Kate Ashley-Norman – is a long-time resident, entrepreneur, mum, and owner of The Didim Hypnotherapy Clinic
YESTERDAY I did something unavoidable that I hate doing – I flew (in a plane, not literally). It’s something that I have to do if I’m going to catch up with family and friends. But I put up with it. A couple of those little bottles of wine normally help too!
It wasn’t always like that. I remember as a young teenager when I started to be more adventurous, I absolutely loved flying – got a real thrill from the engines revving for take-off – loved the feel of the plane turning and swooping through the clouds as it climbed higher and higher. Every journey meant another step into growing independence – and this joy and enthrallment followed me through into my thirties.
Then on September 11, 2001, that image of two planes crashing into the Twin Towers in New York wormed its way into my psyche. This coincided with another major event in my life, meeting my husband in Istanbul. So for a few months after 9-11 I was hopping back and forth between Heathrow and Istanbul, ever more watchful, ever more vigilant. Ever more paranoid, every time I knew I had to get on a plane.
As our life together progressed and we produced one child after another, that fear of flying intensified. It wasn’t the Twin Towers I was seeing, but the absolutely inability, my ultimate feeling of powerlessness, to do anything to save my kids if the plane were going to go down.
The fear started building about a month before the departure date. I would dream about plane crashes, and wake in the obscure early hours trying to reverse the horrific emotions the dreams would rouse in me.
I would grab onto anything and everything that would give me some degree of comfort – to the point of imagining a fleet of angels keeping the plane up for me!
These days I don’t like flying – it’s uncomfortable and smelly, but is the quickest means of getting back to the UK. But I can put up with that for a few short hours, given the pleasure of arriving here. But the blind panic I used to feel as I strapped me and my kids in has gone.
The cold sweats and palpitating heart have calmed as we climb through the clouds. When turbulence hits, I understand what is happening and therefore no longer brace myself for that terrifying final nosedive into the mountains below.
I can quite categorically claim that I have cured myself of my fear of flying. How did I do that?
By learning that my phobia, like many fears and phobias, was based on my anticipating the worst possible outcome, and then imagining and brooding about it.
I learnt to manage my thinking, focusing on the positive outcome of arriving to see my friends and family, enjoying the rain, a darn good curry, proper Thai food, to the point when the journey merely became an irritating few hours to get through before I can get stuck in to UK life for a couple of weeks.
And now that my kids are getting older, and I am no longer constrained by having them toddling around the aisle, or stuck with one on my knee. I am actually beginning to enjoy the actual travelling bit again.
As we landed, my kids were treating it as a roller coaster, hands up in the air and squealing with pleasure and excitement. You know what? I joined in. What fun!