Earlier this month, I attended a Flying Without Fear course.
It consists of a morning session which looks at both the theory behind flying and why it is safe, and the psychology of anxiety and how to control your mind. After lunch you head over to the airport and actually take a flight.
The theory part was brilliant. Captain Dom explained the basic physics which keep you in the air, the various sections of the flight, what he does on take off, the backup systems they have in place – this was absolutely fascinating. Unfortunately it didn’t calm my nerves as I know a lot of the science behind it and I’ve never been worried about whether the plane is going to fall out of the sky or anything like that.
The psychology section was rather disappointing though, which was rather a let down as I was hoping this section would actually be useful to me. Unfortunately, the course uses Neuro-linguistic programming which has now been almost entirely discredited. Why? Because it’s all nonsense.
That isn’t to say their hearts weren’t in the right place. All of the course leaders (most if not all were volunteers who had given up their time to help out!) were incredibly supportive and that is the real benefit of the course. I’m incredibly grateful for the support I received from Sarah, Jill, my dad and everyone else on the course (if you’re reading this, thank you SO much!). They got me here:
Smiling and everything. Because the irony is that I love the idea of flying. I mean, it’s really awesome right, being so far up in the air, watching everything down below like you’re living all those hours spent on Google Earth. If only I didn’t feel ill every time I got near a plane, it would be a magical experience.
Still, I’m now one step forward in the battle for Los Angeles.
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Tags: air travel, flying, planes, psychology
This entry was posted on Friday, January 20th, 2012 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.