Does hypnotherapy work for 'fear of flying'?

Some people are more receptive to hypnotherapy than others. It does work in a large majority of people though. And they can also teach you relaxation tips for when you are going to be flying.

Hypnosis is merely a heightened state of suggestibility, in which you are better able to communicate with your subconscious mind. 85% of people are suggestible to some degree; 15% - 20% highly so, and 15% - 20% aren't much at all, so you could either preferably seek professional hypnotherapy, or, if not an option, more along such lines is on page V at 8m.com, below, where this came from. ~~~ It may be related to stress, panic, or anxiety, so check out those topics at http://your-mental-health.8m.com/blank_25.html (where this extract came from) and pages i, h, & m. View: http://www.uncommon-knowledge.co.uk/phobias/fear-of-flying-phobia.html?utm_source=unk&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tr_trauma_2010 & http://travel.qandas.com/flights/how-can%E2%80%A6 & at: http://www.wikihow.com/ enter: "fear of flying" & www.fearofflying.com/ & http://www.airsafe.com/issues/fear.htm & www.fearofflyinghelp.com/ Book an aisle seat, early, and warn the flight attendant of your aerophobia*. Read an interesting book, or play an electronic game at takeoff, and landing, or listen to music/wear an eye covering, or wraparound sunglasses sprayed black on the inside. One approach is to find a clinical psychologist who deals with phobia. Google: "clinical psychologists; (your location)" Closely examine the http://1-800-therapist.com & http://www.metanoia.org/choose websites. Learn about flying, and its safety, compared with the much more dangerous road travel, with so many people carrying permanent "sleep deficits" these days, resulting in microsleeps. Psychologists tell us that the visual impact of plane crashes that we have viewed over the years causes a greatly exaggerated estimation of their actual risks. NeuroLinguistic Programming, or hypnotherapy may be effective. It is important, however, to address the cause of the problem, rather than just the symptom, or it may manifest again in a different form. There are medications which can help, such as benzodiazapenes, like Xanax, Klonopin, or Valium which are addictive, with very long weaning off periods, so use them rarely. Some people prefer drinking cooled, bottled chamomile, or Tension Tamer tea (from supermarket tea aisles; use no milk) an hour beforehand, but the restrictions on taking liquids aboard stop the possibility of using it before landing, unless the flight attendant will provide hot water for your herbal tea bag. Ask early*. Valerian, from pharmacies, vitamin, health food stores, or (less preferably) supermarkets may be a better solution. Know their effects on you beforehand! Avoid alcohol, when flying, and drink plenty of water; both flying, and alcohol dehydrate you, which is undesirable. Caffeine products (see the list on page f, at 8m.com) exacerbate anxiety, so avoid them before, and during flights. Stretch, exercise, and walk often. There are support garments you can wear on your calves to reduce further the already low risk of blood clots forming, (Deep Vein Thrombosis) and take an aspirin (the buffered type) with water, or herbal tea, an hour before takeoff, unless there are contraindications.

I had a big fear of flying where i would imagine myself falling out of the sky and all the worst things happening thankfully i went to see a hypnotherapist for 5 lessons at £95 a lesson and it was good for me so it should help you just because you think the worse does not mean it will happen

You can expect to get some degree of benefit from it. Some people react to hypnotherapy better than others.

It is no more effective that placebo I am afraid, DON'T waste your money.

No idea - but have you tried watching Dr. PHil - no joke - try him out....

Though I'm thoroughly trained in hypnotherapy, I never use it any more for fear of flying. It just is not reliable, so I turned to developing reliable ways to deal with fear of flying that work reliably and work for everyone. As both a pilot and a licensed therapist, I have specialized in this work since 1980. The problem is this: when a person does not develop (between age zero and two) good ability to regulate emotion (and it isn’t your fault), you have to compensate for that by being in control, or by always having a way out. The way the mind works is this. The sub-cortex is trained to handle routine tasks. It can perform the steps required to drive a car or ride a bike without your having to pay much attention to doing it. You do it on sort of mental autopilot. Meanwhile, the amygdala is monitoring everything going on around you. It is dividing everything into "routine" or "non-routine". If routine, it takes no action, and leaves the part of the brain that handles non-routine matters - the sub-cortex - doing that job. But if something non-routine is sensed by the amygdala, it needs to engage the cortex. The cortex can handle non-routine situations with what is called "executive function", the decision-making part of the brain that can think outside the box and come up with a solution to non-routine situations. The amygdala causes the cortex to focus on the non-routine situation by triggering the release of stress hormones. Examples are driving your car on mental autopilot and someone pulls into your path, but also when a store offers a today only sale) Once engaged with the non-routine situation, your executive function is supposed to be able to quickly assess the situation and dispose of it either by a decision on how to deal with a non-routine threat, take advantage of a special price, or simply dismiss the non-routine situation as not worth doing anything about and not worth thinking further about. When you are in control of a situation - like driving a car - when you make a decision about what to do and commit to that decision, a signal is sent to the amygdala to stop releasing hormones. But when not in control, it isn't so easy. You don't have a choice between action and inaction, and when you can't see what is going on, it is hard to know it is OK to do nothing. If you were in the cockpit instead of in the passenger cabin, you could see what is going on and I'll bet you would have a pretty good flight. What goes wrong for fearful fliers? 1. Too much, too fast. On the plane, non-routine things can happen too fast for executive function to process them. If so, executive function shuts down. Being shut down, it can't signal the amygdala to stop producing stress hormones. The amygdala continues to release stress hormones, and the result is high anxiety or panic. 2. Impaired executive function. In this case, executive function can't deal with even one thing, unless it meets strict requirements. If not in control, the activity needs to be absolutely safe. As an adult, we need to recognize values are not absolute; they are relative. What some say is right, others says is wrong. As adults, we need to recognizes also that safety is relative, not absolute. But if the person stays trapped in absolute thinking, they can never feel secure because anything that does not fit in the absolutely safe category has to be put in the unsafe category. Thus, when not in control (in control, executive function would signal the amygdala to "chill out") if there is even a remote chance of an airline accident, the compromised executive function cannot dismiss the risk as too small to consider; instead, it remains obsessed with the fact that he or she is going to do something that is - according to the terms of absolute and concrete thinking - dangerous. Thus, the amygdala continues to release stress hormones, and anxiety remains a problem. Since none of this can be easily changed, what I have leaned to do is train the amygdala to NOT release the stress hormones. We look at the things we know you are going to run into on the plane and, ahead of time, train the amygdala not to react to those things. So, no stress hormones, no problem with any of those things listed above, even though you are not in control. To see how this is done, there is a video at http://www.fearofflying.com/ Yours truly, Tom