Anticipatory Anxiety
My anticipatory anxiety has always been the worst part of flying for me. But it’s getting better, slowly, in large part because now I absolutely know that I won’t be afraid on the flight. I try to counter the “what if” thoughts—what if I panic; what if I have to leave and can’t—with telling myself it is normal that I’m nervous before a flight, and it doesn’t mean anything about how my experience on the plane is going to be. I practice deep breathing as well as the Strengthening Exercise, and I also try to hit the gym. It does wonders for burning up that extra adrenaline. Also, I cut my coffee intake to one cup a day. I try to keep busy. I try— and this is the hardest part—to accept the anticipatory anxiety as just there, that I don’t have to analyze it or pay it heed.
Why is anticipatory anxiety so different from flight anxiety? In the case of anticipatory anxiety, a person is trying to imagine what it will be like when something in the future is taking place. In flight anxiety, the event actually is taking place and the amygdalae decides whether or not to react. To prevent stress hormone release and therefore anxiety during flight, we train the amygdalae not to react. So, as the flight takes place and the raw data is examined by the amygdalae, we can keep it from releasing stress hormones. But in anticipatory anxiety, you are not dealing with raw data or incoming data. Instead you are dealing with imagination. After you imagine what may happen—including how awful it may be—the amygdalae is not in a position to make a determination about whether or not to react because your point of view that it is awful is integrated into the imagination, and it is presented to the amygdalae as a fully developed image of disaster.
When a securely oriented person considers a flight, what the person expects is based on what happens in the overwhelming number of cases. Crashes happen so rarely that Executive Function dismisses the risk. The person expects to arrive safely at the destination.
However, the imagination of a person with insecure orientation is not based on what happens in the overwhelming number of cases, but on the exception: what could happen. With insecure orientation, Executive Function is unable to dismiss risk that cannot be completely ruled out. Anticipatory anxiety takes place when imagination merges with reality. Allowing what could happen to remain active in the mind causes stress hormones to build up. If anxiety rises high enough, reflective function falters and psychic equivalence takes place. The person believes the crash they imagine will take place if they get on the plane. Just as psychic equivalence needs to be avoided during flight, it needs to be avoided on the ground, too. Measures need to be taken to control anxiety prior to flight.
The Anticipatory Anxiety Exercise
Anxiety is produced in areas of the brain that are visual in their orientation. When uncertain, we can be reassured by what we see on another person’s face. The Anticipatory Anxiety Exercise is based on social-referencing research. “Visual Cliff” research has shown that the face of a person who is important to us can be powerfully reassuring. In a fascinating, safely conducted experiment reported in Developmental Psychology, children between six and twelve months of age were put on a table fitted with a transparent Plexiglas extension. The babies would crawl quite happily on the table itself. But when reaching the transparent extension, they balked. Even when tempted by a toy at the far end, not one baby ventured out onto the Plexiglas. But if the child’s mother stood smiling at the far end, most of the children crawled out confidently. However, if the mother simulated a fearful expression, none of the children ventured out.
The experiment showed that when uncertain about safety, young children are powerfully influenced by their mother’s facial expression. Visual reassurance remains important to us, even as adults. So, for the exercise, think of a person you know well who is comfortable with flying. It helps if you respect that person’s opinions, too.
You can do the exercise either with the person or by using your imagination. Start with the person sitting at a table across from you. Rather than listening to what he or she may say, you’re going to be watching the person’s face. After all, in some cases, people tell us what they think we want to hear. In other cases, they might offer reassurance that they, themselves, don’t believe. If you focus on their eyes, you are likely to discover their real feelings. As you do this exercise constantly focus on their eyes and the part of the face just below the eyes, where what is genuine is so often evident.
Increased emotional strength depends upon links between moments of uncertainty and a moment in which another person was attuned to you. You do not need an ideal moment or an ideal person. Any attuned moment can be used, even one from a fleeting relationship. Moments of connection don’t last. Neither do most relationships. Few of us would have emotional strength if it depended entirely on people still in our lives. Whatever moments you have had are real. You have a right to draw strength from any moment you recall.
Anticipatory Anxiety and Control
After meeting the captain, the Strengthening Exercise kicked in. My flight went quite uneventfully. I was so happy I did it!
Boarding an airliner violates the basic rule of security: Don’t give up control. But the rule is more sophisticated than that. It is actually, “Don’t give up control except to someone you know and trust.” Many people with whom I’ve worked have said they would have no anxiety if I were flying the plane. That isn’t because they know my flying skills; it’s because of trust. Others may not be as interested in your welfare as you are. When you shop for a used car, the salesperson may be more concerned with his or her commission than your welfare. But flying is unique. The interests of the person in control are the same as yours. The pilot can’t get back safely on the ground without also taking care of you. Pilots want to return to family, just as you do. Knowing that, you need only to determine that the captain can do the job. How can you know?
First, consider your gut feeling. I believe when you meet your captain, you will feel confident he or she can do the job.
Second, testing of airline captains is unlike any other profession. If a doctor makes a serious mistake, the patient may not survive. Yet, the doctor continues to practice. If a lawyer makes a serious mistake, the client may spend time in jail while the lawyer continues to practice. It takes action by a professional board to stop an incompetent doctor or lawyer. Such action is not dependable. Doctors and lawyers are not physically linked to their mistakes. Pilots are. You can depend on gravity. One big screwup and gravity does more than revoke the pilot’s license.
If you want to know whether a doctor or a lawyer is good or not, you check out his or her reputation. You don’t have to do that with pilots. If you can see the pilot, you know he or she is a good one. The ones who weren’t good aren’t visible; they’re six feet under. The issue isn’t lack of flying skill that gets young pilots into trouble; it’s judgment. Judgment, to be good, needs some seasoning: That’s the thinking behind the saying, “There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.”
Fortunately, today with flight simulators, the boldness of a young pilot can be sobered very quickly by simulated experience. Because the simulator is safe—except to the pilot’s ego—instructors lead young pilots into scenarios where they will make mistakes that would be fatal in a real airplane. This allows the young pilot to safely make all the mistakes there are to be made, and to learn from them. In addition to years of flight experience and several levels of licenses, pilots are well tested by gravity before any airline will hire them.
Third, since the invention of the flight simulator, even a young pilot can have more experience dealing with flight challenges than the oldest pilot did years ago. The first year of employment at an airline is a probationary period. In the simulator, an instructor certified by the FAA throws every possible problem at the pilot. After the probationary period, retesting is done at least yearly throughout the pilot’s career.
A flight is like an arranged marriage. You don’t choose the person who holds your fate. But you can refuse the arrangement. Board early. Meet the captain. See how you feel about the captain the airline has paired you with. If marriages were arranged with the degree of care that airlines take before turning a $100,000,000 airliner over to a pilot, maybe an arranged marriage would be an equally safe bet.
Anticipatory anxiety will end when you meet the captain. Count on it. Until then, use the 5-4-3-2-1 Exercise when you feel anxiety. You can lower your anticipatory anxiety more by reclaiming control. Give yourself the option to meet the captain and then decide. If you don’t feel good about the captain, get off. Though this sounds impractical, I believe the captain will gain your full confidence every time. Even after you have boarded the plane, you are free to walk off the plane for any reason.
Don’t let the anticipatory anxiety throw you off— it doesn’t mean that you will fall apart on the plane.
The other main part of anticipatory anxiety is worry about how much anxiety you will experience during flight. High anxiety and panic are due to psychic equivalence. If you have completed six to eight sessions of the Strengthening Exercise, the amygdalae are reprogrammed to avoid releasing stress hormones that weaken reflective function and allow psychic equivalence to take place. Even though you may feel anxiety now, it is in no way an indication that you will not be protected when flying. When flying, protection from anxiety is provided in five ways.
Since the amygdalae function at an unconscious level, there is no way to test amygdalae response to flying without taking a flight. This leads to anxiety about how well unconscious control will do its job, particularly after having relied on deliberate and conscious control. If concern persists, consider taking a short flight to test the effectiveness of Systematic Inhibition.
Anticipatory Anxiety That Becomes Panic
I was just going about my day and all of a sudden I was feeling heart palpitations about my flight.
Anticipatory panic can result when strategies to keep the flight out of mind suddenly fail. Blocking and distancing strategies can be used for years with no awareness that they are the only way you deal with feelings—until they let you down. Once blocking and distancing strategies fail, they cannot be reestablished unless bolstered by the use of alcohol, drugs, or other destructive behavior. There may appear to be no other option. Long-established use of these strategies can render a person clueless as to what reflective function is or how to use it. The only answer is a 180-degree turnaround. There are four elements:
Anxiety That Confidence Will Tempt Fate
Every time I feel more relaxed about flying, my subconscious imposes on me that I just have to be scared. I feel that not being scared is abnormal for me.
It’s interesting how fear of not being fearful develops. It begins with the first trauma in your life. Until your first trauma, you didn’t know such a horrible thing could happen, since it happened unexpectedly, out of the blue. How can you go on when something unexpected could happen again? What can you do? You begin to expect it. By expecting it, you’re sort of braced for it. You’re anxious at every moment, expecting a bolt out of the blue. If nothing awful happens for a while, you may begin to believe that by expecting bad things to happen you’re keeping them from happening. In some situations, being hypervigilant makes sense. For example, if a parent is sometimes violent, being hypervigilant may help the child know when he or she needs to avoid the parent. Fast-forward to adulthood. You learn more about what makes flying so amazingly safe. You learn about simulator training, backup systems, and so on. You realize, as your flight approaches, that you are not anxious. Will letting your guard down cause something awful to happen? Even as an informed adult, it’s difficult to give up those childhood strategies learned as a protective device.
Anxiety about Greater Anxiety
If I have this much anxiety now, I’m afraid I’ll have more on the flight!
When conscious efforts have failed to control flight anxiety, it’s hard to believe unconscious control can work. This doubt leads to anticipatory anxiety. You worry that you’ll have even worse feelings during the flight. But anticipatory anxiety and flight anxiety are different. Anxiety about a flight comes from a different source than anxiety during a flight.
To understand the difference, think of the amygdalae as having a front door and a back door. Sensory information enters the amygdalae through the front door: Your eyes, ears, and body sense what is going on around you. Imagination is different. Imagination is not from outside; it is produced inside. It’s presented to the amygdalae not by your physical eye or any of your senses, but by your mind’s eye—through the back door.
Information is raw data for the amygdalae to process and make a determination about. Imagination is fully formed imagery, the meaning of which is already determined. This makes a huge difference to the amygdalae. When the amygdalae process information, they determine whether what is going on around you is routine or non-routine. But when the amygdalae process information coming from the mind’s eye, via the back door, they are not free to make that determination. If you’ve decided the information is threatening, the amygdalae have no choice: They must react by releasing stress hormones.
The anxiety you feel before a flight is caused by imaginative data you input to the amygdalae through the back door. During the flight, the amygdalae will be free to make their own determination. They will ignore what they have been trained to ignore. Regardless of how much anxiety you feel now, your amygdalae will, as they have been trained, respond to what actually goes on around you during the flight.
A more accurate test can be done if you plan ahead. Before you begin practicing the Strengthening Exercise, view some video of flight. (In-flight video can be viewed online at www.flightlevel350 .com and other sites.) Using a scale of zero to ten, note your anxiety level as you view the video. After doing six to eight sessions of the Strengthening Exercise, using the same video, once again note your anxiety level.
Once you have completed six to eight sessions, even if you stumbled through, the Strengthening Exercise is ready to protect you during flight. There is nothing more you need to do until you board the plane and meet the captain. It has been my experience that no one panics once they have learned and properly practiced the Strengthening Exercise.
Anxiety When Forecasting Feelings
I just feel as though I’m going to get on the plane and freak out. I feel like I will start yelling, “Let me out!” That’s the part that worries me the most, my mind flipping out.
Trying to imagine what you will feel about an upcoming flight is just another attempt to maintain control. Will your feelings be tolerable? Or, will the feelings be too much to bear? You know you can’t change your mind about the flight once it takes off, so you try to forecast your feelings. Anxiety develops because when you try to imagine what you will feel, you inevitably overestimate the distress that will be experienced during the flight. Why?
First, in an actual flight, concerns are spread out over the entire length of the flight. But when forecasting feelings, the concerns are concentrated into a moment of anticipation. This causes forecast feelings to be grossly exaggerated.
Second, you have only the distress of past flights on which to base expectations. That causes you to overestimate.
Third, you’ve never flown with the powerful protective effect of the Strengthening Exercise. Research has shown that nothing is as emotionally potent as the human face. Facial expression of empathic attunement inhibits the amygdalae. Empathic attunement, when linked to specific moments of the flight experience, overrides other factors in determining amygdalae response.
When you feel anticipatory anxiety, ask yourself if you’re forecasting your feelings. If so, take a 5-4-3-2-1 Exercise break. If thoughts keep pestering you, try something invented by therapist Jerilyn Ross: Wear a rubber band on your wrist. The moment you notice an anticipatory anxiety thought, snap the rubber band hard. After a few times, anticipation of the sting may help inhibit anticipation of your flight.
Anxiety about Having No Way Out
When the door closes, I’m trapped. There’s no way out. There are so many things that can go wrong with the plane. If anything goes wrong, if one little screw comes loose, we’re dead.
During the dolphin show at the aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut, the trainer explains that it’s easy to get dolphins to jump over a stick but difficult to get them to jump through a hula hoop. Dolphins are air-breathing mammals. They can’t swim backward. If encircled by a space too tight to turn around in, a dolphin can drown. The dolphin’s brain is genetically wired to avoid being encircled. To jump through the hoop, the dolphin has to develop enough trust in the trainer to overcome instinctive fear.
We humans look at the door of a plane the same way dolphins look at a hula hoop—a life-threatening trap. So why don’t the pilots feel that way? Pilots know there are many ways out that you can’t see and may not even know about: engineering ways out. For everything needed on the plane, there is a primary system, a standby system, a backup system, and an emergency system. Since you can’t see these ways out with your eye, use your “mind’s eye.” Imagine the door of the plane. Pretend that you go over to the door and do a bit of graffiti with a marker, writing, “primary, standby, backup, and emergency.” If a primary system fails, it automatically switches to the standby. If the standby doesn’t restore proper operation, the pilots get out the manual and use a checklist to switch to the backup. And, if needed, they can switch to an even more basic system, the emergency system. The engineering ways out are in the manual. We have been flying airplanes for more than a hundred years. Whenever there’s been an accident, the cause has been determined, and a way out of that problem has been developed. To run out of ways out, we would have to run into something that hasn’t happened in a hundred years. That’s why accidents are so incredibly rare. It’s because we have engineering ways out.
Anxiety That Anxiety Will Continue
I know how terrible anticipatory anxiety can be. I almost didn’t get on the plane. However, as soon as I started walking toward the plane, calm came over me and I started to relax. Sometimes it takes getting on the plane for everything you’ve learned to kick in!
Anticipatory anxiety ends when the biggest thing causing anticipatory anxiety ends—anxiety about turning over control to another person. We’re wired up at birth to trust. Distrust is something we learn; perhaps overlearn. Mark Twain wrote, “We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again—and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.”
Just as the dolphin needs trust in the trainer to counter its fear of the hula hoop, you need trust in the captain to counter your fear of giving up control and allowing the door to close you inside. Board early. Meet the captain. When you do, issues of trust and control are resolved. Since the captain cannot get the cockpit on the ground safely without getting the cabin on the ground safely, all you need to know is that the captain is alert, intelligent, and confident. Expect anticipatory anxiety to peak as you wait in the boarding area. You will be tempted to bail out. Don’t. If you do, though you may feel a few moments of relief, that relief will be replaced with disappointment and dissatisfaction with yourself. Push through the feelings and meet the captain. As soon as you meet the captain, anticipatory anxiety will disappear. You will find the anxiety is replaced—not with the shame of bailing out—but with satisfaction and pride.
Anxiety When “Going into Your Own Future”
One thing that I do have a hard time getting over is that it could be my flight is the one that crashes. Since there are no guarantees, it’s hard for me to get past that feeling. If I knew that I would get there safely, it would be so much easier for me! Do you have any suggestions?
Anxiety can lead you to imagine what a future flight will be like. Trying to imagine the flight will not help. No matter how many times you attempt to peer into the future, your imagination will not accurately reveal the future to you. It might seem harmless to use your imagination like this, but it quickly brings trouble. Before you know it, you can lose track that the future you picture is imaginary. Initially, it’s no problem. You know the things you picture are imaginary. But, if you continue, the pictures you imagine become memorized. Once memorized, the images come to mind unbidden. They no longer seem like imagination. They take on a life of their own. It becomes hard to keep them out of the mind. Finally, they feel like something that’s really going to happen. Don’t go into your own future. Don’t allow imagination of what might happen become memorized. Be vigilant. Notice it the moment you start doing it. Don’t cause yourself higher and higher levels of anxiety. Immediately use the 5-4-3-2-1 Exercise to burn off the stress hormones and return to balanced thinking.
Anxiety about Making the Right Decision
I made a reservation with them because they’re the only airline with a non-stop flight. But then I started thinking that their planes are old. So I called and made a reservation on an airline that has newer planes. But then I started thinking about how that meant taking two flights. And I wondered which was more dangerous, one flight on an older plane or two flights on a newer plane. So I decided to go back to the first airline. But the prices had changed. Now I don’t know what to do. I think I want to take the non-stop flight, but I don’t want to spend more money. I shouldn’t have changed my mind in the first place and now I’m really angry at myself.
Gather the best travel information you can get, make your decision based on that, and commit to it. If you’ve been thorough and done your best to make a sensible decision, no further thinking can improve upon it. Secure orientation is associated with the best decision that can be made with the information at hand. Insecure orientation is associated with absolute categories such as “right” and “wrong,” or “safe” and “unsafe.” Oversimplified categorical thinking creates an emotional trap because anything not absolutely safe is deemed unsafe. Categorical thinking causes anxiety because it’s impossible to know in advance that the “right” decision has been made. Give yourself a break from categorical thinking. Recognize you’ve made the best decision you can with the information at hand. Once the decision is made, you can spend the time before the flight in one of two places: the frying pan or the fire.
The first condition, frying pan anxiety, is difficult. But failure to accept anxiety produces the far more difficult second condition, psychic equivalence, which sends the message that disaster is certain.
The skipper of an ocean racing yacht told his crew, “I’ll listen to anything anyone has to say—once!” He wanted everyone’s input. It would be fully considered. But once fully considered, he would hear nothing more of it. This is how a good executive works and how your Executive Function needs to work. It needs to give full consideration to any non-routine matter brought to its attention—once.
Worry, if done masterfully, is good strategy. Worry, if done continuously, is useless.
A client, never free of anxiety due to childhood trauma, was obsessed with the idea that her flight was doomed. She’d worried for weeks about hijackers and bombs. In the boarding area, she saw two men whispering. She said to her boyfriend, “They’re the hijackers.” Her boyfriend summoned a security supervisor who explained to her, “It’s okay. They’re a gay couple.” Instead of saying, “Oh, I see,” she replied, “Good cover!” Instead of accepting the explanation, she used it to reinforce her preconception. When they were onboard, she saw a man dialing his cell phone. She said to her boyfriend, “He’s programming the bomb!” A flight attendant was called and asked the man to put away his cell phone. My client then said, “It’s too late; he already has it programmed!”
Normally, when there’s anxiety, we search for the cause of the anxiety so we may find a way to relieve it. But when anxiety is caused by something in the past, placing its cause in the present only increases the distress. Knowing this woman’s history, I told her, “Look, you have generalized anxiety. You have it for a reason and you’re never going to get away from a certain basic level of it. Whenever you attempt to get rid of it, you try to figure out what’s causing it. But that doesn’t work because things from years ago have caused your anxiety. By identifying something going on now as the cause of your anxiety, and then by fleshing it out, all you do is increase the intensity of feelings you don’t want.” I told her how, on a trip to Africa, I fell asleep on the beach and got terribly sunburned. The next day my skin itched so badly, despite all my willpower, I couldn’t keep my hands off it. Every time I touched it, it got worse. Finally, I took off all my clothes so nothing touched my skin and—literally—sat on my hands until the itch calmed down enough that I could resist touching it. I asked my client to accept, on her next flight, a certain amount of anxiety as normal for her, and to “sit on her hands” to keep it from getting worse. She did much better.
Use the 5-4-3-2-1 Exercise to dispose of built-up stress hormones. If you have generalized anxiety, this will return you to your basic anxiety level. Note this level. Rate it on a scale of zero to ten. Accept this level as basic. Acceptance helps you avoid the problems that develop when you attempt to rid yourself of basic anxiety. Give your concerns one full and complete hearing. Make the hearing thorough so that further consideration is not called for.
Anxiety about Feelings of Abandonment
I know we all have to die. It’s just that dying in an airplane is the worst way in the world to die.
The emotions experienced of being abandoned, even in very early childhood, are indelible. Years later, a trigger can toss us back to those feelings of being alone and helpless. But onboard, you have someone with you inside, built up by the Strengthening Exercise; and you have someone with you outside, the captain, who is “in the same boat” with you and knows how to get both of you safely to your destination. If you wish, you can have someone with you on the ground, too. Ask someone you trust to track your flight from the ground by computer. Knowing you are in someone’s thoughts and feelings helps keep you from feeling alone.
How Reframing Can Reduce Anticipatory Anxiety
As the plane flies, the imagined event takes place in reality. Imagination of what your flight might be like is replaced by the reality of how your flight actually is. And, since the Strengthening Exercise has established protective links between the reality of flight and a moment that causes you to produce oxytocin (which shuts down the fear system), the flight is fine.
But, if you don’t get to that point, if you don’t get on the plane, you don’t find out that it will be fine. So what can we do about anticipatory anxiety? One promising possibility is termed “reframing.” During reframing, you craft a comprehensive set of responses to your fears to weaken the effect of the troublesome thought.
For example, suppose the thought is, “What if there is a terrorist on the plane?” One reframe is, “What if there is a terrorist off the plane? Where are terrorists most likely to be? On your plane or somewhere else? Obviously, the most likely place for a terrorist is somewhere else. That being the case, you don’t want to be somewhere else; you want to be on the plane where there is no terrorist.”
Now, does that make sense? It is really a play on words that involves messy logic. Nevertheless, as the mind starts to untangle the logic, it gets mired down and the emotional impact of the original thought tends to weaken. Reframing was invented by Virginia Satir and Milton Erickson. My first exposure to reframing was in a workshop in which participants were invited to think of something they didn’t like and put it into a statement. One statement offered was, “I don’t like being in New York because the air is so bad.” The person conducting the workshop responded with, “New York has such an air about it.” The meanings of the word “air” in the two statements are so different that the mind has trouble holding onto the meanings of both statements at the same time. As the mind shuttles between the two meanings, the impact of the negative statement is lessened.
So if you think, “What if there is turbulence?” A reframe would be, “The best place to be when there is turbulence is in the plane, because the wall of the plane keeps the turbulent air from coming inside.” This reframe causes confusion with mental sleight of hand. It shifts the person’s focus on the plane as the threat to the implication that the turbulent air is a threat and the plane is protective. Again, the confusion defuses the original thought. A reframe that could be used during a period of turbulence is to think of the path from where you are to your destination as containing a specific number of bumps. Though you don’t know how many there are, the number of bumps is already established by Mother Nature. So, instead of hating it when you feel the plane bump, count them. Each one you count proves the plane is getting that much closer to its airport for landing. Each bump gets you closer to where you want to be.
“What if I have a panic attack?” A reframe might be, “Attack panic. Get out your sword and charge at it.” The person imagines charging forward with a drawn sword, and then has trouble finding anything to imagine sticking the sword into. As a result, when the target can’t be found, even in imagination, the threat—at least for the moment—is burst like a bubble.
“When the door closes, I feel trapped.” A reframe might be, when you are on the plane, think of five places you are glad you are not. Though being on the plane is not your ideal place to be, it is a lot better than being at the North Pole without a parka, up to your chin in quicksand, in the ocean where you see lots of shark fins sticking up, in an elevator falling from the top of the Empire State Building, or being held up at gunpoint on the street. But don’t use mine; come up with your own. Coming up with your own makes this particular reframe useful.
“I’m so anxious about my flight. What if it is really awful?” Or, “What if the flight is really turbulent?” A reframe may be, “My previous flight was a good one, so I figured it wasn’t the Strengthening Exercise working; it was just that the flight was an easy one. I need to have a challenging flight this time to positively prove the Strengthening Exercise will work every time, no matter what. That way I’ll know, and I will never have to have this fear ever again.”
Reframing is a mind game, yes, but one that can have a significant effect on the power of thoughts to cause persistent distress.
The Abstract Point of No Return (APNR): Making It Your Choice
I make a commitment that I’ll be on the plane no matter what. So far it’s been successful beyond my wildest dreams.
Flying, like anything the amygdalae recognize as non-routine, will release stress hormones to activate Executive Function. Whenever there is a stress hormone release, it’s Executive Function’s job to make an assessment and to determine what—if any—action is needed. The next step is commitment. Commitment ends stress hormone release.
Risk is ever-present when driving. Yet, most anxious fliers do not feel anxious when their own hands are on the wheel. This leads to the misconception that being in control inhibits anxiety. It is not control, but commitment, that moderates anxiety. Your inner CEO can assess the situation and build a plan of action to take, but it isn’t until commitment to the course of action—or inaction—that a signal is sent to the amygdalae to discontinue the release of stress hormones. Without commitment, Amy will keep pushing that intercom. Once you do your ABCs, relief will come.
Since commitment resolves anxiety, what steps can resolve anticipatory anxiety through commitment? First, imagine the extreme possibilities: the best a flight could be, and the worst a flight could be. First, the worst: At check-in, hundreds of people are in line ahead of you. Security mistakes you for someone on a list of suspicious characters. The plane is delayed for hours, first at the terminal, and then on the taxiway. Finally, you take off and climb up to cruise altitude. Though, as a pilot, I can’t imagine how it would happen, I’m sure you can imagine the plane plunging. You endure the most extreme terror, knowing you are doomed, with people screaming, and things flying around, and then . . . it’s over. You’re dead. Then what? Nothing. Notice that it is not being dead that is so awful—it’s getting dead, a state of terror before dying.
Most fearful fliers wish a doctor could “knock them out” before the flight and wake them when it’s over. Being “knocked out” has no effect on whether or not the plane crashes. It only means that a plane crash doesn’t cause you terror. As Woody Allen said, “It’s not that I’m afraid of dying. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Notice that on the worst flight possible, once you’re dead, you’re—sort of—safe, emotionally.
Now, imagine also the best flight possible. There’s no line at check-in. You go through security without a hitch. At the boarding area, they move you up to first class. You’re seated next to your favorite movie star, who finds you fascinating and spends the flight talking with you. The food and wine are superb. The air is perfectly smooth. When you land, your luggage is the first off the belt. Your new friend wants to take you out for the evening. Realistic? Of course not. But neither flight is. Your flight will be neither the worst nor the best, but somewhere in between.
On your flight, once the door closes, physical escape becomes impossible. But you can control whether or not you play the victim or the agent of the situation. Think of this: Imagine you’re in a room with a group of people where there’s a huge sheet of steel and a sledgehammer. Someone picks up the sledgehammer and slams it into the sheet of steel. The noise frazzles everyone in the room—except the one swinging the sledgehammer. There’s a huge difference between a noise caused by someone else and a noise you yourself cause. When someone else causes an awful noise, you are the victim of what happens. When you cause the noise, you’re the agent of what happens.
Instead of being a victim, forced past the point of no return when “they” close the door, you can be the agent of what happens. Of course, that doesn’t mean closing the door yourself; that’s someone else’s role. Your role—if you are to avoid being the victim—has three parts.
A person with good Executive Function knows—because of commitment—that he or she will be on the plane when the door closes. But for a person with impaired Executive Function, commitment is difficult. Whether the chance of fatality is one in a thousand, one in a million, or one in a billion, he or she is unprepared to commit unless the desired result is certain.
It might seem that balking at a commitment that could (though rarely) be fatal is self-preservation. But excessive need for certainty is self-destructive. On the one hand, it can lead to indecisiveness. Since the results of any course of action are rarely certain, the person who requires certainty avoids commitment. On the other hand, the need for certainty can lead to ineffective decisions based on magical thinking, false guarantees, superstition, or illusion of control. It is an illusion, for example, to believe that control of a car’s steering wheel, accelerator pedal, and brake pedal makes safe arrival certain.
Noted psychiatrist James Masterson, M.D. said that a person with impaired Executive Function is like a sailor who, instead of steering his boat, allows the wind and tide to determine where it goes. When ending up someplace he doesn’t want to be, he regards himself as the victim of circumstances.
If you commit to being inside when the door is closed, then you are the agent—not the victim—of the situation. The same is true if you commit to being outside when the door is closed; you are the author in that situation as well. But if you cannot commit at all, you’re like the sailor who allows prevailing conditions to determine where you end up: if you’re on the plane when the door closes, you could feel victimized by being trapped; if you’re not on the plane when the door closes, you may feel victimized that you can no longer get on.
ABCs & APNR
Assess. Is the flight an opportunity, irrelevant, or a risk? It is an opportunity to do something you want or need to do? The risk of flying is less than the risk of staying home; the flight exposes you to considerably less risk than routine driving.
Build a plan. You have considered the best and worst flights possible. Good Executive Function rejects those extremely unlikely possibilities and builds a plan of action based on what is most likely. Without question, the most likely result is safe arrival at your destination.
Commit. Instead of waiting and finding out which side prevailing conditions place you on when the door closes, determine now where you will be.
Sitting on a fence isn’t comfortable. The only way you can eliminate anxiety is by making a commitment—and it doesn’t matter what that commitment is. You can commit to being outside when the door closes, you can commit to never fly again, or you can commit to being on the inside when the door closes. If the latter, not only will you be rid of anxiety, you will have the self-satisfaction of setting a course, maintaining it, and arriving at your desired destination. There is great satisfaction in being where you want to be.
If you want that satisfaction, mentally advance to the point of no return from the present moment to a time in the future. Establish once and for all your placement on one side of the door or the other. Make the commitment absolute: Absolute commitment means it’s just as certain where you will be when the door is closed as if the event had already taken place.
Thinking needs to shift from “what if” your flight is the one plane in twenty million that crashes to “even if” yours might be the one that crashes, you are making the commitment anyway. Commitment requires a shift from thinking “what if I panic” to I’m flying “even if I panic.” In other words, you are following through with your plan even though the final result might be a crash or a panic attack. It means commitment no matter what, even if it kills you. Confront what happens in one flight in several million and commit anyway. Allow nothing to stop you from being on the side of the door you have committed to being on when it closes. Take it to the bank. Carve it in stone. It’s a done deal. When commitment is absolute, Executive Function signals the amygdalae to stop the release of stress hormones. Anxiety disappears.
As the flight gets closer, if commitment lapses, anxiety will return. As you attempt to make the commitment again, remember this paradox: If you commit primarily to get relief, it may not work. Commitment needs to be done primarily for self-satisfaction, and only secondarily to escape anxiety. Search in advance for the hidden strategies that would let you sneak out of the commitment such as, “Yes, I’ll do it no matter what, but if I don’t sleep well the night before, then I don’t know.” Or, “The weather doesn’t look good.” Or, “There was a crash on the news.” Or, “If I don’t feel well.” Or, “If I don’t feel like I can do it.”
It is, I think, worth knowing how the Abstract Point of No Return was discovered. Some years ago, I bought a race car, a Formula 3 Lola. It weighed 880 pounds. The engine was behind the driver. There was nothing in front of the driver but some tubing and a fiberglass shell. When I first saw how little protection there was for the driver, it gave me pause. The cockpit was form-fitted to my body. Sliding into the cockpit feet first was like slipping fingers into a glove. Once in, it wasn’t easy to get out. As I worked my body into the cockpit, I felt physically committed to the car and what I was planning to do with it. At the same time, the thought went through my mind, “You shouldn’t be doing this.”
Notice the word “you.” All of us have multiple facets of self. This statement was coming from a protective, hesitant facet of myself; it was directed toward a more adventurous and bolder facet of myself. I felt anxious as these two parts struggled to be dominant. Suddenly, the conflict disappeared. Though what happened did not involve words, if there had been words, they would have gone something like this: “Well, you shouldn’t be doing this, but I can see you are committed, and nothing is going to change your mind. So if I tell you that you shouldn’t be doing this when you’re going around a curve at ninety mph, we’re both going to get killed. Though I object to what you’re doing, I’m going to disappear.” At that juncture, that facet of myself vanished and a state of total calm came over me. The matter was resolved. I was committed. I was going to do it no matter what, even if it killed me.
In his book The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe wrote about test pilots and astronauts who were able to face formidable risks and maintain good Executive Function. The right stuff is the ability to determine a course of action and commit to it, even in the face of significant risk. One of the test pilots Wolfe wrote about was Air Force Captain Charles “Chuck” Yeager, who made the first supersonic flight on October 14, 1947, in the Bell X-1. While variations of the X-1 continued to explore supersonic flight, the Air Force contracted with North American Aviation to develop a supersonic fighter. This plane, the F-100, went into production in 1953. Since the technology of supersonic flight was still in its infancy, the plane had major design deficiencies. As a result, during the twenty years the F-100 was flown by the USAF, one out of three crashed. I clearly recall walking toward my F-100, parachute over one shoulder and helmet in hand, knowing it was not safe. But knowing I was going to do it, no matter what, the closest thing to anxiety was a feeling of determination to stay keenly focused.
• • •
The French philosopher Descartes famously wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” The anxious flier could say, “I consider, therefore I am anxious.” Outcomes are often uncertain. Consideration, short of commitment, sustains anxiety. In such cases, the only certainty available is that which can be produced by commitment. After prospective courses of action—or inaction—are assessed, reality-based living calls for decision and commitment even though safety is not absolute. Though commitment can be based on an illusion of certainty, pretending properly belongs to childhood, where it’s done to prepare for adult reality-based living. When committed to fly no matter what, Executive Function signals the amygdalae to discontinue stress hormone release.
“I am committed, therefore calm.” Such is the power of commitment to limit anxiety. The purpose of this book is not to turn the reader into a test pilot or astronaut, but to develop enough of the right stuff to embrace living without certainty, and to commit to the extraordinarily small risk of flying on a modern jetliner.