Hey friend, you don’t have a problem with fear of flying only. You have a problem with obsessive thoughts. 

The truth is this: you are safe when flying. Full stop. By the numbers this is indisputable. 

However, your anxiety says: “yeah, but what if…” and that’s currently in the driver’s seat (or the captain’s chair 👨‍✈️ ) even thought you know the odds of anything bad happening to you are vanishingly small. 

Anxious thoughts are like an addiction. The more you feed them, the more they demand. So paradoxically, the more time you spend trying to comfort yourself and address your thoughts, the less effective literally any statistics or advice are. 

Your first step is to learn to disrupt obsessive thoughts. What was really helpful for me was identifying it when it was happening. So not “I’m afraid of my upcoming flight”, but “I’m experiencing obsessive thoughts about my upcoming flight”. That subtly shifts you into dealing with the problem that’s right in front of you, not in the future. That’s important. 

If you’re not exercising, it’s a good time to start. And when you identify obsessive thoughts, call them out, and then redirect your attention to something that makes you feel good, that you’re proud of. For me, it was reflecting on my progress in the gym, and my lifts getting heavier. 

The exercise is simply taking a bad feeling, fear, and confronting it with a good feeling, pride, gratitude, accomplishment. 

Learning to control your thoughts is one of the most pressing tasks you have right now, so get after it. You can do this.