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Fears And Phobias

Flying

Solid detective work finds the true cause of a Fear of Flying

Important Note: This article was written prior to 2010 and is now outdated. Please use my newest advancement, Optimal EFT. It is more efficient, more powerful and clearly explained in my free e-book, The Unseen Therapist™.  Best wishes, Gary

Note: This article assumes you have a working knowledge of EFT. Newcomers can still learn from it but are advised to peruse our Free Gold Standard (Official) EFT Tutorial™ for a more complete understanding.

Hi Everyone,

The Fear of Flying is often an "easy fix" with EFT. But sometimes we have to dig for the true causes and that is where solid EFT skills are important. This article by Gillian Wightman of Scotland provides good skill building along these lines.

Hugs, Gary


By Gillian Wightman, EFTCert-I

Hi Gary

My husband asked me to see a client of his who had a fear of flying; she would just not fly and this was causing conflict with her husband.  She had been seeing my husband for a sore shoulder which seemed difficult to shift with physical therapy.  She showed visible signs of distress when even thinking about flying, with pale skin and a tense jaw, and hands gripping tightly, so we tapped on fear of thinking of flying.  Her anxiety came down enough to start being able to think about how she felt.

I then got her to think of what really disturbed her about flying. She came up with quite a list of aspects.

  • Just sitting on the plane, strapped in, not able to get out.
  • Way up high, falling, it would really hurt when she landed. (had to try not to smile at that one) I WILL die.
  • I hate the turbulence,
  • I hate the engine sounds, the rattling sounds It just doesn't feel safe, its dangerous A terrorist might slit my throat!
  • What if I can't put on my oxygen mask, what if mine didn't work I don't care what people say, I know flying is dangerous.

We did a few free-flowing tapping rounds, incorporating all of these things.  By this time her anxiety levels were down, her jaw was more relaxed and she was pinker – she had lost all colour at the beginning, the intensity was now 4 out of 10 – it had been 100. She felt no real response to the initial thoughts and she said she had no idea what was still bothering her.  I asked her if she had ever been able to fly and she said she had, she had flown to Canada but flying back she had first felt the terror.  I asked what happened on the flight and she said nothing, the flight was fine.  So we tapped:

Even though I might have a memory connected to flying, I don't know what it is yet, but I am open to knowing, and open to clearing that memory fully…

She blurted out,' What if I fall asleep and it crashes when I am asleep?'  Anxiety levels were visibly high and she rated them back up to a 9 on a scale of 0 to 10.  As I already ascertained nothing untoward had ever happened on a plane, but realised we had hit on something significant, I asked her if it was a familiar feeling.  She said it was and she started telling me about being in a car crash. I told her the intention was not to re-traumatise her so I asked her to step back from the memory and see it as a movie.

She called it 'The Nightmare.' We tapped on this and her intensity came down after tapping on this to a to 3 and she could then tell me the story of being asleep in the back of the car that crashed. She awoke at the jolt and the car landed upside down, she had to go to hospital and get her shoulder strapped up and she has had problems with the shoulder ever since. 

We did some rounds of tapping on the story.  Can you guess what's coming next? I asked her when did the accident happen?  She said it was in Canada the day before she flew back!  She flew back in pain and too afraid to go to sleep in case something happened.  This was the last piece of the puzzle and her anxiety was down to 0.  She could imagine being at the airport, getting on the plane, strapping in, lifting off, setting down, no problem. I explained to her the way the brain works is that if you can imagine something you can do it, but she also now knew how to do EFT if any feelings came up in real life.

A subsequent session revealed that she would be OK with flying to Europe but not America.  She had vivid memories of scenes on the news from 9/11 so we tapped on fears that a terrorist might be on the plane and on the specific images she was imagining.  She imagined a threatening Asian man and felt extreme anxiety.  Tapping for all fears and specific images allowed her to imagine an Asian man with calm and see that he was smiling and looking friendly.  She flew with ease that summer. Her shoulder also improved.

However a year later she flew again and on the way home she experienced more anxiety.  I received a phone call just before this year’s holiday where she told me she was terrified of flying again.

I knew she had flown out the year before and it was my suspicion something else had caused the anxiety which she assumed was the original flying fear.  Sometimes our conscious mind tries to look for reasons for our anxiety and we often land on the wrong one!

This time I got her to tap on her physical feelings and she realised she was feeling trapped.  The problem was anger about an event that had happened just a few days before. When we tapped for anger on this situation she realised she had no anxiety about flying and was excited about her holiday.  I got a postcard  from her, which said,  “Hiya, Just thought I would drop you a wee card to say we are having a great holiday.  The flight was good Gill, I almost enjoyed it.  Thanks!”

 

 

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