tells a story of a fellow pilot in the service and how he claimed fearlessness. You'll have to buy the CD yourself for the full story, but the point of the story is that anyone claiming fearlessness is either fooling themselves or trying to hurt another person's self-esteem and that by pretending not to be afraid of things, you can actually create a panic attack when things you tried to put behind the metaphorical curtain come back to bite you when you don't have the ability to adequately handle the fear you pretended didn't exist. THIS was my experience on my last flight two years ago. We flew from Seattle to Minneapolis, Minneapolis to Charlotte and then home from Charlotte to Detroit and Detroit to Seattle. I handled the first three flights...let's just say...okay. But the flight home apparently pushed me over the top. I had repeatedly told myself I was fine, but the flight to Seattle was bumpy and my imagination took over and I spent about 3 hours in the midst of a panic attack on that flight. 43 years old...sobbing. Yep...that was me! And that's why I'm doing this program because I would like that NOT to be me again!
Lesson 4 - Courage and Risk
Everything we do has some risk. There is no way around risk because there is nothing that is completely safe. Everyone knows that flying includes some risk. Some people who appear to be fearless about flying may still have fear, they just don't let it stop them. You don't have to remove all fear to be able to fly.
"Courage consists in equality to the problem before us" ~ Emerson
Not adding or subtracting anything. Courage isn't fearlessness...it's allowing yourself to feel the fear, hold the fear, and still have room left over for action.
"Courage is mastery of fear, not absence of fear" ~ Twain
Capt Bunn discusses flying F100s and how in his class, when they graduated (all 13 of them), they were told "Congratulations" because they were the first full class to finish without someone dying. He said they weren't told that ahead of time. 18 months later, there were only 9 left...not during war time...4 more had died in routine flights. F100s weren't safe and people flew them.
He goes on to discuss that he doesn't believe telling people that airplanes are completely safe and people shouldn't be afraid is the way to handle a fear of flying program. Instead, he is going to tell it how it is and some of the things may cause people to feel uneasy (he says to e-mail him if that happens because he wants to clear it up). But he wants people to understand how flying is...JUST AS IT IS.
Lesson 5 - Imagination and Sensation
Flying is the safest form of transportation there is. What needs to change is not flying, but how a person FEELS about flying. This begins with acknowledging that there is nothing wrong with the way we feel now.
In Capt Bunn's experience with countless people who have a fear of flying, he says that everyone who has a fear of flying has two excellent characteristics: They are very intelligent and they are very imaginative. That imagination takes the information in the brain and VIVIDLY makes it seem real. He does a quick experiment and says to pick an object in the room and then imagine someone told you it wasn't real...how could you prove it was real...by touching it, right? If something is imaginary, there is no physical evidence of it. If it is real, you can feel it. On a plane, it's not that simple. When a person thinks a plane is in trouble, there is actually physical evidence to prove this to us. Capt Bunn explains that when we tense up, it transfers weight to our arms on the arm rests and our feet on the floor instead of the weight being firmly planted in the seat and thus it feels as though the plane is dropping.
And here it is...44 minutes into the video...the Fight or Flight response. THAT certainly never comes up in a childbirth class. :o Ahhh...that lovely adrenalin.
So, now it comes to reality testing. If we can both see something and feel something, we satisfy the reality test. We now believe it. Once reality testing is satisfied, we reach closure...we are sure we are right, whether it is right or not. Once we are convinced we're in danger, the body tenses even further and this is taken as even more proof that we are in trouble and the more tense we go. We go from thinking we are in danger to believing we are doomed. Ugh...THAT was my flight from Detroit to Seattle. Capt Bunn says it doesn't matter at this point what anyone else thinks or believes on the plane...we believe we are crashing and ARE, in a psychological way, actually crashing. But just like my flight...the plane didn't crash...it was a false reality and false closure and reality shifted and cycled out of control...more fear, more tension, more panic (in childbirth classes we discuss more fear, more tension, more pain).
We need to add sophistication to our reality testing. Fear does not equal danger. Danger does not equal fear. The fight or flight response is like the smoke alarm going off in the kitchen. If the smoke alarm goes off, you don't automatically run out of the kitchen. You determine if something is actually on fire.
Lesson 6 - Awareness and Mindfulness
One kind of panic results when we try to keep too much out of awareness and finally the ability to do that fails. Once again...this is so central to my life. I understand all this. I know that this truly is the core of my flying issues. Capt Bunn discusses how we can spend a lifetime putting things behind a curtain, a wall, a dam inside of us...all that does is develop anxiety that the dam might break (which it inevitably will).
Mindfulness takes us directly back to the core of this course. Experiencing the flight exactly as it is. The more aware you are, the more control over your life you have.
Lesson 7 - Seven Levels of Arousal
1 (Lowest Level) - Deep Sleep - completely asleep, not even dreaming
2 - Active Sleep - some dreaming takes place
3 - Drousy - Not quite awake
4 - Awake - Alert but not processing
5 - Awake Plus - Alert and processing
6 - Agitation - Could be positive (excitement) or negative emotion(fear or anxiety)
7 - Flooding - Can't think rationally
Levels of Flooding
7a - Mind is flooded (mind will come unflooded if nothing else happens - low level panic attack)
7b - Place (lose sense of place...out of body experience)
7c - Time (lose sense of time...in endless timeless state of panic)
7d - Person (lose sense of who you are)
Once one has experienced any level of Flooding, you want to avoid it again...but if you make it all the way to 7d, the ego is involved and the ego will do just about anything to avoid this situation again because it basically lost itself in the panic attack and doesn't want that to happen again. THIS...again...is exactly what happened on my flight to Seattle two years ago. Capt. Bunn states that "It takes almost a super human effort to get on an airplane once you have had a level 7d panic attack". The ego KNOWS that getting on a plane will kill you...because as far as the ego is concerned...if the ego dies...so does the person.
Lesson 8 - Synthetic Fear - Scaring the Ego to Death
Scaling Fear from 0-10 - Zero being relaxed and 10 being flooded. Scientific studies show that real based fear only takes a person to a 3 or maybe a 4. Capt. Bunn uses the analogy of a car accident. When it's actually happening, you may get up to a 3, but it is after the event, when you look back on it, that the levels climb. You can do the "what if" looking back or forwards. The highest levels of fear come from imagination and one after another of "what ifs". This kind of fear is synthetic fear. Real fear is based on what IS. Reality is limited. It rarely, if ever, presents you with one life threatening situation at a time. But synthetic fear can ramp up one life threatening situation on top of one another. Fear based on reality cannot flood us, but fear based on imagination can.
The ego believes it is all there is and that there is no difference between being overwhelmed and being dead.
The ego can rationalize that although other people may be able to get on a plane and get to their destination just fine, if "I" get on the plane, it will crash. (THIS IS ME!) "I" being the ego. And in other words, the crashing of the airplane is not the crashing of an airplane, it's the crashing of the ego.
If we can completely understand that what we are running from is synthetic fear...we might be able to stop running from a tale of our own creation.
And THAT my friends is just DVD#1 of 11. 1 hour and 20 minutes. I have 3 1/2 weeks to get through the remaining 10 DVDs. But this one alone has already had a HUGE impact on me...if for no other reason than to make me feel less alone.
My hope is that this is helpful to someone else as well and that it gives a look into the mind of those of us with flight anxiety for those who simply don't understand it.
The countdown continues....
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