← The Psychology of your 20s
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Want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On tech stuff, we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture and everywhere in between. Join us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down and discuss the psychology of our 20s. Okay, so this is not our usual episode. I think typically with the topics I choose to discuss, I want to make sure that most people can relate to them. Right. I feel like there are some very universal experiences, not just of our twenties, but of being human, that I would say around like 80 to 90% of us can say, yeah, I totally get that. I've been there, I've experienced that. I can see myself reflected in that topic. This one is for a unique subset of my listeners who can relate to a fear of flying. A fear of flying. That is what we are going to talk about today. I have spoken about this on and off in certain episodes about how I was so terrified of flying that I didn't fly for like a very long time and I would even do like you know, 14, 15, 16 hour road trips in order to avoid a two hour plane ride. But a listener actually DM'd me the other day and she was asking me for this specific episode where I talked about it and I couldn't remember. So I thought, you know, I've spoken about it maybe for a couple of minutes here and there. But this deserves a full spot on the feed for people to come back to and to listen to if this is something that they fear and that they experience. So yes, we are going to talk about a fear of flying, how it manifests, what it looks like and of course how to overcome it. I remember when I was really struggling with this maybe two years ago was when I really started to be committed to overcoming this fear. I was going through and like searching for answers everywhere. And I remember looking it up on TikTok, like what are the best tips for a fear of flying? And there were some great tips, but a lot of what I received was like informative videos about like plane safety and like interviews with pilots. And I really needed something else. And I think I also realized that it was kind of a turning point for me where I was having all of these huge, huge opportunities to be able to go overseas, to go to the us, go to Europe, fly everywhere and you know, go to these events and travel. And I wasn't going to get that opportunity again. And if I let myself be held back by my fear of flying, I would really, really regret it. Now I also have to say, when you live in Australia, like those big long international flights are definitely something you really have to, you know, it just adds a little bit more intensity to the fear. Like if I want to overcome my fear of flying and therefore give myself the opportunity to go to Europe or to experience like a beautiful Italian summer or to go to the US for that's like a 24, 30 hour commitment. And it was one of those flights that really pushed me to finally get over this fear and find strategies that worked for me. Back in 2023, I had this really cool opportunity to fly to London to speak at the podcast show, and I was not going to give it up. So I want to talk about how I really got through it because now I'm not going to try and toot my own horn here, but I'm a bit of an exper. Like, I definitely still have my moments of fear and anxiety, but I really went about this in, like, a systematic way of, like, this is not going to control my life. And I will say, I know it sounds like a very small, privileged fear, and in many ways it kind of is, but it can also hold you back from a lot of experiences that we want in our twenties. Right? There is a lot of glamour and romanticism to solo traveling and to just traveling in general and having backpacking experiences and summers abroad that if you. You really deeply fear flying, you can feel a lot of FOMO around and feel like you are going to really miss out on. And therefore you're going to miss out on really getting everything that you can out of this decade. So hopefully by the end of this episode, you feel capable to have those experiences, even if getting on a plane and flying to whatever destination it is is part of it. Like, you feel capable of saying, yeah, I'm scared of this thing, but I'm going to do it anyway because this is what I want to do with my time and what I want to do in these younger years of my life. So, yeah, we're going to talk about why we have a fear of flying, the different types of fears that create the broader fear, and also why avoidance and ignoring the problem is only going to make it worse. And the baby steps and the mental steps and the psychological steps that you can take and you can perform to be okay with getting on those long flights or even just getting on an hour long flight. I really do believe that this is a fear that is easier to overcome than you would think. So without further ado, let's get into it. If you have a fear of flying, let me just tell you, you are not the only one. Even if people don't really talk about it. There have been some recent estimates that about 40% of us have some fear of flying. And that has only increased since the pandemic, obviously, because a lot of us weren't flying. A lot of us weren't having the exposure to an airplane or to air travel that would help beat a fear. Instead, it was sustaining an anxiety through avoidance that, you know, bad things would happen when we get on a plane and we weren't having any of the experiences to prove that that would be the opposite of the case. Like that wasn't going to happen. I want to talk about where a fear of flying comes from, firstly by talking about my own experience. So for me, I felt like this just crept up on me. When I was 18, 19, I solo traveled around Europe. Like I met up with some friends, but my to get to Europe from Australia, I did that all by myself. And I, you know, was not flying business class. I wasn't flying premium economy. I was flying like on China Airlines, China Southern Airlines, like not a great airline in like the back of economy. And I remember my flights being like 800 return and the food was awful. On one of my flights, like we didn't even have a TV screen and it was like 15 hours. Like the whole experience was like not a pleasant experience and I was totally fine. Oh, and by the way, like that ended up being being like I think a 30 hour flight because we had to do two flights with a huge layover and I was completely alone that whole time and like it wasn't the smoothest sailing and I don't remember having any real fear. And the same on the way back as well. Like I actually, I don't know if I've told this story before but on my way back from Europe when I was 18 and like I did my first big solo trip on my way back, I got stuck in Taiwan for the night and I'd run out of money. Like I didn't have, have any money on my travel account. I didn't have a SIM card for Taiwan. Like I was completely and utterly kind of stuck. I wasn't sure if I was going to make the flight. And the whole experience was actually really stressful and I still like got on the plane and didn't feel any fear. In fact I felt quite peaceful. And so I can reflect on those experiences and be like, oh, there was a time when like I really wasn't scared by this. And then covet happened, the pandemic happened. I was meant to, I think like a lot of us, I had these big travel plans because I was about to graduate university. Like I was, I had just graduated and I was like, great, 2020 is like my year for traveling and like I'm going to save up and I'm going to go to Russia. Like this was before the Ukraine, Russia war. Like, look how much has changed. Like I was like, I'm gonna go to Russia and then I'm Gonna go to the US and maybe like a bit of Asia and just have a great time. And I had no fear flight, like it was not in my mind. And then I didn't fly for two years. No one really flew in Australia. Like if you're from Australia, you know, the lockdowns here were like very, very intense. And then I had the opportunity to fly home to see my parents in Melbourne. And oh my goodness, I remember going to book that flat and being like, oh my God, suddenly all of these fears are coming up for me. Like I suddenly am picturing myself walking onto that plane and the only sensation I can feel is like a deep pit rock heaviness in my stomach. And I didn't book the flight. I drove down and then when I had, when the time came to go back up, I drove back up again. Like, and it was like a 12, 13 hour drive. Like it was ridiculous and it was totally ineffic, efficient, totally like unsustainable, totally expensive as well. And that was my first real moment of like, oh, wow, this like fear has suddenly emerged for me. And it kept coming up. All these opportunities to go and see family, finally being able to see family. Like I would not catch a flight. And then the one time that I did that I really had to, I didn't get on it. Like, I literally was about to board and I was like, I, I'm gonna fully freak out and I'm going to like, I remember having this fear of like, I am going to panic when I'm on this plane and I'm going to try and get out of the plane, I'm going to pull the emergency exits and I'm gonna scream and I'm gonna like fully freak out and I'm not gonna be able to control myself. So I shouldn't get on this flight. Like I was just so terrified of having a reaction that I wasn't prepared for and I was so terrified of my fear. So that is kind of where I was at when I realized I needed to change something. So for me I think it was that I hadn't, I think underlying this there had always been a more general, like claustrophobia and a more general fear of the unknown. But because I had flown so much as a kid, because my parents were always traveling for work, because then I'd done, you know, long a long haul flight when I was kind of not even in my 20s yet, like I had been exposed enough that the anxiety didn't have time to feed itself with fantasy. So that's really where mine came from. I think for a lot of others it could be your fear of flying comes from a negative experience. So you've just had one really terrible, awful flight that has completely shaped and dominated how you think about flying. I was talking to someone about this. One of my friends, she has a really. She has a terrible fear of flying. And I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this story, but I'll keep it anonymous. She was flying back from the Philippines and they flew through like a thunderstorm, like a lightning storm. Like they. They flew through a storm and it was not anticipated and it was terrifying and the plane was shaking and she thought she was gonna die and it just sounded absolutely awful. And it was like from then on out, like the fear had emerged. Like that was a triggering event that was a catalyst for her fear. Another really big one is a lot of people experience or a lot of people report an uptick in their fear around flying after a crash. So if you remember like MH370 or a bunch of these other flights that have come down in recent memory that were everywhere in the news, everyone was talking about it. It was a crazy tragedy that leaves an imprint because of something called the salience effect or a salience bias, where really intense, captivating, highly emotional news stories or things going on feel like they're actually a lot more common just because they are dominating so much of the headlines and they're dominating so much of our thinking space. Like our brain is like, ah. Because this is more apparent, it must be more common. Even though it's only been one plane amongst hundreds and hundreds of thousands. This was a big thing that we saw following 9 11. That was actually a real moment for people of a real moment where a lot of people shifted from being totally happy to get on a plane to a real avoidance within a lot of people and some people still. I was reading an article like there's people who reported having no fear about flying until 9 11. And even what are we now, like 24 years on, like they still won't get on a plane because of how our memories work and how our brain influences our decision making and our behavior to protect us from what it fears and to help us survive when really, you know, something like a plane crash or something really terrible happening on a flight doesn't actually happen all that often. This kind of links to a broader, deeper idea of why do we fear flying? You know, a lot of people will say I fear crashing or I fear turbulence or I fear the confined space. So at its root A lot of these come down to a deeper, more simplistically labeled fear. The big one being the fear of the unknown and the fear of being out of control. So obviously, when you get on a plane, you. You're not in control anymore. If something bad was to happen, there is nothing that you can do, really. I know that probably gave you a jolt of anxiety, but we're going to discuss why, how to overcome that. But really, that's what the fear is coming down to. If you are someone who is already scared of uncertainty, who is already scared of not being able to control their environment, or scared of the unknown, flying can be a real triggering event. This also really relates to a fear of crashing, right, Or a fear of turbulence or a fear of something bad happening on the flight. You kind of realize that in that situation and in that moment, you might be quite powerless. And that power, like that feeling, is one that you are not comfortable with potentially being exposed to. There's also the deeper fear or a deeper kind of phobia. Claustrophobia. This was also one that was big for me. My big thing was, I don't like being in enclosed spaces. I don't like getting in elevators. I don't like, at the time when my fear of flying was really happening, I didn't like even catching the train, like, into work in Sydney. I didn't even like going in tunnels. So it was all coming down to this claustrophobia. I remember specifically, like, I would avoid driving in any tunnels around this time. And when I would go into a tunnel, I would really feel, like, the panic rising. And I was particularly scared of there being traffic in a tunnel because I was like, oh, my God. I don't want to get stuck underground in this enclosed space. Like, that just sounds like my worst nightmare. Like, everything is closing in on me. And so I remember talking to my friend and being like, who travels so much for work and being like, how can you cope with being locked in this metal tube for hours? Like, you get in, they close the door, you're not coming out. Nothing you can do can allow you to exit. And he actually said something really beautiful to me. He was like, yeah, but isn't that really nice? Because while you're suspended up and up in the air, like, you get this beautiful break from reality. Like, it's actually quite special. You get to completely disconnect. You get to just, like, float in this, like, space and time that is just, like, all for you. And I was like, yes. Like, I'm slightly convinced by that. I'm not fully on board, but I do really see, like, where he was coming from. And he also said to me, he was like, there are so many situations like that that you're going to be exposed to in life where you just have to be a bit stoic about it. Like, think about so many other things in your life where you are in a space or an event or a situation or a context that you can't change, and you just have to find a way to accept it. And so learning how to overcome a fear of flying, actually what it really does is teach you a lot of lessons about dealing with discomfort and anxiety and your inability to control a situation in general. Like, it helps teach you how to do that in so many other broader areas of your life. But again, just to summarize, those are the real big reasons that we fear flying. We fear a terrible event occurring. Maybe we fear death, we fear injury, we fear the plane crashing. And therefore we become quite worried about turbulence. We become quite worried about small little things. And then we also have a deeper fear of the unknown, a fear of being out of control, and also claustrophobia, a fear of enclosed, tight spaces. When you have a fear of flying, if you're not someone who's familiar with this, what this can feel like is a lot of anticipatory anxiety. So I remember last year I caught a flight from Bali to New York, and the whole two to three days before that happened, it was all I could think about. I was obsessed. I was obsessed. I was googling what kind of model the plane was going to be. I had to know exactly where my seat was going to be, had to know exactly what food was going to be served on board, what time we were departing, what time we were landing, all the possibilities of things that could go wrong, and yada, yada, yada. Like, it was all this, like, information seeking was all coming back to anticipatory anxiety. Like, I wasn't actually in any danger at that point. I wasn't being triggered. I wasn't in the situation that I feared. But my brain was almost like, well, let's prepare you by almost copying the anxiety that you will eventually feel right now, so you can get used to it. Of course, that didn't work. Like, it doesn't work. Your brain tries to come up with all these different ways to manage something that it sees as difficult. But really the biggest thing you can do for yourself is expose yourself to the fear and see that you are still capable, which we're going to get to eventually. The other Big thing with the fear of flying that you're likely to feel is like when you get on the plane, I would sweat, I would shake. I would like just literally my whole body would shake and I would be pushing my foot up and down, bouncing my foot up and down. Everything felt very, very hot. I felt like I needed to run. I literally felt like a scared rabbit. And I found that actually that was the worst before takeoff. But once we were like 10, 20 minutes into the air, I felt quite calm because I was like, okay, I'm in it now. I'm in it. Like, the sense of like, yeah, there's really nothing I can do took over. And I was like, well, I may as well just enjoy this experience. So that's really what it feels like. It feels like a panic attack. It feels like a lot of anxious worry. It feels like you are stuck, you are trying to fight or flight obviously trying to run away or fight back against this thing that feels like it's threatening you, I. E. Being on an airplane. But it all comes back to like a real, like your. The fear center of your brain and your like nervous system is not properly responding to your circumstances. So it's seeing danger where danger is not. Yes, danger could eventually appear, but you're not actually in any danger in that moment. Your brain is reading the environment and reading the context wrong. And when I began to realize that that my anxious thoughts about something didn't make anything more or less likely to happen, that also was a great relief to me. So we're going to take a quick break here and when I return, I want to really get into the tips that I have for overcoming my fear of flying. Stay with us.
- [23:26]
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If you're like me, you love feeling confident and empowered in your own skin. Or should I say your own ha. That's why I'm excited to tell you about Madison Reed. A female founded hair color company, Madison Reed believes confidence is the new beautiful. Whether you're touching up your roots, going for a bold new look or enhancing your natural shade, Madison Reed has got you covered with their salon quality easy to use hair color. They offer a range of options that fit your needs. Plus they have everything from vibrant permanent hair color to demi permanent shades to root touch, UPS kits and more. And here's the best part. Their formulas are made with ingredients you can feel good about free of harsh chemicals like ammonia and parabens. Plus, Madison Reed stands behind their products with a money back guarantee. Shop online at madison-reed.com Amazon or your favorite stores like Ulta Beauty or Walmart. So what are you waiting for? Take the guesswork out of hair color and find your perfect shade today. Visit madison-reit.com iheart today.
- [24:27]
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Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? I'm Osvaloshin, one of the new hosts of the long running podcast Tech Stuff. I'm slightly skeptical but obsessively intrigued.
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And I'm Cara Price, the other new.
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Host and I'm ready to adopt early.
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And often on tech stuff. We travel all the way from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars to the dark corners of TikTok to ask and attempt to answer burning questions about technology.
- [24:53]
D
One of the kind of tricks for surviving Mars is to live there long enough so that people evolve into Martians. Like data is a very rough proxy for a complex reality. How is it possible that the world's new energy revolution can be based in this place where there's no electricity at night? Oz and I will cut through the noise to bring you the best conversations and deep dives that will help you understand how tech is changing our world and what you need to know to survive the singularity.
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So join us, listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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The biggest thing I can say to you if you have a fear of flying, is that you need to find any possible way to stop avoiding the situation, to stop avoiding flying flights, airports, whatever it is. And what you want to do is really approach that in slow, manageable steps. So I knew that when I was really getting ready to like beat this fear or at least find a way to handle it, that I had this big thing coming up, this big flight that I really wanted to do. So I wanted to fly to London, I wanted to make it there, and I wanted to be able to get on that plane and, you know, maybe not feel okay, but still be able to go through with it. So in the lead up, like the six month lead up to this flight, I started doing small things to help myself. So I went to a flight simulator simulator. I would watch videos on YouTube of people entering planes, like getting onto a plane, sitting down, showing their surroundings. Like, a lot of them were like, reviews of certain seats on like, different airlines. Like, I'd watch like, oh, the Emirates, A380, like flight from Doha to wherever. Like, like what the seats would look like and what the meals were like to just really see. Then I also started saying yes to opportunities that would require me to do very short flights. So one hour, two hour flights around Australia. And for the first couple of flights, I took someone with me. So I would literally be like, okay, do any of my friends need to fly to Melbourne this weekend? Let's see if we can get on the same plane. Like, I paid for my dad to like fly on one of my flights with me to just help expose me to this fearful state. So the first flight I did was an hour. I think it was even less. And I did it with my dad. And it was hard. It was hard. But actually I realized by the end how proud I was, how much relief I felt getting off the plane and how I was like, wow, that was not as hard as I thought it was. And that's what the avoidance makes you believe. It keeps you in this state where the biggest source of truth is your fear about a situation and your thoughts about a situation, often which are false. So the only truth you have to rely on is what your brain is coming up with. But when you actually expose yourself to the situation, a much different reality becomes apparent. I then did a two hour flight with a friend, just me and her, and then a one hour flight by myself. And that was really hard because we got stuck on the tarmac. And that was something that I hadn't anticipated and it kind of threw me for a loop. But what I did was I was just reminded myself of how it felt to have someone else there with me, how really, like, I was still able to do it it by myself. And I had a list of things that I knew would help me out. So I still have this list in my phone. And it's a number of strategies that I knew would calm my anxiety and break me out of a panic attack. So one of them was to just do some guided meditation to do a breathwork exercise. I actually downloaded this app called the Dare App, which I've spoken about before. And they do guided meditations for a fear of flying and guided meditations for panic attacks. And I would just sit and I would listen to that meditation until I felt better. I also would just do jumping jacks at the back of the plane, like in the little flight attendant area, just until I felt better. Or squats, something that would, like, make me feel like I was escaping or doing something about the anxiety within me. I put cold water on my wrists. I had something sour to bite into. I also would bring coloring in books. I just had a lot of it almost felt like I was building a military, right? Like I was building my line of defenses against this anxiety. And I Said I'm only allowed to panic if I get through all these things and I don't feel better. Obviously, you know, maybe my anxiety would be able to jump a couple of hurdles, but I had a whole list of things that I could do, so there was no way that it could get through all of them. Something was bound to work. Something was bound to make me feel better. And I also just allowed myself to be okay with being scared. I was like, okay, I'm just gonna accept this feeling. Like, I feel anxious, but I'm gonna look around at my environment. Is there anything to feel anxious about? Is there anything to feel scared about? And what I would do is I would look to other people and I would mirror their response. So I'd look at the people in front of me. I'd look at all the heads of the people on the plane, and I'd be like, okay, well, these people seem fine. These people aren't panicking. So obviously, like, if I can't trust myself and my own evaluation of this situation, I can trust theirs, and they seem okay. I also reminded myself something that I knew very much to be true. It's the biology of us as humans. Our psychology is that we cannot panic forever. So even if I was on the verge of a panic attack, I knew that eventually it would subside. So it was okay. If I felt myself falling into this state, it wasn't going to last forever. It was eventually going to go away. I know that my body could only sustain panic and that level of alertness and stress for so long. So I remind myself, it's just sensations, you know, it's just my body trying to protect me. It doesn't change what is actually happening. I also want to say flight attendants, they know how to handle this. They see this all the time. And I've actually seen a flight attendant help someone who was panicking on a flight. I've seen random strangers help someone who is panicking on a flight. You've got to remember, most people are very, very kind and very, very good. If you were sitting next to someone on a plane who turned to you and said, I'm really, really scared. Scared, would you dismiss them? No. You'd be like, I totally understand. Let me help you. So you've got to understand that most other strangers will also do that for you as well. Most people are genuinely very nice. And even if they aren't, the flight attendants have to be like, they're getting paid to be there. They aren't just decorative. Like, they have done a lot of Training. And their training also involves how to handle really heightened emotional states for people for whom this is a big fear. My other biggest, biggest tip, the thing that I still swear by to this day, and this is particularly the case with long haul flights, is to just don't let yourself be bored. Create itineraries for each flight. The same way that you might wake up and you might create a timed to do list about your day. You would create an itinerary for a holiday of in the morning we do this. In the afternoon, we do this. In the evening we do this. Like these are our activities for the day. I would do the same for each of my flight. And the day before I would make one of these itineraries. So let me see if I can pull one up from my flight to London that I was talking about. Okay, here it is. I've managed to find it. So we had two flights. This was flight one. I will also say that for my flight to London, at the last minute I did ask my dad to come with me and I paid for his flight, which is something I've felt very lucky to be able to do. I had all these points that I had been like saving up for. Literally, like, because I wasn't flying anywhere. But before COVID I flew a lot and I'd like saved up all of these points for that trip to Europe I was meant to be doing. Never used them. So I used those to get my dad a flight so that he could come with me because I was really, really scared. But this is what my itinerary looks like. So hour one, talk to my dad and get settled. Hour two, I had my routine, like my nighttime routine. So I got a face mask, I brush my teeth, I put on my noise cancelling headphones. Hour two, again, put on a movie. Hour three, finish movie and do some knitting. Hour four, have my first round of snacks, eat meal. So like I was scheduling things to look forward to for each hour. Hour five, start second movie, get ready for sleep, take a melatonin. Then it was like hour six, hour seven, hour eight, sleep. But if not, I had alternatives which was to edit some of my podcast episodes or to do some coloring in. I even had other things to do as well. Like I had a little Lego set, so I had activities like I was prepared. Then hour like 10, 11, 12, I had like instructions to make Instagram posts. Like I had everything set up so that I had more things to do. Movie three and then hour like 14, prepare to land. And then my second flight. This is what I Said, I said it was an eight hour flight. I said this is just like a nine to five work day day. Like that is what this is. If I would easily sit in an office for eight hours in the same space that I would sit in a chair on a plane. Like this is the same amount of time. So I had my hour one, get settled, have some snacks, listen to a podcast. Hour two, do another face, face mask. Hour three, I could either write some episodes or write my books. I was writing my book at the time. Or I could watch a movie. I was movie movie write. Right I was seven, listen to a podcast, read our eight, talk to dad, prepare to land. So like I had itinerary for myself that would help me feel like my time was full the day before my flight as well, the morning before. I would go and get everything that I needed to buy, slash needed to bring with me slash wanted to have. So this is what I had for like the list. I needed to buy sour candy, compression socks, a puzzle book. I also brought magazines, an eye mask, toothbrush and toothpaste. Portable charger, water bottle. I also bought my prescription candy. I also had instructions for myself to download five movies. That seems a little bit excessive, make sure that everything was charged, wear comfortable but fashionable clothes which will come into the next tip that I have. And then the morning of my flight, I went for a really big swim and a really big run so that I was exhausted. Then I had an everything shower and I had a really healthy breakfast. All of these things like putting myself in the best possible place to be prepared for this flight. And I had a daily reminder at the top of this list. So this is my list that I have on my phone called Flight Prep. Haven't updated it since the 3rd of December, but the reminder on the top of my phone said, you need to do hard things to grow, acknowledge the fear and run towards it anyway. And so I had this like huge comprehensive list to come back to. And can I tell you something? Something? Those itineraries, that whole plan, I didn't once have to use it, not once, it was so important that it was there. But once I got onto the plane and I settled in and I maybe did the first hour or two of my routine, I realized that all of this preparation, really what it was doing, was just making me feel more at ease with the possibility of discomfort. But after the first hour, I wasn't uncomfortable, I wasn't scared, I wasn't anxious, I was okay. So I was really able to relax into the situation that is really what this preparation taught me is that you can do all that you want to do, but when you are in the situation, the chances are it's not going to be as bad or as hard as you previously thought it was. Now I want to bring us all back to that thing I said before that may have sounded strange. Wear comfortable but fashionable clothes. This links to something that I still to still do to this day, which is that I romanticize the privilege and the act of flying by. And this is going to sound really silly, imagining that I'm someone really famous or really important. And the person that I tend to imagine is that I am Taylor Swift and that I am getting on my flight and that this is just part of business. And I romanticize this whole process of like having the opportunity to be a jetsetter. What that means, like, what that feels like. Like, would that person feel anxious? Would like Taylor Swift feel anxious about flying? Probably not. Would Beyonce feel anxious about flying? Probably not. This is what they do. This is what it means to be someone who is successful. And I kind of like to pretend that I'm someone else in that moment. I am someone more capable. I am someone for whom this is really, really normal and it really, really works. Visualizing and romanticizing the process. Visualizing getting off the plane as well. Visualizing what it's going to feel like to literally put your feet on the tarmac or on whatever it is the walkway. Visualizing that sensation. Visualizing your first breath of fresh air when you get off the plane. Also really, really profound. Your mind has so many superpowers and hidden talents and hidden capabilities built into it to get you through hard situations. And its ability to reflect and remember and visualize and imagine future situations or past peaceful situations is something that you can use to really pull yourself into a calm space when you are maybe panicking or you are maybe spiraling. I also mentioned having a go to meditation that you know and you have proven to yourself can bring you out of a stressed state. Mine was the dare meditation. That's really useful. And finally have a backup calming option. Now I'm not going to tell you to go out and get a Valium prescription or to rely on prescription drugs or whatever it is, or melatonin or something herbal or even like a glass of wine. But just knowing that you have it there without having to use it is incredibly helpful. So I did have a Valium prescription, but let me just tell you, I didn't touch it. Like I for a lot of my long haul flights now slash ever like I think I've only taken it once and it was because I was really like, I was feeling quite ill and I was also really like not feeling well mentally. I was like, hadn't slept for like a couple of days just because I'd been so run off my feet and jet lagged. That was the only time I used it. But I have taken so many international long haul flights where I have not needed it. But just the fact that I have it in my toiletries bag or that I know I can have a glass of red wine and feel better even though I don't drink on flights, that has been so powerful. Again, it's just giving your brain and giving yourself all of these hurdles that it has to jump over before you are going to let yourself panic. So having all of these different things that you can focus on, that you can zoom in on, that you can feel comforted by before you feel like you have to let your sensations take over. I want to also remind you of that reminder I had at the top of that list. In order to grow, you have to do hard things. So if you are someone who has avoided flying, who is scared of it, who feels really uncomfortable, it does get easier. And you do see more of the rewards of putting yourself in a hard situation, an uncomfortable situation, something that you don't actually want to do, but which you are able to come out of and realize that you are so grateful to yourself for doing it. And it's actually not very common I think in our day and age that we do things that are very difficult and that we push ourselves really hard into a place of discomfort and even fear and are still able to come out the other side and see the rewards. Flying, when you have a fear of flying is such a great opportunity to feel what it really means, to feel deeply proud of yourself and deeply accomplished for doing the hard thing over the easy thing. So I'm wishing you so much luck. I know this is really, really hard, but I also want you to know that as someone who used to be so afraid that she would get off flights, that she would drive freaking 13 hours to get places, who, who avoided so many opportunities because of her fear, I have been able to get over it. Yes, it's not completely gone, but in two weeks I'm flying solo to the US for work and then flying back and that's like a 15 hour flight. And the level of anxiety I feel about it is nowhere near what I would have experienced two or three years ago. And I feel completely, fully capable of doing it. And I believe that you can feel that way as well. So I'm sending you lots of love, love, peace, strength, calm and the opportunity to really push yourself and to learn and to see what you are capable of. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you are someone who also has a fear of flying and you have a tip or a suggestion or a piece of advice that you personally have used that I didn't mention, please drop it in the comments below. I would love to have the comment section on Spotify just be, you know, just a huge page and piece and community notice board of advice and feedback and tips and tricks for all of us to learn from each other. I think that would be really, really useful. And again, send this to someone who you think might need to hear it. If you have a friend who you know also experiences this, who was one of the 40% or a parent or a family member who has been avoiding or putting off flying for some of the very reasons we talked about, maybe this could help. So feel free to share it. And if you haven't already, make sure that you are following along the psychology of your twenties. Leave us a five star review and follow us on Instagram thatpsychology podcast if you have further thoughts, questions, queries about this episode or you want to suggest another episode. I love hearing from you all over there. And until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself, happy flying, safe travels and we will talk very, very soon. Soon.
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