There’s something about being crammed into a tiny plane, thousands of feet above the ground, that can make even the calmest person’s stomach drop with flight anxiety. The tight space, dizzying heights, and unsettling thought that one malfunction could send you plummeting—it’s easy to see why flying instills panic among so many of us.
And if you’ve been keeping up with the news lately, it’s hard not to feel even more on edge. With stories of recent crashes (like the Jeju Air tragedy) alongside a string of other unexpected defects, injuries, and other controversies, you’re not alone if you’ve had an anxious thought or ten about the state of air travel safety.
Beyond recent events, though, flight anxiety is a pretty common phenomenon for a variety of reasons, Martin Seif, PhD, founder of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, tells SELF. Maybe you’ve had a scary experience previously or you’ve never flown before and aren’t sure what to expect. Not to mention, lots of people are nervous to get on a plane simply because they don’t understand how it functions. (It is kind of wild that these giant machines just…stay up like that.)
In more severe cases, this fear of flying (called aviophobia) can go beyond mild discomfort. It can trigger intense physical symptoms like hyperventilating and full-on panic attacks, along with avoidance behaviors like canceling trips altogether. Even if you don’t experience these extreme reactions, though, flight anxiety can still be a major challenge to deal with, Dr. Seif says, especially when hopping on a plane is your only option for an important business trip, a dream vacation abroad, or visiting your family.
While overcoming flight anxiety may not happen overnight, there are a few ways to keep this dread from taking over your life. Below, experts share some of their best tricks to stay calm and in control the next time you take to the skies.
1. Recognize your anxiety as discomfort, not danger.
Planes move fast, they make strange noises, and being thousands of feet in the air isn’t exactly a typical experience. So it makes sense that this environment can set off your flight-or-fight response—the mechanism behind your racing heart, sweaty palms, and nervous freakout. When that happens, your brain might convince you you’re in more trouble than you actually are. And while your first instinct may be to stop or deny these feelings, Dr. Seif says it’s actually more effective (and realistic) to “understand that anxiety is discomfort, but not danger.”
Here’s what we mean: Just because your brain feels like something’s wrong doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually in a life-and-death situation. According to Dr. Seif, this reaction is your body’s way of trying to protect you from what it thinks is a threat (even if sometimes it’s not)—which can kick in during unfamiliar yet safe scenarios, like being on a roller coaster or, yep, a cramped aircraft.
