I was talking with a woman recently who was telling me how excited she was about an upcoming vacation to Florida. In her next breathe she said she was already feeling anxious because she has a fear of flying.
Oh my, that’s a horrible thing to have!
I asked her if she would rather enjoy the ride. She replied that of course she would but she couldn’t because she HAS a fear of flying.
Of course I knew that, but she didn’t know that having a fear of flying and being anxious about flying are two very different things.
Getting a fear of flying
Having a fear of flying is usually the result of Getting a fear of flying.
It happens very quickly.
For example, maybe an announcement is made that the fuel is running too low so they have to do an emergency landing to fuel up. Yes, this is what happened thirteen years ago.
Upon hearing that announcement FEAR kicks in and our imagination can run wild with all of the “What ifs.” What if the plane crashes and I die but my five year old son survives? What if the plane crashes and my five year old son dies but I survive? What if (allow your imagination to run wild here)?!!!
What if it works out better than I can possibly Imagine?
Yes!
We can use our imagination for good as well as for bad, but we are used to using it to scare ourselves into the worst scenarios.
The difference between “Fear Of…” and “Anxious About…”
The fear kicked in very quickly with the announcement regarding the emergency landing.
The anxiety about flying takes a little bit of work — first we have to begin to conjure up horrible thoughts, then our heart begins to race, then our mind and body get flooded with stress chemicals and if we are really really good at this we can then get a full blown PANIC ATTACK.
Yikes!!!
And then we have to do this repeatedly to Be Anxious about flying.
I assured her I could help her enjoy the ride so she had her first session with me today.
While she was telling me her story about that flight with the emergency landing we utilized Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT, also known as Tapping). This created a safe feeling in her body while she was telling me a very true scary experience.
While feeling Safe it’s hard to tap (pun intended) into full blown Fear or Anxiety.
How to clear fear of flying
Using some Neuro-Linguistic Programming (better known as NLP) she was able to get in touch with the feeling; it really felt quite simply like that nervous feeling we may get before a first date. Likened to butterflies in the stomach. In this case the butterflies were red and flying in a circle. Just the thought of that makes me feel a little nauseous – YUK!
So we had the butterflies stop flying in a circle and just recline on the bottom of her stomach.
Of course, that made both of us feel much better.
Chatting about how precious her four year old daughter is, what a wonderful communicator that little girl is and how she thinks her mother is the most beautiful princess on planet Earth. Smiling, feeling good, seeing images of that beautiful, loving child. Feeling what it feels like to feel good – no red butterflies flying in circles in the stomach.
So we can recognize images or feelings that make us anxious and we can recognize images or feelings that make us feel good.
Yahooooo!!!!!
I love the way our minds work! The thing that I really love, though, is when we can make our minds work for our highest good.
Now working with the NLP Swish Pattern first we create a big picture of what we don’t want which in this case, fear of flying. Secondly we create a small picture in the lower right hand corner of the big picture of what we do want, Enjoying the Ride. We reach down and we pull that small picture up into the big picture so it crashes through the big picture of what we don’t want and Enjoying the Ride becomes the bigger picture and we feel how wonderful it feels to Be Enjoying the Ride.
In reality, it takes a matter of minutes as opposed to the seconds it just took to type this.
And we do this a number of times to get a good strong new neural-pathway related to Enjoying the Ride.
Time to take a break from all this hard mental work!
Relaxing music, comfortable recliner, soothing voice, drifting off to your favorite place, enjoying the sights and sounds of your favorite place…. seeing yourself Enjoying the Ride… feeling yourself Enjoying the Ride…Being on the airplane Enjoying the Ride….
Count of 5 eyes open knowing that Indeed Change Has Taken Place on a Very Very Deep Level.
So how was that?
“I had a very pleasant flying experience with no stress related to it. This was very helpful. More people should do this.”
Hypnosis Works!!!!!!
