Hi all,
This is my first post here and it's this issue that has led me here so I hope this is the right place to discuss this.
I'll cut to the chase, next Saturday I fly on holiday for a week. When I was a kid, right up to my mid teens, I had no problem with flying at all. I used to love airports, I've always had a secret interest in venues like airports and stadiums and how they are designed, built and run. I had no issues with flying, only problem I ever had was that I got travel sick as a child but that was in a car, boat, train, coach or plane. I used to wear those little grey travel sickness bands that go around your wrist and nine times out of ten they worked. Either I cured it or I grew out of it as I haven't been sick traveling since I was a teenager and I'm now 30.
But something did happen when I was mid teens and that was something snapped and I developed a dominanting fear of flying. I've always been afraid of heights but it never stopped me when I was younger and I've been up high since the fear of flying kicked in but there's something different about a plane and height isn't the only issue. The lack of control can petrify me, as does the inability to escape. If I'm anxious about something else I walk from one room to the next, or sometimes go outside, and it calms me down. On a plane you obviously can't do that. Speed terrifies me too and the feeling of dropping makes me feel disconnected from my body. I went on a family holiday just shy of a decade ago and both flights were very difficult, I was constantly sweating, twitching with nerves, my mind kept drifting back to how high we were and with no escape and I suffered what I'm confident were frequent moderate panic attacks but hid them well from other passengers for fear of embarrassment but my family will tell you, I didn't hide them that well. Taking off was awful, the shape you feel the aircraft becomes feels so unnatural to me, landing was slightly better but I think that's because the adrenaline kicked in and I knew it was nearly over. The best feeling by a country mile was coming back in to Bristol and seeing the tops of the smaller trees that are cluttered around the runway, my mind was like we can touch the ground virtually from here and suddenly I felt fine.
I haven't flown since. I wouldn't say I've avoided it, but I would say there have been chances and I've not confronted them because of it. Next week I go away with my girlfriend and I want this to not dominate me. I thought it was doing pretty well in the lead up and not thinking about it but last few weeks it's interrupted my sleep, it's always there and I know as this week starts to go by I'm going to be very scared and most of all I want to beat this or at least work with it. I want to go around the world, I'm lucky that I can afford it, I lived in America and I want to go back.
Interestingly my grandad on my mums side who passed away before I was born suffered this, and for very similar reasons. He hated the unnaturalness of fast travelling, they couldn't even get him on a motorway. People have told me his reasons and experiences of flying and they are bang on same as mine. I'm not sure of this form of anxiety, or any, is possibly genetic but in some ways it is reassuring.
Anyway I'm going to the docs on Tuesday to talk about with him and see what he thinks. I work in pharmaceuticals so I know the range of calming script meds that he could prescribe but I also know as a first time case for him he may not want too at this stage and there would be limited time prior to the flight for me to test these and diazepam for example can make people so drowsy they appear very drunk, which can lead to rejection from flights. This flight is also four hours.
What I'm here for is any other advice anyone can offer me? Has anyone experienced this or similar? What do you take, use, plan to help counter it? I'll take any recommendation for over the counter lines but I tried Kalms last time and they are designed for mild anxities, they take the edge off leading up to flight but not I'm flight.
Appreciate everyone's help and happy new year to you all.