How Hypnosis Helped Me Get Over My Fear of Flying — And More

“Excuse me,” I said to the flight attendant greeting passengers and handing out packs of disinfectant wipes and headphones as she reached my aisle.. Taking full breaths felt like trying to lift cement with my lungs. I’d been in my seat for just five minutes as passengers were still filing in, cramming too-big carry-ons into too-small overhead bins;. Despite my best efforts, I hadn’t been able to convince myself to sit down and buckle up.

My heart was pounding at the speed of hummingbird wings in mid-air, and I felt lightheaded. Taking full breaths felt like trying to lift cement with my lungs. The following fall, I booked a vacation for my wife, kid, and me to Portugal for that November. Maybe with my family in tow, I reasoned, I would be able to muster the trip. Besides, I was not going to let deboarding one international flight stop me from trying again. Then, three weeks before takeoff, I awoke in the night in a full sweat with a familiar sense of doom. I couldn’t stomach the thought of being untethered to the ground. I could feel my throat squeeze shut.

Historically, I am skeptical of alternative treatments, worried about feeding grifters. But given that we’d already spoken about how talk therapy alone wasn’t always effective for physical symptoms of trauma, I reasoned that my fear of flying might call for something different. She encouraged me to try.

She waited and stared. I blinked back, unable to figure out what she wanted me to conclude. “And how about when you’re on a plane?” she pushed. “Well, I can’t leave a plane.” She nodded. My most important coping strategy, to flee, to move my body anywhere else, was not available to me at 26,000 feet in the air. My eyes welled and a deep sadness that lived right under the surface of my fear and frustration opened.

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