Speaker 1: This is the Anxiety Bites podcast and I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jen Kirkman. Hi, Welcome to another episode of Anxiety Bites.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jen Kirkman. Today is a little
Speaker 1: bit different. I'm doing a solo episode. I will be
Speaker 1: doing a few of these throughout the season, but I
Speaker 1: thought it would be fun. I guess to drop this
Speaker 1: episode on this particular Wednesday, which is known as the
Speaker 1: busiest travel day of the year. Maybe some of you
Speaker 1: are out there right now flying and you have a
Speaker 1: phobia of air travel like I did, and maybe maybe
Speaker 1: this will help. Maybe it won't. But I have a
Speaker 1: feeling that I have a lot to offer because I
Speaker 1: had a massive phobia of air travel for decades, and
Speaker 1: it is nothing short of a miracle to me that
Speaker 1: I am truly not a phobia flyer anymore at all.
Speaker 1: I can't believe it. In fact, how this podcast started
Speaker 1: was an idea that I had a couple of years
Speaker 1: ago where I wanted to be a fear of flying
Speaker 1: coach and I wanted to not not people who are
Speaker 1: afraid to fly coach. Don't don't misunderstand me. I wanted
Speaker 1: to be a coach for people who have a fear
Speaker 1: of flying, and I thought it would be cool to
Speaker 1: travel with people. I'd pay my own way and I
Speaker 1: would fly with you if you were a fearful flyer.
Speaker 1: And I thought, wouldn't that be kind of interesting to
Speaker 1: record that as a podcast or I don't know, as
Speaker 1: videos or something. And as I started to seriously think
Speaker 1: about how would I do this, uh, coronavirus hit and
Speaker 1: we were locked down, and I had no desire to
Speaker 1: get in a plane with strangers. And then so during
Speaker 1: that lockdown of when the idea for this podcast really
Speaker 1: was born. But it did kind of start with my
Speaker 1: desire to really help people who have a fear of flying.
Speaker 1: So I we'll break this podcast down into a few parts.
Speaker 1: I'm going to spend a lot of this podcast telling
Speaker 1: you my story of my fear of flying, what it
Speaker 1: was like, all of the ridiculous moments I had on
Speaker 1: airplanes because of this phobia, all of the things I
Speaker 1: gave up in life because I didn't want to get
Speaker 1: on a plane, the attempts I made at getting some
Speaker 1: recovery in this area that just didn't work. And what
Speaker 1: led me to, finally, I don't know, gain control of
Speaker 1: this that that's a bad term to use, but to
Speaker 1: master this. I will also provide statistics and tips and
Speaker 1: information about airplanes and about what's actually happening to us
Speaker 1: when we're on planes, whether it's claustrophobia or something else.
Speaker 1: And then I will end the episode with a progressive
Speaker 1: muscle relaxation. But let's just begin with my story. I
Speaker 1: don't really remember the first moment that I realized I
Speaker 1: had a phobia of flying. I really don't know, but
Speaker 1: I know that the beginnings of it all went something
Speaker 1: like this. I was about seven or eight years old.
Speaker 1: I kept seeing commercials for Disney World on TV. I
Speaker 1: lived in Massachusetts. I have two older sisters. They were
Speaker 1: so much older than me that they already weren't living
Speaker 1: at home anymore. My parents and my sisters used to
Speaker 1: vacation down in Florida once in a while. They would
Speaker 1: drive all the way from Massachusetts to Florida. But in
Speaker 1: the eighties, I feel like air travel was starting to become,
Speaker 1: you know, not something that just rich people did. And
Speaker 1: so I think I asked my parents can we fly
Speaker 1: to Disney World? And I'd never been anywhere before outside
Speaker 1: of Massachusetts and maybe New Hampshire, but they said yes,
Speaker 1: and I think I was excited, and I know that
Speaker 1: the whole thing was my idea. And then I think
Speaker 1: by the time that trip was over, I had a
Speaker 1: full blown phobia of air travel. I do remember my
Speaker 1: first flight. I remember my my dad being fascinated with
Speaker 1: the cockpit that you know, again this is the early eighties.
Speaker 1: The pilot would stand there in front of the cockpit door.
Speaker 1: The door would be open and you could basically walk
Speaker 1: into the cockpit if you want to do. And my
Speaker 1: dad asked the pilot and can we get a little tour?
Speaker 1: And I think I remember feeling anxious then that was
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by all the buttons and dials, as though they
Speaker 1: were going to ask me to fly the plane. And
Speaker 1: then I swear I'm not making this up. There was
Speaker 1: a spiral staircase on on the airplane. I think it
Speaker 1: was Eastern Airlines. I mean, I know that staircases on
Speaker 1: planes are a thing on some flights. Uh, It's just
Speaker 1: one of those weird memory things. Did did that really
Speaker 1: happen on my first flight or did I make that up?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but in my memory, I think I
Speaker 1: did see a spiral staircase and I just thought, well, wait,
Speaker 1: what like, this is too many this is too many
Speaker 1: things in the in the plane. What do you mean
Speaker 1: there's a first class lounge up there, that there's stairs?
Speaker 1: I mean, isn't this too heavy? How's it gonna stay
Speaker 1: in the air? All that kind of thing. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know where the you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: about what what's going on in my brain. Where I
Speaker 1: see a cockpit and I immediately think the pilot's going
Speaker 1: to be too overwhelmed to fly. Where I see a
Speaker 1: glamorous nighties spiral staircase on a plane and I think
Speaker 1: that there's too many levels on this plane, it's too
Speaker 1: heavy to stay in this guy, I don't know where
Speaker 1: that negative thought pattern came from. It it's not important
Speaker 1: to my recovery in a way. But one thing I
Speaker 1: do remember, and again I think I remember this. I
Speaker 1: swear my mother took out her rosary beads during takeoff. Now,
Speaker 1: my parents did not have a fear of flying, as
Speaker 1: far as I knew, but they didn't fly often. It
Speaker 1: might have even been my mom's first flight as well.
Speaker 1: I said, don't remember. But we weren't very religious Catholics.
Speaker 1: We went to church once a week and then that
Speaker 1: was it. We don't talk about God outside of the church,
Speaker 1: and you know, the rosary beads only came out in
Speaker 1: an emergency, you know, and so that signaled to me
Speaker 1: that something was maybe an emergency. And then my dad
Speaker 1: was clutching the seat during takeoff, going here we go,
Speaker 1: here we go, here we go. You know, was he
Speaker 1: trying to act excited, was he really anxious? Was my
Speaker 1: mom anxious or did she find it normal to take
Speaker 1: out the rosary beads. I don't know, but I don't
Speaker 1: think their behavior is to blame, because I really think
Speaker 1: I'm on a plane. I'm a tiny person, right, I'm
Speaker 1: seven years old, and I had never been in a
Speaker 1: vehicle that was moving so fast. I mean, these things
Speaker 1: are speeding down the runway, and then sounds are so loud,
Speaker 1: and their new sounds, and they're not sounds I'm used to.
Speaker 1: And then that feeling of this big thing rising off
Speaker 1: of the ground and you hear the wheels coming up
Speaker 1: and clunking, and it's a very strange feeling. I mean,
Speaker 1: now to me it's like, oh yeah, whatever. But back then,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it caused as a lot of things do.
Speaker 1: The first time we feel them, a little bit of sensations,
Speaker 1: a little bit of sweaty palms, my heart's racing. It
Speaker 1: could have just been excitement, but it immediately went to anxiety.
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty sure I probably had a panic attack.
Speaker 1: I just don't remember, but I do know that ever
Speaker 1: since that first round trip flight, I identified as someone
Speaker 1: with a fear of flying, and I thought it was
Speaker 1: very normal. I talked about it as though, well, we
Speaker 1: should have a fear of flying. I talked about it
Speaker 1: like it was a fear of I don't know, jumping
Speaker 1: out of an airplane without a parachute, as though that
Speaker 1: was the same thing, you know. And every year we
Speaker 1: went to Disney World, and that was the only time
Speaker 1: I flew once a year, round trip, three hour flight
Speaker 1: from Boston to Orlando. And every year, the anticipation before
Speaker 1: the flight, I don't know, probably began a month before
Speaker 1: every trip, just almost planning to be anxious. Now I
Speaker 1: didn't have the words anxious or panic, but afraid, I
Speaker 1: guess I knew the word afraid. I guess I would
Speaker 1: have put it that way. I'm afraid to fly. And
Speaker 1: of course, you know what, what we're all getting wrong
Speaker 1: when we say that is we're not afraid to fly.
Speaker 1: We're afraid to feel anxious while in an airplane. We're
Speaker 1: afraid of whatever the unknown. We're afraid of a plane crash.
Speaker 1: But we're really not afraid to fly because flying is
Speaker 1: a great sensation. But I mean, it would just it
Speaker 1: got to the point where I couldn't even enjoy my
Speaker 1: time in Disney World because I was worrying about the
Speaker 1: flight back. And then when I was about eleven or
Speaker 1: twelve years old, maybe thirteen, I would say to my friends, well,
Speaker 1: I'm probably going to die this week because I'm getting
Speaker 1: on a plane. And I don't remember what their reactions were.
Speaker 1: I was always the kid that was thinking about that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, so I think they were used to
Speaker 1: it by then, because I'd probably been talking about nuclear war,
Speaker 1: you know, for some all during the eighties as well.
Speaker 1: I remember writing a will on a cocktail napkin on
Speaker 1: a flight down to Florida, writing, you know, to my
Speaker 1: friends SHAWNA and Terry, you can have this record of mine,
Speaker 1: you can have this T shirt of mine. I don't
Speaker 1: know why I thought if there was a plane crash
Speaker 1: that a cocktail napkin would survive, but I don't know
Speaker 1: what a weird thing to do is to sit with
Speaker 1: pen and paper and almost um, not glorified, but give
Speaker 1: in to your worst fears. And after that trip, I
Speaker 1: just couldn't handle what felt like a three hour I
Speaker 1: can't breathe feeling. And I said to my parents, it's
Speaker 1: not worth it anymore. I don't want to fly. I
Speaker 1: don't want to go on these vacations. And it's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not tragic story. I was thirteen, it's fine, like,
Speaker 1: we don't need to keep going to disney World. Now
Speaker 1: I'm you know, becoming a teenager. And you know, even
Speaker 1: though I loved disney World and still do you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta actually I think it's corny and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: But you know, okay, great, so you say, well, some
Speaker 1: people never get to go to Disney World. What's what's
Speaker 1: the big issue it is on it? But it was
Speaker 1: just that I had trained myself to believe something that
Speaker 1: totally was not true, that I was participating in something
Speaker 1: very dangerous, and I was tired of risking my life,
Speaker 1: you know, And I just continued to have an anxiety
Speaker 1: disorder after that, unrelated to being in airplanes. You'll hear
Speaker 1: me talk about it on other episodes with guests, so
Speaker 1: I won't get into it. We'll just stick to the flying.
Speaker 1: But then I went to college, um, you know, only
Speaker 1: twenty minutes away from where I grew up, and there
Speaker 1: were a few things at my college where you could
Speaker 1: go study abroad, and I didn't do that because I
Speaker 1: was too afraid to fly. And I just thought, I mean,
Speaker 1: I even looked down on the the other kids that
Speaker 1: went and thought, God, they're risking their life just to
Speaker 1: go to Amsterdam. I mean, I mean, I really thought
Speaker 1: this was a risk. Now, I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: know what kind of things got in my head. I
Speaker 1: remember when I was in eleventh grade in high school,
Speaker 1: I was taking French as my language elective, and there
Speaker 1: was talk of maybe we go on a field trip
Speaker 1: to France, and the first Iraq War had just started,
Speaker 1: and some of the moms got together and talked to
Speaker 1: the principle and they said they were worried about just
Speaker 1: overall terrorism in the world, and and hijacking of planes
Speaker 1: was kind of a big thing in the eighties, and
Speaker 1: this was like early nineties. But I don't know if
Speaker 1: they were worried about that. So we decided we'll just
Speaker 1: take a bus and go up to Montreal. And I
Speaker 1: was so relieved, and I can't believe I was relieved
Speaker 1: and was like, oh good, I'm going to get on
Speaker 1: a Grayhound bus. But you know that's what a fear
Speaker 1: flying will do. So then I get out of college
Speaker 1: and I just, yeah, I'm never going to get on
Speaker 1: a plane again, is what I think. And my mom
Speaker 1: found this I don't know article in the Boston Globe
Speaker 1: about a class you could take at the airport at
Speaker 1: Logan Airport in Boston, and it was a class for
Speaker 1: fearful flyers taught by a psychiatrist named Dr al four
Speaker 1: Gioni Rest in Peace, Dr l And it was called
Speaker 1: Logan's Heroes, which, if you don't understand, is a pun.
Speaker 1: There was a TV show, a comedy about Nazis called
Speaker 1: Hogan's Heroes. Anyway, that we were Logan's hero So I
Speaker 1: sign up for the class, and now my fear of
Speaker 1: flying is so bad that I can't even be on
Speaker 1: the highway driving to the airport. And you start to
Speaker 1: see those signs for the airport. That is when the
Speaker 1: insane panic attacks would begin, the kind of panic attacks
Speaker 1: where my entire body. I'm not joking, head to toe,
Speaker 1: violent shaking and shivering. If I were driving a car,
Speaker 1: probably would crash it into the guardrail. And so my
Speaker 1: dad would drive me to the airport every Tuesday night
Speaker 1: from six to nine pm to take this class with
Speaker 1: Dr Al four GIONI. It was in the Delta Airlines lounge.
Speaker 1: You know, this is pre n eleven, pre security at airports.
Speaker 1: I mean this is this is almost like right at
Speaker 1: the gate, you know. And we met Dr Al and
Speaker 1: I'm the youngest person in class by twenty years. Everyone
Speaker 1: in there, there's probably maybe eight other people, and yeah,
Speaker 1: they're all in their forties and their fifties. A lot
Speaker 1: of it is their kids left home for the first time,
Speaker 1: their kids, you know, went to college somewhere out of state,
Speaker 1: or they got married and moved away, and the parents
Speaker 1: are afraid to get on planes to visit them. They
Speaker 1: don't know what's happening. They've never had this fear. It
Speaker 1: was sort of came on them in midlife. And they
Speaker 1: all had different things. And yeah, they all had physical
Speaker 1: anxiety like me, but they also had other stuff that
Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily have. You know, some of them just um,
Speaker 1: I didn't like being strapped in in a seatbelt. That
Speaker 1: didn't bother me. Some of them were really afraid of terrorism.
Speaker 1: I don't think I was totally that afraid of it.
Speaker 1: That we all had different things, but I really felt
Speaker 1: like I was the only one that was sitting there
Speaker 1: in the room not able to breathe, just because I
Speaker 1: was simply in the airport. I mean, I was getting
Speaker 1: lightheaded just sitting at the table, and we were in
Speaker 1: this room that was just wall to wall windows. The
Speaker 1: windows were shut, the shades were shut, and Dr L
Speaker 1: opened the shade a little bit and you could see
Speaker 1: the nose of a plane just right there. And I
Speaker 1: swear to you it was as though I was on
Speaker 1: a plane that was taking off. The panic was intense.
Speaker 1: And he shut the shade and said, we're not there
Speaker 1: yet where we can look at the planes, but that's
Speaker 1: what's coming, and pretty soon every class the shades will
Speaker 1: be open and we'll just be watching planes take off
Speaker 1: in the background. I mean, just that thought to me
Speaker 1: was like, I I can't come back to this class.
Speaker 1: But I loved Dr L. I loved his irreverence, and
Speaker 1: I always think I want to be a doctor al
Speaker 1: in term of the way I approached talking about anxiety.
Speaker 1: He was so well, he just didn't have anxiety, but
Speaker 1: he understood what it was. And again this is you
Speaker 1: could still smoke inside back in those days, and he
Speaker 1: would drink his coffee, he would eat McDonald's and smoke
Speaker 1: cigarettes while he taught class. And every week we'd go
Speaker 1: over a different aspect of, you know, working on our anxiety,
Speaker 1: and and one of the weeks he talked about the
Speaker 1: things we put in our body and how it affects us.
Speaker 1: You know, drinking a pepsi or a coke on the
Speaker 1: plane is just full of sugar and that is going
Speaker 1: to go straight to your adrenals and it's going to
Speaker 1: make you anxious. Drinking coffee, I mean, this seems so obvious,
Speaker 1: but you know, you might not think about that stuff.
Speaker 1: Drinking coffee, um, drinking alcohol. You may feel like it's
Speaker 1: calming you down, but it's dehydrating you. It's removing important
Speaker 1: electrolytes from your body, which you know you're you're getting
Speaker 1: dehydrated and kind of losing electrolytes when you're up in
Speaker 1: the air anyway, so it's really important to stay hydrated.
Speaker 1: It actually really helps your nervous system, and so alcohol
Speaker 1: can end up feeling a little bit at first like
Speaker 1: it's helping, but then eventually it just turns into sugar
Speaker 1: and you're anxious and hydrated and possibly drunk. And so
Speaker 1: he said no alcohol. And again this is I think
Speaker 1: you could still smoke on planes at this point, and
Speaker 1: he said no smoking. And so this woman said, well,
Speaker 1: dr al, you're sitting there drinking coffee and smoking. How
Speaker 1: come you can do it? And he said, I'm not
Speaker 1: the one who's anxious, and he had the greatest Boxton accent.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you had to be there, but
Speaker 1: every week it was a new thing. One week we
Speaker 1: had a pilot come in and answered all of our questions,
Speaker 1: is turbulence? Okay, what about if the plane gets hit
Speaker 1: by lightning? And he explained to us that a plane
Speaker 1: could still get hit by lightning and be okay. In fact,
Speaker 1: some planes, if they get hit on the nose with
Speaker 1: lightning what's called a great ball of fire, can travel
Speaker 1: down the aisle and everything will still be fine. I remember,
Speaker 1: I think the movie Apollo thirteen had just come out,
Speaker 1: and this one woman in classed, no, no, what if
Speaker 1: the plane, Um, it just goes too high and and
Speaker 1: and you know, we're trapped in space. And he said, well, ma'am,
Speaker 1: planes can't leave the Earth's atmosphere. And then she she
Speaker 1: seemed embarrassed that she'd have been asked, and she want,
Speaker 1: are fine, I didn't know. I'm not a pilot, and
Speaker 1: he said, that's okay, ma'am, there's no stupid questions. She
Speaker 1: was like, well, clearly there is. Like I don't know
Speaker 1: what's gone on with her. That day, there was another
Speaker 1: woman in the class who was taking the class because
Speaker 1: she had tickets to fly the Concorde. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you remember that, uh that that plane is not
Speaker 1: in use anymore. It used to fly you from America
Speaker 1: to Europe in three hours and it went like supersonically high,
Speaker 1: and she was afraid of that, and so she wanted
Speaker 1: to take this class in order to get on the Concorde.
Speaker 1: And she was like this fancy, very wealthy woman. And
Speaker 1: you know, one class we learned about progressive muscle relaxation,
Speaker 1: which again is my favorite thing in the world for anxiety.
Speaker 1: I can't believe I haven't talked about it more on
Speaker 1: this podcast, but it's basically as simple as tightening musts
Speaker 1: and then releasing them. I did talk about it a
Speaker 1: little on the Doctor Lauana Marquez episode, But what Dr
Speaker 1: Al taught us is you can't just go on a
Speaker 1: plane with anxiety and start jumping into your solutions thinking
Speaker 1: that the work if you haven't practiced when you're not
Speaker 1: on the plane. And so every night I listened to
Speaker 1: a tape that's right at cassette tape narrated by Dr
Speaker 1: Al himself, and I would do progressive muscle relaxation in
Speaker 1: my parents living room. It was about a twenty minute
Speaker 1: tape and I did it every night. And the reason
Speaker 1: you do that is because you're most likely not panicking
Speaker 1: when you're at home in the living room and you
Speaker 1: go through the progressive muscle relaxation and you teach your
Speaker 1: body that first of all, just doing it is relaxing,
Speaker 1: but you do it in a safe space, and you
Speaker 1: do it every night, so that if you have a flight,
Speaker 1: you know in six weeks, you do it every night
Speaker 1: for six weeks, and then when you get on the plane,
Speaker 1: you start going into your progressive muscle relaxation and something
Speaker 1: in your body kind of clicks and says, this is
Speaker 1: what we do in a safe space. And it's not
Speaker 1: the only thing. You're not going to be cured of
Speaker 1: your fear flying if you do that. But it's a
Speaker 1: really good tool. But to really, really really have it work,
Speaker 1: you must practice progressive muscle relaxation every day leading up
Speaker 1: to the thing that you're going to use progressive muscle
Speaker 1: relaxation for. We learned about relaxing our bodies. We learned
Speaker 1: about not putting all of you know, sugar, alcohol, caffeine,
Speaker 1: tobacco into our systems. We had the pilot teach us things.
Speaker 1: We learned how to rate our anxiety on a scale
Speaker 1: of zero to ten. And throughout this I think it
Speaker 1: was an eight to ten week course. Throughout these weeks,
Speaker 1: we began to rate our anxiety at the beginning of
Speaker 1: every class, and mine was still pretty up there. I
Speaker 1: mean mine was a five, and other people would be
Speaker 1: like a two. I'm at a two, I'm at a zero.
Speaker 1: I loved the class though, and I loved listening to
Speaker 1: the relaxation and tapes every night and again that that
Speaker 1: great Boston accent of dr Al. Relax your cobs, relax
Speaker 1: your arms. So the class would culminate in a round
Speaker 1: trip flight from Boston's Logan Airport, Logan's Heroes to LaGuardia,
Speaker 1: New York and back. That's a forty five minute flight
Speaker 1: each way, so ninety minutes to and the class before
Speaker 1: the final flight, we just went on a plane and
Speaker 1: I was so afraid to get on the plane. I
Speaker 1: didn't trust the doctor. I thought that they were going
Speaker 1: to somehow get a pilot in there and have the
Speaker 1: plane take off. Go ah see. I knew you guys
Speaker 1: could do it. I was terrified. I didn't like being
Speaker 1: on the plane. And everybody else in the class when
Speaker 1: they walked on the plane and we sat down and
Speaker 1: we put our seatbelt on, and we started doing the
Speaker 1: progressive muscle relaxation. We started practicing getting used to feeling
Speaker 1: like being on a plane. Everyone else and Dr al
Speaker 1: Mans d he's down to a one or two. Mine
Speaker 1: was twenty. And I did not know how I was
Speaker 1: going to handle the flight. The next week and we
Speaker 1: all showed up at the airport again, paid cash for
Speaker 1: our flights. I don't even think you had to show
Speaker 1: your I D. I mean, I feel like it was
Speaker 1: I feel like, how am I not a hundred years old?
Speaker 1: Stories like that, And at the last minute. I got
Speaker 1: so scared, I asked my mom to join me on
Speaker 1: the flight because my parents were with me at the airport. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know why I asked my mom. Isn't like
Speaker 1: she was some like fearless flying you know, dynamo. I mean,
Speaker 1: she wasn't a fearful flyer, but she wild. She didn't
Speaker 1: sit near me, she she just was on the plane.
Speaker 1: I think my reasoning for that was there was something
Speaker 1: in the back of my head that's like, I don't
Speaker 1: want my mom to dine. If I really thought we
Speaker 1: were going to dine in this plane, I wouldn't ask
Speaker 1: her to come on. So it was like that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. So I was sitting next to the doctor
Speaker 1: and we get on the plane and there are you know,
Speaker 1: quote normal people on this flight to their business people
Speaker 1: going from Boston to New York City in the morning.
Speaker 1: This is a weekday morning. And we're sitting there on
Speaker 1: the flight and uh Dr Al says b again the
Speaker 1: relaxation and he is calling out to us the progressive
Speaker 1: muscle relaxation moves and people are turning around, and he goes,
Speaker 1: these are fearless flyers. These are Logan's heroes. They have
Speaker 1: taken this class to overcome their fear of flying, and
Speaker 1: and everyone started applauding, Oh good for you. So we're
Speaker 1: up there and I am terrified. I mean, I do
Speaker 1: not relate to anyone. I am white knuckling. The doctor
Speaker 1: is taking my hand and trying to un white knuckle it,
Speaker 1: and he's saying, Jennifer, are you really this afraid? And
Speaker 1: I said yeah, and he's like, you know, he seems
Speaker 1: so disappointed. Now as a hyper vigilant, anxious person, I
Speaker 1: was counting down these seconds until the flight was going
Speaker 1: to land, and I knew we were over New York City,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, why aren't we landing? And nobody else
Speaker 1: is noticing. They're all looking out the window. They're they're
Speaker 1: like practically like face smosh, like like they're trying to
Speaker 1: jump out the window. Doctor. All my anxiety is a zero.
Speaker 1: I love it up here. I love it, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I hate the right brothers. Why did they have to
Speaker 1: invent flight? We should all just stay on the ground.
Speaker 1: It's so much easier. I am freaking out and I
Speaker 1: am saying why aren't we landing? And the pilots like
Speaker 1: we're going to circle the airport and I don't want
Speaker 1: why why are we circling? Why? What's going on? I'd
Speaker 1: never been in a plane that had to circle before.
Speaker 1: It seemed like something really bad must be happening, which
Speaker 1: if your pilot ever has to circle the airport, that
Speaker 1: thing bad is happening. But anyway, we landed late. But
Speaker 1: when we got to the airport there was a different
Speaker 1: vibe than had been at the Boston airport. And again
Speaker 1: this is so pre nine eleven, well but five years.
Speaker 1: But there was no going through our bags or metal detectors.
Speaker 1: That was not a thing. But there was some It
Speaker 1: wasn't the National Guard, but it was some uniformed people there,
Speaker 1: and we had to, you know, go back in the
Speaker 1: airport and get our boarding pass for the flight back
Speaker 1: to Boston, and you know, get back in line. And
Speaker 1: and they went through our purses, and it was like
Speaker 1: the injustice of it. What don't mean you're going through
Speaker 1: my things? And that the fancy woman had this really
Speaker 1: elaborate pen, and I remember that they're dismantling my pen.
Speaker 1: They were taking her pen apart. And I said to
Speaker 1: the doctor, why is this like weird swat team going
Speaker 1: through our things? What is going on? Why was the
Speaker 1: why was the flight circling? And uh? Because I saw
Speaker 1: the doctor talking to one of these security guys. And
Speaker 1: the doctor was like, alright, alright, don't tell the other people.
Speaker 1: There was a little incident with a bomb threat. It's fine.
Speaker 1: I'm like, a bomb threat. What happened? And he's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know. There was a bomb threat in the
Speaker 1: parking garage, but it's all set. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: did they find a bomb? No? And I said, well
Speaker 1: did they find the person? He said no. I said, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. I'm supposed to feel better that there
Speaker 1: was a bomb threat, but no bomb or person was found.
Speaker 1: So we just keep going. I mean, we don't shut
Speaker 1: it down until we absolutely find a bomb. If we
Speaker 1: have to take apart the entire airport, brick by brick,
Speaker 1: what if what if the bomb is on a plane.
Speaker 1: That's so that's where the guy put it. He was
Speaker 1: hiding in the parking garage and and the you know,
Speaker 1: the authorities were called, and then he went, oh, I
Speaker 1: gotta go, and he ran then put it on a
Speaker 1: plane when no one was looking, and the doctor was like, Jennifer, please,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. So we get back on the
Speaker 1: flight or not get back on the flight. But we
Speaker 1: go in the next plate, flying home again. Everyone's like, Doctor,
Speaker 1: my anxiety is at a zero. My anxiety is nine
Speaker 1: billion trillion now at this point, because I am convinced
Speaker 1: there's a bomb on the plane and that nobody looked
Speaker 1: thoroughly enough, and I am just I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: believe it didn't break Dr Alfour June's arm. I am
Speaker 1: just gripping his arm. My mom's in the back of
Speaker 1: the plane waving high. I'm trying to do my breathing,
Speaker 1: but it's coming out, and I'm staying to the doctor. Basically,
Speaker 1: I'm saying, look at these idiots with their anxieties at
Speaker 1: a zero. You know, they should know that they're sitting
Speaker 1: here not feeling anxious, but there was a bomb threat
Speaker 1: at the airport. They need to know the truth. And
Speaker 1: he's like, they don't need to know the truth. It
Speaker 1: makes no difference. You know, these things happen sometimes. You
Speaker 1: you still, this is not an excuse to be anxious,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm yelling. They need to know the truth.
Speaker 1: I'm not yelling it. So we land and then I
Speaker 1: tell I said, can I tell the class can't find it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, there was a bomb threat LaGuardia just and
Speaker 1: they're like, they're even more delighted that. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, they're more delighted that they heard about
Speaker 1: it and went, oh well, I mean I think I
Speaker 1: still would have gotten on the plane because I wasn't
Speaker 1: anxious and I thought I was gonna I don't know
Speaker 1: what I was trying to do. I was just trying
Speaker 1: to get someone to be anxious because I thought it
Speaker 1: was I thought it was such a freak for being anxious.
Speaker 1: And the doctor took me aside and said, I think
Speaker 1: you have more than a phobia of flying. I think
Speaker 1: you have an anxiety to order. And you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know if he used those exact words, but I
Speaker 1: think he said, like, you're anxious. And we did use
Speaker 1: the word anxiety in the in the Fear of Flying class,
Speaker 1: but but he he got it through my head that
Speaker 1: I maybe just anxious in general. And you know, I
Speaker 1: started going to talk therapy and I learned, how do
Speaker 1: you know not really have panic attack? I was having
Speaker 1: panic attacks everywhere, So I was trying to deal with
Speaker 1: places I went to every day. First, before I thought
Speaker 1: about going to therapy for this fear of flying. I mean,
Speaker 1: honest to God, after that class, I thought it didn't
Speaker 1: work for me. So I will stay put where I
Speaker 1: am in this abject fear of flying. And I don't
Speaker 1: need to fly anywhere, and I don't have any money
Speaker 1: anywhe I'm a broke post college student with student debt
Speaker 1: and a degree in theater. So here I am a
Speaker 1: waitress and you know where are my flying Cut to
Speaker 1: maybe five years later and living in New York City,
Speaker 1: I'm a you know, working a day job as a
Speaker 1: temp and I'm doing stand up at night and uh
Speaker 1: dating this guy and his friend is getting married in Italy.
Speaker 1: They're they're having some kind of you know, he's marrying
Speaker 1: some fancy lady. And the whole thing is paid for.
Speaker 1: My boyfriend at the time was in the wedding party.
Speaker 1: He got a free flight, including my ticket. If I
Speaker 1: had gone to pose Atano, Italy, staying in like a
Speaker 1: little cottage, just first class all the way flight to Italy.
Speaker 1: Now I wouldn't go. Now. The reason I wouldn't go
Speaker 1: is because of a few things I had flown since
Speaker 1: the fear of flying. Class. I had flown to and
Speaker 1: from Los Angeles. I had been booked to perform stand
Speaker 1: up comedy on this little Comedy Central show that hasn't
Speaker 1: been on the air in twenty years, and I knew
Speaker 1: I have to get on this plane. I nothing more
Speaker 1: than to do my first television appearance. And I was
Speaker 1: seeing a talk therapist at the time and a psychiatrist
Speaker 1: because I was on antidepressants, and he prescribed at a
Speaker 1: van I think it was zan X for the flight,
Speaker 1: and I swear I don't remember any instructions about how
Speaker 1: to take the Zanex. I just knew how many you
Speaker 1: could take, and then you stop at that certain amount,
Speaker 1: don't take more than that. And I go to the airport.
Speaker 1: I mean, by myself. It was terrifying, and I can't
Speaker 1: swallow when I'm anxious, and so I couldn't take the Zanex.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought to take it before going to the airport.
Speaker 1: I I don't know what I thought. I wasn't thinking
Speaker 1: preventatively about, oh, the anxious feelings will come. I just
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's out of my mind, and so
Speaker 1: I couldn't swallow. I could not get that pill down.
Speaker 1: I was just like, I'm going to die. I can't breathe.
Speaker 1: I feel feelings of unreality. I feel like I'm fainting.
Speaker 1: My heart is racing, my palms are sweaty. I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm going crazy. I'm just going to explode. I'm
Speaker 1: just going to die. This is unsafe. I'll never be said.
Speaker 1: I mean, just intense. And I just remember seeing a
Speaker 1: pilot sitting in a restaurant at the airport and I
Speaker 1: went up to him and said, I mean, I couldn't
Speaker 1: even speak, and I said, it's flying really safe? Is
Speaker 1: flying really safe? I was acting like I don't even
Speaker 1: know what a child maybe, and He's like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very safe. And I have to go to l
Speaker 1: A and I, I mean, I was just like that,
Speaker 1: and um, he said you might want to go up
Speaker 1: to the gate and ask them for help getting on
Speaker 1: the plane. I said, I'd take this medication. He said
Speaker 1: you should take it now, and maybe he was basically suggesting,
Speaker 1: like maybe someone canna help you walk on the plane.
Speaker 1: You can get a little wheelchair thing, And so I
Speaker 1: felt safe next to him. So I took one of
Speaker 1: the Zanex and I swallowed it down and almost choked.
Speaker 1: And then I because my throat was so closed up
Speaker 1: and then I went to the gate and I said,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to bother you. Can you look up is
Speaker 1: there anything to look up? Trains? Trains to um Los Angeles?
Speaker 1: Is there an amtrak? I mean literally asking the gate
Speaker 1: agent she's taking tickets, I mean the plane is boarding,
Speaker 1: and she's like no, and I'm like, I think, you
Speaker 1: know there's no internet back that this is like I
Speaker 1: think I could I think I could him. I think
Speaker 1: I could take trying to California. And you know, I
Speaker 1: was working it out in my head, and you know,
Speaker 1: the t V taping was the next day, so I
Speaker 1: don't think I get the train would get there in time.
Speaker 1: And I just find myself on the plane and it's
Speaker 1: huge the plane. I'm one of these weird people that
Speaker 1: when I'm anxious, I don't like big, wide open spaces.
Speaker 1: So some people might like a big plane with um
Speaker 1: you know, this plane was like three seats than an aisle,
Speaker 1: than five, than an aisle, than three or two five
Speaker 1: and two or something like that. But I'd rather get
Speaker 1: on something smaller that just feels like, hey, we're all
Speaker 1: in this together, you know. I just want that tight,
Speaker 1: compressed feeling. And I was in the middle seat of
Speaker 1: the five seats, and it just felt, oh god, so untethered.
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting there and I had bought a stuffed
Speaker 1: animal at the airport and I'm I'm just hugging this
Speaker 1: duck and and had a tag on it that said, Hi,
Speaker 1: my name is Honks, and I'm whispering to it hawks
Speaker 1: Hong songs like that, and I want to take another
Speaker 1: dand next, but I can't swallow. I have no idea
Speaker 1: when is the first one going to kick in. I
Speaker 1: don't have any idea that it takes, you know, thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: I the first one still hadn't kicked in, and I'm
Speaker 1: sitting there and the plane is starting to TAXI, and
Speaker 1: I again, as though it's this feat of bravery, I
Speaker 1: swallow down another Zanex because again, my throat is so
Speaker 1: close up it feels like to swallow any water is
Speaker 1: to choke. And I'm just I'm getting to the point
Speaker 1: where I don't know how my heart could beat any faster.
Speaker 1: I don't know how these feelings of unreality could not
Speaker 1: Just how did I not faint? I don't know. And
Speaker 1: the plane is taxing down the runway and I just think, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can't do it. I gotta get off. If I
Speaker 1: get to the cockpit, I can just be like, can
Speaker 1: you just slow down? I'm just gonna get off. I
Speaker 1: need to get off. It's an emergency. I was gonna
Speaker 1: even lie and say I was having a heart attack.
Speaker 1: And I run up the aisle as the plane is
Speaker 1: starting to go faster and faster, as it's almost lifting
Speaker 1: it's wheels off the ground, and it is going faster
Speaker 1: and faster, and the flight attendants, two of them, these
Speaker 1: two women, see me. And again, these are when flights
Speaker 1: used to be pretty empty. There was not that many
Speaker 1: people on it. My entire row was empty. They came
Speaker 1: and not tackled me. This this you know again you
Speaker 1: hear a story about someone running up towards the cockpit.
Speaker 1: It sounds like these people that are getting duct taped.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is just not that world. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is back when you could run up on a on
Speaker 1: a on a takeoff and and they kind of went
Speaker 1: and mam, sit down, sit down, I said, reading And
Speaker 1: they never being a heart attack, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they know panic when they see it. So I couldn't
Speaker 1: get them to stop the plane. And I asked politely,
Speaker 1: I said, do you think if there's any chance, but
Speaker 1: like it's still really really again. And I told them
Speaker 1: the zand X isn't working, so it must be really bad.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's anxiety, think it's a heart attack,
Speaker 1: because they still feel this and and uh, I took
Speaker 1: one more and they sat with me. Um. I might
Speaker 1: be getting this a little wrong because but I feel
Speaker 1: like they they sat with me on takeoff. I might
Speaker 1: be wrong, but if not, it was one second after takeoff,
Speaker 1: once they were able to stand up, and they lifted
Speaker 1: up all of the arm rests and they got pillows
Speaker 1: and blankets and this is not first class. And they
Speaker 1: kind of tucked me in and let me lay down
Speaker 1: and gave me my duck. How humiliating. That's how scared.
Speaker 1: I wasn't even care. And they put the seatbelt around me,
Speaker 1: and one of them sat with me and kind of
Speaker 1: like patted my hand, and I just at that point
Speaker 1: all three of the Zanex must have kicked in and
Speaker 1: I passed out and I woke up in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: and I was really pretty drugged. And that was how
Speaker 1: I flew. So that was and the flight back. I
Speaker 1: literally when I say I don't remember, I mean I
Speaker 1: must have come back, but I must have just you know,
Speaker 1: taken a much bills fallen asleep. So when my boyfriend
Speaker 1: said we can go to Italy, I said, I'm never
Speaker 1: doing what I did again, and I'm not flying over
Speaker 1: the ocean, like in my mind, flying over the ocean
Speaker 1: is more dangerous than land. You know, had all these rules,
Speaker 1: and so I missed out on that trip. And uh,
Speaker 1: there were a few times when I did have to fly.
Speaker 1: I had another day job in New York City where
Speaker 1: we had to fly to Boston on biz nous and
Speaker 1: I held it together a little better, I learned than
Speaker 1: by talking to my doctor. No, you take a zanex
Speaker 1: an hour before, and that really helped, Like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: actually at the airport and not in a panic because
Speaker 1: I had taken the zanex an hour before, so I
Speaker 1: was just a little relaxed. And the pressure of saving
Speaker 1: face in front of my bosses that really helped too,
Speaker 1: and just sitting with people and so I just tried
Speaker 1: to act like I wasn't scared and it sort of worked.
Speaker 1: But when I moved to l A, I did take
Speaker 1: a train. I took an amtrap and thus began living
Speaker 1: in l A. In two thousand and two and coming
Speaker 1: back for Christmas to my family Massachusetts once a year.
Speaker 1: So it became this, I fly once a year and
Speaker 1: I spend oh, I don't know, seven months obsessively thinking
Speaker 1: and talking about the flight and and just you know,
Speaker 1: booking the flight and thinking, well, I could either take
Speaker 1: the ten thirty am flight or the noon. I think
Speaker 1: I went to do the noon, but what if the
Speaker 1: ten thirty am is the safe one and the noon
Speaker 1: is the one that's going to crash? You know that
Speaker 1: I would call friends, do you think I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: okay on the flight tomorrow, which now you know is
Speaker 1: known as a reassurance seeking doesn't work at all. But
Speaker 1: I had my I think I was prescribed KONA been
Speaker 1: at that point, and so I had my drugs. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't mean that to sound awful, but it did help.
Speaker 1: But it was again this um. You know, I took
Speaker 1: the most that I was allowed to take, and I
Speaker 1: didn't need to be that asleep, but it was it
Speaker 1: was almost like I need to be asleep before the
Speaker 1: plane takes off, and then I need to wake up
Speaker 1: as we're landing. I didn't want to have one second
Speaker 1: of consciousness. And I would I somehow worked that out,
Speaker 1: But I mean I would wake up drooling on the
Speaker 1: person next to me. I mean one time I woke
Speaker 1: up and I was fully asleep on the shoulder of
Speaker 1: this old man next to me. And I woke up
Speaker 1: and his sleeve was wet from my drool, and he
Speaker 1: said that was nice. I felt like I had my
Speaker 1: granddaughter with me for six hours. Six hours I laid
Speaker 1: on this man's arm. It probably fell asleep, it probably
Speaker 1: fell off. I probably gave him a blood clut, and
Speaker 1: so it It really never dawned on me that my
Speaker 1: life would involve flying. And one of the reasons I
Speaker 1: became a comedian is I wanted to do comedy, but
Speaker 1: I lived in New York City and I didn't know
Speaker 1: that you don't really get paid to do comedy clubs locally.
Speaker 1: Like the work is on the road, you know. And
Speaker 1: if you do some television work, you you do that
Speaker 1: because you want people to find out about you so
Speaker 1: they come see you in their city. You've got to
Speaker 1: get on planes and travel. And I lived in l
Speaker 1: A for a while. I I had a manager and
Speaker 1: she had some clients that were comedians and they needed
Speaker 1: an opening act, you know, and I would go on
Speaker 1: the road as an opening act for people, and I
Speaker 1: would have to book flights and I would have to
Speaker 1: fly across the country, and it forced me to start practicing.
Speaker 1: And again, I I was in therapy. I knew about breathing.
Speaker 1: I had my doctor for gione tips and tricks, but
Speaker 1: I wasn't doing them because I thought, well, they don't
Speaker 1: work obviously, well, yeah, they don't work, or not doing them,
Speaker 1: you know. I would maybe do them halfheartedly, but I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I've got the pills and those work really well, but
Speaker 1: they don't really because I was always sort of you know,
Speaker 1: exhausted for for days after and again I would just
Speaker 1: it's like almost like putting yourself under anesthesia when you
Speaker 1: don't have to, you know, like I didn't have to
Speaker 1: be that lights out about everything. And and when you
Speaker 1: start to fly more often, you can't really live that way.
Speaker 1: You know, once a year is fine. But it was
Speaker 1: starting to be like, oh, maybe once every two months,
Speaker 1: I would have to fly. And I started to kind
Speaker 1: of see a light at the end of the tunnel
Speaker 1: in the sense that I was starting to just have
Speaker 1: more experiences where I'm in more airports, I'm noticing how
Speaker 1: many flights are going out. At the same time, I'm
Speaker 1: realizing this is something thousands of people do all day
Speaker 1: long in just in this airport alone, and I just
Speaker 1: came from another airport and there are thousands of people
Speaker 1: doing that to No planes are crashing, Everything's going fine.
Speaker 1: You know, at a certain point, I'm like choosing to
Speaker 1: believe something that's not true. It's like I'm choosing to
Speaker 1: believe the Earth is flat. I think I'm choosing to
Speaker 1: believe that this thing is not safe based on nothing.
Speaker 1: I'm just a dumb comedian. So I start to practice flying.
Speaker 1: I get a job writing on this TV show called
Speaker 1: Chelsea Lately on the E Network, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: a bunch of comedians making jokes, and it helped all
Speaker 1: of our comedy careers. So now I'm starting to fly
Speaker 1: around the country a little more, and it's getting a
Speaker 1: little easier, and I'm flying with comedian friends, and I'm
Speaker 1: still using the pills as needed. I now have a routine.
Speaker 1: I take it when I leave the house, I take
Speaker 1: one at the airport, and then if I'm still panicking,
Speaker 1: I take one on the plane. And so it actually
Speaker 1: would help I would not panic. I would just have
Speaker 1: kind of circular thinking anxiety and spend a lot of
Speaker 1: the flights saying to my friends, is this okay? Is
Speaker 1: that okay? Is that? But deep down I actually knew
Speaker 1: I think I enjoy this, This could be fun if
Speaker 1: I could just chill for a minute. But it was like,
Speaker 1: I can't chill because if I chilled, then the panic
Speaker 1: will find me. And the one thing is I started
Speaker 1: to get used to flying around the country. The one
Speaker 1: thing I said to myself is okay, but I'm never
Speaker 1: going to fly to Europe. And then I got a
Speaker 1: gig in London and I had to fly to Europe.
Speaker 1: And I made it through that flight. I was I
Speaker 1: think I had what I call a week long panic
Speaker 1: attack in London. I was hyper ventilated, breathing the entire time.
Speaker 1: I was so freaked out that I was all the
Speaker 1: way what felt like all the way across the world.
Speaker 1: I wasn't it was just across the pond, but all
Speaker 1: the way across into a different land mass. It just
Speaker 1: everything seemed the world still seemed huge to me, that
Speaker 1: everything seemed so scary. Okay, So I made it on
Speaker 1: the trip to London, still flying around the country here
Speaker 1: and there. And I said, okay, but the one thing
Speaker 1: I will never do is fly to Australia. That is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: That is a seventeen hour flight that is ocean the
Speaker 1: whole time. I don't need to go. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I would just make up things. I'm never going
Speaker 1: to Australia. Well, the show I wrote on was kind
Speaker 1: of a hit in Australia and the network offered to
Speaker 1: pay all of us to fly to Sydney now first
Speaker 1: class flight on a flight to Australia from Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: That is that was nicer than my apartment at the time.
Speaker 1: I mean it was. And my boss he called me
Speaker 1: aside and he said, you know, I get your intense
Speaker 1: fear of flying. You don't have to come with us
Speaker 1: to Australia. But there would be no way that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime.
Speaker 1: And I knew I have to do this, and I
Speaker 1: did it. I mean, I'm gonna be totally honest, it's
Speaker 1: kind of easy not to have anxiety. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say in first class because I can have anxiety anywhere.
Speaker 1: But you know, you get this free flight, I had
Speaker 1: my meds. The flight attendants looked out for me. It's
Speaker 1: a lay down bed. I mean, I just slept a
Speaker 1: lot of the way. When we landed, I still felt
Speaker 1: that same feeling of hyper ventilated breathing. For about a week.
Speaker 1: I was anxious just being there. It felt scary and dangerous.
Speaker 1: And then I made it through it. I made it
Speaker 1: through it again on the flight home. And when I
Speaker 1: landed on the flight home, I felt like a changed person.
Speaker 1: Something cracked open in me and I said, I have
Speaker 1: to keep doing this. I have to keep practicing. I
Speaker 1: should go to Europe again for fun. I should book
Speaker 1: a trip with a friend, and I did and we
Speaker 1: went a few months later, I started to fly more
Speaker 1: and more for stand up and I it's almost like
Speaker 1: I made a decision. Okay, Jen, you keep doing the
Speaker 1: thing that you say you're never going to do. You
Speaker 1: keep doing the scariest thing in the world, and you
Speaker 1: keep surviving. At what point do you want to thrive
Speaker 1: and enjoy this? Can you make a decision that you're
Speaker 1: going to start releasing this identity as a fearful flyer
Speaker 1: because it has not served you. And then I started
Speaker 1: flying around the count Tree regularly. I started getting gigs
Speaker 1: in other countries. I got gigs in Ireland, Sweden, London again, Amsterdam, Norway,
Speaker 1: and then I started to become a regular at this
Speaker 1: festival in Melbourne, Australia. I flew to Australia four times
Speaker 1: round trip by myself. That was never an option in
Speaker 1: my life New Zealand. I I started to love the
Speaker 1: flight to Australia so much that when it landed, I'd
Speaker 1: be like, oh, I could have done eight more hours,
Speaker 1: you know, because it becomes an entire day up there.
Speaker 1: I rena turn some emails and then gonna watch a movie. Oh,
Speaker 1: and here's dinner. Oh, and then I'm going to read
Speaker 1: a book. I became addicted to the bravery that I felt,
Speaker 1: even though there's nothing to be I wasn't feeling brave
Speaker 1: anymore like I cheated death, the plane was going to crash.
Speaker 1: I just mean I felt brave that I was confronting
Speaker 1: my fears. And I got addicted to feeling good about flying.
Speaker 1: I got addicted to the power trip of look at me,
Speaker 1: I'm have grown up flying. And by the way, this
Speaker 1: one day I said I'm not going to take the
Speaker 1: clono bin. I'm just gonna get on a plane and
Speaker 1: I have it in case I'm panicking like crazy, and
Speaker 1: guess what, I didn't need it. And so then I
Speaker 1: just started flying around the country fifty times a year,
Speaker 1: no drugs at all, and I think, I think I
Speaker 1: had actually trained my body by using by using that
Speaker 1: um klono bin, and people can use an X out
Speaker 1: of it by using it once you leave the house,
Speaker 1: once you get to the airport, it's like it's like
Speaker 1: now when I fly. I swear it was like a
Speaker 1: Pavlovian response, where now I'm at the airport, no drugs
Speaker 1: in my system at all, and I feel relaxed. Now. Again,
Speaker 1: the use of drugs may not be for everyone. Maybe
Speaker 1: you need a beta block or maybe you don't need
Speaker 1: a drug at all. But I'm just telling you this
Speaker 1: is just my story. But I think the drugs helped
Speaker 1: me in the sense that I was able to experience
Speaker 1: um no symptoms of anxiety in the airport enough times
Speaker 1: that it became routine. And then I took the training
Speaker 1: wheels off, didn't take the pills, and went, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is real. I actually feel relaxed. So that is my story.
Speaker 1: I now get on planes all the time I have
Speaker 1: feelings of discomfort on flights. I don't like turbulence. It
Speaker 1: bothers me. It I live in in Los Angeles, UM
Speaker 1: as well, and I don't like earthquakes. It reminds me
Speaker 1: of earthquakes where it's like, I'm not scared. I know
Speaker 1: it's not the big one, but it does something to
Speaker 1: my nervous system. That's not my favorite, but that that's
Speaker 1: not a phobia. That's just like, yeah, turbulence is uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: but my mind doesn't tell a story anymore. Do I
Speaker 1: like the feeling sometimes of when the plane's first taking
Speaker 1: off and you kind of your your brain might go
Speaker 1: up your trapped now for six hours. I don't love it,
Speaker 1: but I don't let my brain do that to me.
Speaker 1: Like you know, my brain is gonna think thoughts. I
Speaker 1: can't stop them from happening, but I can stop myself
Speaker 1: from going Oh, let me think that over and over.
Speaker 1: So in the next part of this episode, and I
Speaker 1: know this is a long or one, I will talk
Speaker 1: about my personal tips and tricks for when I get
Speaker 1: on a flight and what I do during a flight.
Speaker 1: Then I will talk about what actually is happening to
Speaker 1: your body when you're on a plane. I will talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about the realities of turbulence and some
Speaker 1: of the just the mechanics of flying, and then we'll
Speaker 1: end with a progressive muscle relaxation. But I will say
Speaker 1: to just to wrap up my story, part of it
Speaker 1: all is that it's really hard to be someone who
Speaker 1: has a phobia of flying, who only gets to fly
Speaker 1: once a year, if it's because that's when your business
Speaker 1: trip is or you go home for the holidays. It
Speaker 1: is something that takes practice. And if you don't have
Speaker 1: that opportunity where you have a job where you have
Speaker 1: to fly, you may not have the same story as
Speaker 1: me where you get better due to having to practice.
Speaker 1: But I think there are ways to cheat that, and
Speaker 1: you can practice without actually having to get on a plane.
Speaker 1: You can practice thinking about being on a plane. You
Speaker 1: can practice the kind of thoughts that you think. So
Speaker 1: I'll get into that next. So let's just get to
Speaker 1: some facts about this very real phobia. According to very
Speaker 1: well mined dot com, aero phobia that is the fear
Speaker 1: of flying. It's also known sometimes as a vio phobia.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not going to get into right now, the
Speaker 1: statistics that air travel is actually safer, which is that
Speaker 1: does not sue anyone right now. But let's just name
Speaker 1: what you might have, what we might have, and move
Speaker 1: on from there. So lots of people are afraid to
Speaker 1: fly to some degree, but a smaller portion of people
Speaker 1: actually meet the criteria for a phobia diagnosis. The symptoms
Speaker 1: of a vio phobia or aerophobia people who are traveling
Speaker 1: by air or even sometimes just thinking about flying, which
Speaker 1: is known as the anticipatory anxiety. And that doesn't just begin,
Speaker 1: you know, as you're driving to the air part. You
Speaker 1: can have anticipatory anxiety about a flight three months in advance,
Speaker 1: while you're just sitting at home watching a movie. The
Speaker 1: symptoms of aerophobia, including even the anticipatory anxiety on the ground,
Speaker 1: are chills, choking sensations, clouded thinking, disorientation, flushed skin, gastro
Speaker 1: intestinal upset, increased heart rate, irritability, nausea, shaking, shortness of breath, sweating,
Speaker 1: and in some instances, people will experience a full blown
Speaker 1: panic attack that's accompanied by more symptoms of heart palpitations,
Speaker 1: feeling detached from reality, and a fear of dying. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't even say it's a fear of dying. I would
Speaker 1: say it's a certainty in that moment that you are dying.
Speaker 1: I mean a fear of dying. Yeah, who doesn't. But
Speaker 1: for me, when I've been in a panic attack, I
Speaker 1: know I'm dying in that moment, even though I'm not. Now.
Speaker 1: There's related conditions that also clog up the works here.
Speaker 1: If you also have caustrophobia, that can affect you having
Speaker 1: a fear of flying because you are in confined quarters
Speaker 1: and there's a lack of personal space. If you have
Speaker 1: a fear of heights, that can also exacerbate a fear flying.
Speaker 1: And if you have social or germ phobias, social anxiety
Speaker 1: disorder or fear of germs, well, that could also go
Speaker 1: into your fear of flying because you are spending a
Speaker 1: lot of time with strangers on planes that might talk
Speaker 1: to you and their germs. There are also physical disorders
Speaker 1: that can contribute to a phobia flying. If you have
Speaker 1: sinus issues, vertigo, chronic sinus problems, ear disorders, you might
Speaker 1: have this very real fear that you're going to develop
Speaker 1: discomfort on the plane, which can give you anticipatory anxiety.
Speaker 1: It can lead to symptoms of anxiety on the plane
Speaker 1: or even a full blown panic attack. If you have
Speaker 1: cardiovascular disease or other conditions that increase your risk of
Speaker 1: blood clots, you may be anxious about flying and start
Speaker 1: to you know, fantasize I'm gonna get deep vein thrombosis
Speaker 1: on a flight. So obviously, talk to your doctor about
Speaker 1: any of these conditions you have. In your doctor can
Speaker 1: explain the acts to you. This is how safe it
Speaker 1: is to fly. Here's how you overcome some of these symptoms.
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. Now, according to this website, the causes
Speaker 1: of fear flying are not known, but some things can
Speaker 1: play a role. Obviously, I mean this is my favorite one.
Speaker 1: If you've experienced a traumatic flight or plane crash, well, yet,
Speaker 1: no duck, and most people I know, and myself, my
Speaker 1: phobia of flying had zero to do with a plane crash,
Speaker 1: and in fact I had the opposite of plane crashes.
Speaker 1: I had dozens of successful flights, and yet I insisted
Speaker 1: what I was doing was abnormal, not safe, very dangerous,
Speaker 1: very traumatizing. But I get it. Of course, that can happen,
Speaker 1: they say, even if you watch extensive news coverage of
Speaker 1: airline disasters, that can be enough to trigger a fear
Speaker 1: of flying. And of course, I mean when I was
Speaker 1: growing up again, as I said, in the eighties, there
Speaker 1: was always a news story. You know, it probably wasn't
Speaker 1: even as often as it felt, but once every few
Speaker 1: years there was a flight that blew up overseas or
Speaker 1: there was a hijacking. And they don't do news stories
Speaker 1: about every single successful flight around the world every day.
Speaker 1: There's not enough hours in the day to cover those.
Speaker 1: And so you see a story, you know, one, two,
Speaker 1: three times in a period of a few years, that's
Speaker 1: all you think about when you think about flying. Oh,
Speaker 1: the Lockerbie tragedy, Oh the time this plane was hijacked.
Speaker 1: And at that point it's hard to convince you, well,
Speaker 1: there's forty million other news stories about flights that don't
Speaker 1: get hijacked and don't crash, and I don't want to
Speaker 1: hear about those because we start to think, well, what
Speaker 1: about me, What if I'm on one of those flights.
Speaker 1: Environment if your parents had a fear flying, if anyone
Speaker 1: you know how to fear flying, you may internalize their
Speaker 1: trepidation and then other related circumstances. Now this for me,
Speaker 1: you know, because if I go okay, I watched too
Speaker 1: much news about plane crashes. Okay, my parents had a
Speaker 1: fear flying. What does that get me? I can't work
Speaker 1: on that per se, But other related circumstances is something
Speaker 1: I find very interesting about anxiety on flights. So it
Speaker 1: says that a fear flying that develops soon after a
Speaker 1: job promotion, for example, that requires travel, could be caused
Speaker 1: by concerns about the job itself or its impact on
Speaker 1: your daily life. Or children who fly frequently to visit
Speaker 1: divorced parents sometimes develop aerophobia as a coping mechanism for
Speaker 1: the trauma of the divorce. So two things here. One,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you've I think you've heard this before,
Speaker 1: but you have no control over life to a point, right,
Speaker 1: I mean you you were born without your consent and
Speaker 1: you will someday die. That is for me, a giant
Speaker 1: existential what the fuck? That is? Wow? That one just
Speaker 1: silently plagues me. Right, So I had to do work
Speaker 1: on that notion because I don't walk around thinking that,
Speaker 1: but maybe I should because it helps. Now I don't
Speaker 1: walk around thinking about it obsessively, but I note, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that gives me a little bit of angst. So what
Speaker 1: do I do about it? I get into acceptance. I breathe,
Speaker 1: I meditate, I I accept the thoughts. I let them stay,
Speaker 1: but I don't ruminate and go down a rabbit hole,
Speaker 1: which then goes into I'm completely out of control and
Speaker 1: I'm going to have a painful, lonely death and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be gasping for bread and everything is terrible. I
Speaker 1: don't go there, but I let myself just with a
Speaker 1: sense of humor saying it's crazy wow. And then I
Speaker 1: get into wonderment and gratitude, where it's like, wow, well,
Speaker 1: how the how did that happen? I did I win
Speaker 1: some kind of lottery. I get to be one of
Speaker 1: the souls on this earth. Wow, that is wild. And yeah,
Speaker 1: nobody gets out of here alive, including you know, insert
Speaker 1: the name of your favorite person here and uh uh cool.
Speaker 1: Well you know what, Wow, you know, I just I
Speaker 1: just get into that kind of wonderment instead of getting
Speaker 1: into this doom and gloom. Now. But that whole notion, right,
Speaker 1: the whole existential notion of lack of control, I don't
Speaker 1: think we bring it to the forefront of our minds,
Speaker 1: and so it just runs around in the back of
Speaker 1: our head until we get on something like an airplane
Speaker 1: which somebody else is flying, were in the air and
Speaker 1: we really have no control. Now it's hard to believe
Speaker 1: we have the same amount of no control up there
Speaker 1: as we did in the airport. It just it's just
Speaker 1: more heightened and we're more aware of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: there was even a study that came out that said
Speaker 1: people tend to enjoy movies more that they watch on airplanes.
Speaker 1: There's this like heightened intensity going on in your body,
Speaker 1: even if it's not a bad thing, and people tend
Speaker 1: to cry more at movies on planes that in you know,
Speaker 1: on the ground they would just be like, oh, those
Speaker 1: are okay movie. But we're so emotional and affected by things.
Speaker 1: So when I'm in a plane, or when I used
Speaker 1: to be in a plane and have this phobia, it
Speaker 1: was like that notion of just the utter lack of
Speaker 1: control that life itself is. It would come to not
Speaker 1: quite the forefront, but it would get activated and I
Speaker 1: wouldn't know why I was panicking, Which leads to what
Speaker 1: this are Well just said about kids who are, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of traumatized by a divorce. They're traveling by by
Speaker 1: plane to visit their parents, and now they're having panic
Speaker 1: attacks anxiety attacks developing a phobia of flying, and that
Speaker 1: is called avoidance coping. It's a maladaptive form of coping
Speaker 1: in which a person changes their behavior to avoid thinking about,
Speaker 1: and feeling or doing difficult things. So, in a weird way,
Speaker 1: developing a phobia of flying lets you concentrate on that.
Speaker 1: You know, Oh my god, what's going on the plane?
Speaker 1: What's going on the pilot? You know, I think he
Speaker 1: looked kind of shady. What's that noise? I don't know
Speaker 1: what that is? Should we really be flying? It's a
Speaker 1: little turbulent up here. Oh my god, I can't breathe.
Speaker 1: You know, all of that takes you away from the
Speaker 1: real thing underneath, which is in the example that they
Speaker 1: gave this this kid that needs to cope with their
Speaker 1: feelings about their parents divorce. For me, it was I
Speaker 1: needed to cope with the overall lack of control I
Speaker 1: have in life. I hadn't really in a mature way,
Speaker 1: look did that. And so once they started looking at
Speaker 1: things in therapy that really don't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with aerophobia, you know, I didn't do I did the
Speaker 1: exposure therapy in the fear flying course. That didn't quite
Speaker 1: work for me. As the only tool because I had
Speaker 1: other things to address, and so as I just went
Speaker 1: through therapy and learned. I don't know how to say this,
Speaker 1: but terra lax a little bit in life and to
Speaker 1: bring what's really underneath it to the forefront. Then I
Speaker 1: could cope with it and learn thoughts stopping and replacing
Speaker 1: thoughts that did help. I think that's where it ultimately
Speaker 1: things started to get underway. Now. Obviously, the treatment for
Speaker 1: a phobia of flying is cognitive behavioral therapy, systematic desensitization.
Speaker 1: That's sort of what I went through with having to
Speaker 1: fly for work, gradually progressive exposure to a fear or
Speaker 1: the situation, and then there is even hypnotherapy people can do.
Speaker 1: There are group classes, and I, by the way, I
Speaker 1: highly recommend those group classes. I just had a little
Speaker 1: more than a phobia going on, but it was incredibly
Speaker 1: helpful and it's one of the tools in my tool kit.
Speaker 1: Everything I learned in Logan zeroes. Obviously, there's medication, and
Speaker 1: medication does help. I mean, obviously, as I've told you,
Speaker 1: it was a big part of my story, but I
Speaker 1: don't think I would have ever gotten to the point
Speaker 1: where I can fly without medication without also the talk therapy.
Speaker 1: It really is a little bit of everything for me.
Speaker 1: And of course, um putting together a relaxation toolkit, which
Speaker 1: I will tell you about in a moment about my
Speaker 1: tool kit, and I'll give you some you know, advice
Speaker 1: on what you might want to do. Now. It's so
Speaker 1: different now to that than you know, I mean in
Speaker 1: my day. But I mean, I'm I was reading an
Speaker 1: article that that flights Now, Um, you know, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be stretching and meditation classes added to some Delta Airlines flights.
Speaker 1: Peloton will be doing this. Um, you know, it's going
Speaker 1: to be on the seat, the screen under your Seat's
Speaker 1: not like a teacher's gonna come in higway, buddy, but um,
Speaker 1: Peloton on which normally you have to have one of
Speaker 1: those you know, Peloton machines. And this is the first
Speaker 1: time Peloton content will be available outside its app or
Speaker 1: utilities and it will be on the back of your
Speaker 1: seat in a Delta flight. So just the even the
Speaker 1: notion that the airlines recognized that people need to relax
Speaker 1: on planes was something that I didn't have the luxury of,
Speaker 1: you know, coming up with during my years of a
Speaker 1: fear flying I would look around and everyone seemed to
Speaker 1: find me. Everyone seemed quote normal, not worried. So the
Speaker 1: fact that you can just get on a plane and
Speaker 1: there's there's this, you know. And on some of the
Speaker 1: Jet Blue flights now they have these almost like radio
Speaker 1: stations as part of their in flight entertainment. You can
Speaker 1: put on headphones and listen to a meditation. I mean that,
Speaker 1: the fact that that's even being recognized as something everyone
Speaker 1: needs to me is a big part of being able
Speaker 1: to say some feelings of discomfort and anxiety are normal.
Speaker 1: It's okay, I'm not dying. My thoughts about how unsafe
Speaker 1: airline travels are not true. So according to the Anxiety
Speaker 1: and Depression Association of America website a d a a
Speaker 1: dot org, overcoming a fear flying takes a lot of
Speaker 1: courage and practice. Fear of flying is not a single phobia.
Speaker 1: Most people who fear flying have a bunch of different
Speaker 1: phobias working at once. Like we talked about, it could
Speaker 1: be claustrophobia, could be a bunch of different things. But
Speaker 1: a phobia is an intense fear that is out of
Speaker 1: proportion to the danger. Most flight phobics agree that flying
Speaker 1: is safe yet frightening, and they have a hard time
Speaker 1: reconciling their fear with safety statistics. Although we know our
Speaker 1: phobias are not logical, we cannot reason ourselves out of one.
Speaker 1: And it's true because we didn't reason ourselves into one,
Speaker 1: because our phobias are not reasonable. But our flying phobias
Speaker 1: have triggers. Those are thoughts, images, sensations, and memories to
Speaker 1: which we have become sensitized. A person who is sensitized
Speaker 1: to certain bodily feelings might fee or turbulence or normal
Speaker 1: takeoff and landing. The list of triggers can be long. Turbulence,
Speaker 1: takeoff landings, terrorism crashes, social anxiety, being too far from home,
Speaker 1: you know, using the toilets, what if there's violence on
Speaker 1: a plane. Others just have a random bad feeling about
Speaker 1: their flight. That is mine, Oh, I have a bad feeling,
Speaker 1: like suddenly I'm psychic, and it's so interesting when I
Speaker 1: you know, I had to look at some of the
Speaker 1: not actual narcissistic personality disorder, but for lack of a
Speaker 1: better word than narcissism, the self involvement of thinking that
Speaker 1: here I am on a flight and I've got a
Speaker 1: bad feeling about this flight. You know, I'm getting on
Speaker 1: that plane going I think this thing is going down.
Speaker 1: I don't give a deep about anyone else on the flight.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to the person next to me, you
Speaker 1: should really get off this plane. Um, I have a
Speaker 1: bad feeling about this flight. We're going down. I don't
Speaker 1: say to the pilot, I have a bad feeling about
Speaker 1: this flight. You should really check the brakes. I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't care about the other people. And if I
Speaker 1: take apart that thought process, if I really hone in
Speaker 1: on it, which I did one time on a plane,
Speaker 1: and it kind of blew my mind, it's that. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I'm not worried for them. It's a
Speaker 1: cognitive it doesn't make sense. Well, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: going to happen to them. Wait wait, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: So you have a bad feeling about this flight, it's
Speaker 1: gonna crash and not affect anyone. But you wait, this
Speaker 1: isn't rational, you know. You start to here, you start
Speaker 1: to just instead of quickly believing your thoughts, you start
Speaker 1: to I mean, imagine if someone knocked on your door
Speaker 1: right now and said your house is on fire and
Speaker 1: then ran away, would you run after that person and
Speaker 1: go tell me more about my house being on fire,
Speaker 1: tell me every detail you know, or would you look
Speaker 1: around at the house you're standing in and go, it's
Speaker 1: not on fire. You know. It was like my thoughts
Speaker 1: were this runaway neighbor saying weird things to me, and
Speaker 1: I followed them instead of following my own thought process,
Speaker 1: which is looking around and going, okay, wait, so if
Speaker 1: I really think something bad is going to happen, why
Speaker 1: don't I care about the person next to me that's
Speaker 1: not like me? Okay, So this is disordered thinking something's
Speaker 1: going on here. Now. I can't exactly just get over
Speaker 1: my phobia in that second, but it and it helps
Speaker 1: to start to question yourself and not take your fear
Speaker 1: so seriously. Because I know a lot of people say
Speaker 1: I have a fear of flying. It's like, have you
Speaker 1: made a decision, just even just making the decision. I
Speaker 1: do not want to have one, and I'm in control
Speaker 1: of that. Just saying that I want to love flying,
Speaker 1: or I know that I do love flying, it's just
Speaker 1: being covered up by this bizarre fear. It can be
Speaker 1: hard to say because I used to identify with my
Speaker 1: fear of flying. No, no no, no, I need to keep it.
Speaker 1: It's it's charming, it's my identity, or it keeps me safe.
Speaker 1: You know. Somewhere in that spectrum is where I lived.
Speaker 1: What's also behind the phobia and the fear, the common
Speaker 1: denominator from where the nine of flight phobics is the
Speaker 1: fear they will be overwhelmed with anxiety during the flight.
Speaker 1: And that that's what mine has become as a fear
Speaker 1: of fear. So when I'm tired, when I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit maybe I'm hungry, maybe I'm just you know, just
Speaker 1: a little bit out of sorts physically, I will have
Speaker 1: a fear of fear of getting on a flight. I mean,
Speaker 1: when I flew for the first time after not ha
Speaker 1: been flown for a year and a half during the
Speaker 1: lockdown part of the pandemic and pre vaccine, I I wondered, well, well,
Speaker 1: well my fear flying does come back? You know, if
Speaker 1: I lost it, I I lost all my coping mechanisms,
Speaker 1: and you know, and then I little fear of fear.
Speaker 1: But it was okay. It was not a full blown phobia.
Speaker 1: It was just, yeah, we had a little bit of
Speaker 1: a fear of fear. It says people who experienced unexpected
Speaker 1: panic while flying, then fear that's something unexpected like panicking
Speaker 1: will happen again on their next flight. These panics typically
Speaker 1: emerged between the ages of seventeen to thirty four, and
Speaker 1: they are around the time of a significant life change
Speaker 1: could be birth, death, marriage, divorce, or graduation. This is
Speaker 1: why a lot of times with flying phobias that come
Speaker 1: at you at a certain point in life, they wonder
Speaker 1: why have they been able to fly so comfortably before?
Speaker 1: And that was what I experienced. In my Logan's heroes classes.
Speaker 1: These were adults who were kind of going through empty
Speaker 1: nest syndrome. Their kids weren't at home, they were probably
Speaker 1: a little bit of a midlife That was why for
Speaker 1: me it was more of an intense phobia and anxiety disorder.
Speaker 1: Um and experts have divided fearful flyers into three main groups.
Speaker 1: One those who don't fly or haven't flown for more
Speaker 1: than five years despite the opportunity to do so. To
Speaker 1: those who fly only when absolutely necessary with extreme terror,
Speaker 1: and three those who fly when required but with anxiety.
Speaker 1: I was all three in that order and then became
Speaker 1: number four unafraid to fly. So the elements of successful treatment,
Speaker 1: according to the a d A, is that any successful
Speaker 1: treatment will help fearful flyers manage anticipatory anxiety as well
Speaker 1: as the anxiety during a flight. Obviously, there's cognitive behavioral
Speaker 1: therapy that is tailored to flying, diaphgmatic breathing to use
Speaker 1: on the flight. Um education how the plane flies, facts
Speaker 1: about turbulence, the meaning of various bumps and sounds during
Speaker 1: a flight. So let's get into that. Let's just get
Speaker 1: into the safety. I know nobody wants to hear this,
Speaker 1: but we have to because these are facts and you're
Speaker 1: not allowed to ignore facts. So any time you board
Speaker 1: a flight on a major carrier, your chance of being
Speaker 1: in a fatal accident is one in seven million. And
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter whether you fly once every three years
Speaker 1: or every day of the year. Your odds don't go
Speaker 1: up the more you fly. If you did fly every
Speaker 1: day of your life, the probability indicates it would take
Speaker 1: you nineteen thousand years before you would succumb to a
Speaker 1: fatal accident. Nineteen thousand years. Your chances of dying on
Speaker 1: a train are one in one million. Those are great odds,
Speaker 1: but flying coast to coast is ten times safer. Than
Speaker 1: the train. One hundred and thirty people are killed daily
Speaker 1: and auto accidents that's every day, and that's forty seven
Speaker 1: thousand a year. A sold out jet would have to
Speaker 1: crash every day of the week with no survivors to
Speaker 1: equal the highway deaths per year in this country. Now,
Speaker 1: I have to be really honest. Once I really let
Speaker 1: the facts sink in, I did develop a little phobia
Speaker 1: of driving. Um that I don't have anymore. It's not
Speaker 1: a phobia, but I don't love it because I am
Speaker 1: so well aware, you know. I mean, I'm you're driving
Speaker 1: on the freeway and there's traffic. Why because there's an
Speaker 1: accident up ahead. I mean, may not be fatal, but
Speaker 1: it's at the very least annoying, and you gotta keep driving.
Speaker 1: I mean, when we're flying in the air, it's not
Speaker 1: like folks were gonna circle for a while. There's two
Speaker 1: plane crashes of a had that never happens. You are
Speaker 1: nineteen times safer in a plane in a car. So
Speaker 1: here's here's what's crazy. So whenever we fly, we have
Speaker 1: a one one hundred thousand of one percent chance of dying.
Speaker 1: That's point zero zero zero zero one death by odds
Speaker 1: smoking by or before at five one and six hundred.
Speaker 1: Look at your Facebook or your your social media. You
Speaker 1: know six people, even if you don't know all of
Speaker 1: them personally. One in six hundred. I used to smoke
Speaker 1: a half a pack to a pack good day during
Speaker 1: the times when I wouldn't get on a plane because
Speaker 1: I was too phobic. I'm killing myself slowly smoking and
Speaker 1: thinking it won't get me and I won't get on
Speaker 1: a plane, which is actually not at all a threat,
Speaker 1: thinking ah ha, I'm cheating death by not getting on
Speaker 1: that plane. I mean, this is where it's important to go. See,
Speaker 1: this just doesn't make sense. We're holding on two things
Speaker 1: that don't make sense because we're either getting something out
Speaker 1: of it. For me, it was putting everything into My
Speaker 1: phobia of flying was my avoidance of looking at actual
Speaker 1: issues in my day to day life. A car trip
Speaker 1: coast to coast one and fourteen thousand, bicycle accident one
Speaker 1: in eighty eight thousand. It keeps going up and up
Speaker 1: till we get to commercial jet airline one in seven million.
Speaker 1: And you guys can do your own research on turbulence.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I didn't mean to say do your
Speaker 1: own research like a conspiracy theorist. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: turbulence is really just air moving from one place to another.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like being on a ship that's you know,
Speaker 1: in some rough seas. But again, the planes are built
Speaker 1: and designed to withstand turbulence. They can withstand so much
Speaker 1: more than you've seen. Honestly, the probability that you would
Speaker 1: get hurt during turbulence is if you've got out of
Speaker 1: your seat and bump your head. Like that's what they're
Speaker 1: worried about when they're like, sit down, stay stay buckled.
Speaker 1: They don't want you hitting your head. They're not like,
Speaker 1: sit down, stay buckled, because this is very dangerous. The
Speaker 1: plane is going to break apart. That's not what they're saying.
Speaker 1: Their job is to keep you safe while you're on
Speaker 1: the plane. And they're probably thinking, oh god, we might
Speaker 1: have some unruly passengers that are having anxiety or whatever,
Speaker 1: and we've we just we have this sort of alarm
Speaker 1: in our voices. Everybody, sit down, strap in. It's really
Speaker 1: to prevent you from harming yourself, because then they've got
Speaker 1: to go take care of you, or god forbid, land
Speaker 1: the plane somewhere and get you to a hospital. Or
Speaker 1: even worse, some mass hysteria breaks down on the plane
Speaker 1: because someone hits their head. They're trying to keep things going.
Speaker 1: That's why you have to sit down and strap in.
Speaker 1: It's not because there's any inherent danger with the plane.
Speaker 1: Is fine, you are not. The plane will be fine.
Speaker 1: But you cannot walk around a plane while it's bopping
Speaker 1: around in the air because you will lose your balance
Speaker 1: and you will fall down and you will hit yourself
Speaker 1: in the face on the arm of someone's chair. That's
Speaker 1: that's the real danger. So you can prevent that by
Speaker 1: sitting down and buckling up. But otherwise they are not
Speaker 1: trying to imply in any way the plane is in danger,
Speaker 1: because if it was, they'd be like, you know what, bucket,
Speaker 1: this plane is going down. Have fun, smoke him while
Speaker 1: you got him, take the seatbelt off. Who gives a ship?
Speaker 1: You know? I mean, I don't think they would do that,
Speaker 1: But if it helps you to think of funny things
Speaker 1: like that, then then let it help you. So I
Speaker 1: will give you my tool kit. Now, I know this
Speaker 1: sounds crazy, but I had a what I'm about to
Speaker 1: say with sound crazy. I had a psychiatrist that I
Speaker 1: saw for twenty years and he would prescribe my medication
Speaker 1: as needed for flying, and you know, it just it's
Speaker 1: a certain point it just got to think exhausting for him,
Speaker 1: where he's like, do you ever just think I don't
Speaker 1: want this phobia anymore? And I was like yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's like, well, then let's go from that point. Instead
Speaker 1: of your this victim of a phobia, what do we do?
Speaker 1: How about your an active partner in wanting to get
Speaker 1: rid of it? And in that mind shift, I felt
Speaker 1: this sense of control that I've been so lacking, you know.
Speaker 1: And I remember Dr Forgioni from Logan's Heroes used to say,
Speaker 1: get mad at the fear. I like that. That gives
Speaker 1: me something to do. You know, I'm a creative mind
Speaker 1: and I wasn't using my creativity for so many years.
Speaker 1: I remember my psychiatrist was suggested things I thought were stupid,
Speaker 1: but I would think about them on the plane and
Speaker 1: I would start laughing and I kind of enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: He was like, think about you know, your anxiety is
Speaker 1: just it's like it's like imagined. Some mobsters got on
Speaker 1: the plane and they and they went over to you
Speaker 1: and said, hey, you always a hundred thousand dollars and
Speaker 1: you go, what are you talking about. I don't owe
Speaker 1: you anything. You've got the wrong girl. And he's like,
Speaker 1: can you think of your anxiety like that? Like it's
Speaker 1: just interrupting you and saying crazy things that aren't true.
Speaker 1: And you'd be like, no know, And I was like what.
Speaker 1: I tried to make that analogy work in my head
Speaker 1: so many times, and usually I just ended up laughing
Speaker 1: at how dumb it I thought it was. And then
Speaker 1: at least that was a relief, you know, to to
Speaker 1: be able to laugh at something. But I did start
Speaker 1: to realize what he was saying, like, we've got to
Speaker 1: use our creative minds because our minds are going just
Speaker 1: nuts in those moments, you know, go right, go right,
Speaker 1: a disaster movie, you know, like that's creative, But in
Speaker 1: that moment, can you use your creative mind to think
Speaker 1: about other things? And there's also something called is that
Speaker 1: all you Got? It's a it's a type of coping
Speaker 1: with panic attacks. A lot of times in my panic
Speaker 1: attack recovery, I would try to make myself panic. That
Speaker 1: was actually something that was prescribed to me, and you
Speaker 1: can't really make yourself panic, but it helps you to
Speaker 1: realize that panic attacks do just come out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: But when you're having one, if you say to yourself,
Speaker 1: come on, let's try to panic more. Let's try to
Speaker 1: panic more, it actually does the opposite. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a neat trick. When there's turbulence. My psychiatrists recommended that
Speaker 1: I think this, this isn't turbulence. This is nothing. I
Speaker 1: can handle so much more than this. You know, even
Speaker 1: if you go but that's not true, I can't handle
Speaker 1: any whatever. It's just your brain. Just let your brain think,
Speaker 1: think thoughts. If your brain is going to think thoughts
Speaker 1: that aren't true, why can't they be in the more
Speaker 1: positive end of things instead of Oh, this, this turbulence
Speaker 1: is going to break the plane apart. Why not this?
Speaker 1: This isn't turbulence. I can take so much more than this.
Speaker 1: Both may not be true, but what what one is
Speaker 1: going to stir up your nervous system more so, in
Speaker 1: addition to my huge recommendation of finding some kind of
Speaker 1: cognitive behavior therapy, even just googling that and finding some
Speaker 1: free worksheets online and doing those if you can't afford therapy,
Speaker 1: doing a progressive muscle relaxation and I will lead you
Speaker 1: in one at the end of this exercise, doing that
Speaker 1: every day, learning about breathing exercises you can do on
Speaker 1: the plane. In addition to all of that, I also
Speaker 1: have a tool kit and I will share that with
Speaker 1: you now. No one quick thought on the breathing. Don't
Speaker 1: forget when you feel like you're short of breath, you
Speaker 1: are not actually lacking in oxygen, but there is a
Speaker 1: little bit of an imbalance of your carbon dioxide. So
Speaker 1: what you need to do is not try to suck
Speaker 1: in more air. It's actually about regulating what you've already got.
Speaker 1: So one tip that I learned for when you're feeling
Speaker 1: anxious is wherever your breath is right at that moment,
Speaker 1: just blow it out slowly through your mouth. So here
Speaker 1: I am right now, I have a certain amount of
Speaker 1: breath in me, and then you'll feel your body want
Speaker 1: to naturally start breathing again. And just let your body
Speaker 1: start breathing again. Doesn't have to be a big As
Speaker 1: long as you're breathing, we're good. The notion of deep
Speaker 1: breath I sort of fight against. It might be nice
Speaker 1: if you're perfectly calm and you're taking a yoga class,
Speaker 1: that's fine. Deep breath. Oh, that feels kind of nice.
Speaker 1: But when we're anxious, it's almost like I don't want
Speaker 1: to hear about deep breaths. I just want to hear
Speaker 1: about regulated breathing. I don't want to breathe deep necessarily.
Speaker 1: I just want to not breathe in a hyperventilated way.
Speaker 1: And when we are taking those short, shallow breaths like that,
Speaker 1: we're breathing in a hyperventilated way. It's screwing up our
Speaker 1: chemistry and it's actually causing our nervous system to go haywire,
Speaker 1: and we're just breathing normally. Then we're regulated. So I
Speaker 1: don't think we have to jump from hyperventilated breathing to
Speaker 1: this deep breathing. We just have to regulate the breathing.
Speaker 1: And so that is one of my favorite tips, is
Speaker 1: just that release of air. And I tend to think
Speaker 1: of the breath as something that expands from left to right.
Speaker 1: I think of my ribs. I don't think about my lungs,
Speaker 1: which I tend to think of as like in the chest,
Speaker 1: But the lungs actually expand around our back, and i'd
Speaker 1: picture my ribcage expanding. I don't try to picture my
Speaker 1: lungs filling with air. And there are many breathing techniques
Speaker 1: you can do. In episode one of this podcast, Dr
Speaker 1: Judd taught us his five finger breathing technique for panic.
Speaker 1: There's count breathing, where you breathe in for four counts,
Speaker 1: you hold your breath for four accounts, and then you
Speaker 1: breathe out for four accounts. There are many breathing exercises
Speaker 1: that involve more of an exhale. I prefer those. You
Speaker 1: might breathe in for four accounts, hold your breath for
Speaker 1: four accounts, and then breathe out for seven. It's really
Speaker 1: the exhale that's going to regulate our breathing, and I
Speaker 1: feel like that's just a well kept secret. So here
Speaker 1: is my tool kit. Now. I don't do this anymore
Speaker 1: every time I fly, because I really just to me,
Speaker 1: flying is as normal as like hopping on the subway.
Speaker 1: But this tool kid is there. So first of all,
Speaker 1: let's just decrease our anxiety by what I call like
Speaker 1: realistic travel tips. Don't get drunk the night before or
Speaker 1: use drugs and think, fuck it, I might die tomorrow
Speaker 1: in a plane crash. Let's live it up tonight. Take
Speaker 1: really good care of yourself twenty four hours before the flight.
Speaker 1: Keep that nervous system humming. Don't come at it with
Speaker 1: a lack you know what I mean. If you if
Speaker 1: you get on a plane hungover, your nervous system is
Speaker 1: already at a deficit. Avoid caffeine for twenty four hours
Speaker 1: before your flight. Do not drink caffeine the morning of
Speaker 1: your flight or at all. Don't drink it on the flight.
Speaker 1: Alcohol if you can avoid it, if it is really
Speaker 1: the only thing that works for you on a flight,
Speaker 1: then do what you need to do until you can
Speaker 1: start to to let that one go. But in general,
Speaker 1: just know that it will probably cause you more anxiety
Speaker 1: about an hour into the flight. Stay hydrated, Drink a
Speaker 1: lot of water. If your phobia involves, you know, using
Speaker 1: the toilet on the plane, I understand, Maybe don't, but
Speaker 1: just you know, happy medium. The realistic travel tips. Arrive
Speaker 1: early at the airport, even if you hate being at airports,
Speaker 1: even if it freaks you out. I will help you
Speaker 1: with that in a minute. But get there early so
Speaker 1: that you're not rushing around and being anxious. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: there's this long line. Oh my god, everyone called in sick.
Speaker 1: There's only one person that's you know, printing boarding passes
Speaker 1: and the kiosk isn't working and I don't know my
Speaker 1: you know, just have all of that. Have your frequent
Speaker 1: flyer number, have your boarding pass on your phone if
Speaker 1: you can, or at least no, your confirmation number. Have
Speaker 1: all of your details ready so that when you walk
Speaker 1: into the airport you can print that boarding pass or
Speaker 1: get in line and give them all the information they need. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you're checking a bag packed properly, don't overpack. When
Speaker 1: you get to the thing, they're gonna say this weighs
Speaker 1: too much and you might have to pay more. If
Speaker 1: you want to pay more, that's fine. If you don't
Speaker 1: want to get into the situation where you're opening your bag,
Speaker 1: you know, and trying to take things out, get details
Speaker 1: of parking. Are you driving to the airport, leave yourself
Speaker 1: extra time because there is always a situation in the
Speaker 1: parking garages at the airport. There's a lot of people
Speaker 1: trying to park or get a ride from someone that
Speaker 1: really makes you calm, someone that you can confide in,
Speaker 1: but not someone that's going to do reassurance seeking, someone
Speaker 1: that can just validate for you that you need to
Speaker 1: close your eyes, put on your headphones, and do you
Speaker 1: know some kind of meditation in the car? Do you
Speaker 1: want to take an uber or some kind of car
Speaker 1: service where you can do that and you can shut
Speaker 1: your eyes and do some kind of for us of
Speaker 1: muscle relaxation or listen to a guided meditation. Listen to
Speaker 1: music that suits you. But think of the flight as
Speaker 1: beginning right when you leave for the airport. If you
Speaker 1: are taking a medication like a Xanex or Klono bin
Speaker 1: and you're not driving yourself, can you take it on
Speaker 1: the way to the airport. Now once you get to
Speaker 1: the airport, have something to look forward to. Is there
Speaker 1: a favorite food that you like to indulge in? I
Speaker 1: know a lot of it does involve sugar, so trying
Speaker 1: to stay away from sugar. But you know, is it
Speaker 1: a cheeseburger? Is it a slice of pizza? Do you
Speaker 1: do you just like to get you know, stupid gossipy,
Speaker 1: trashy magazines at the airport that you would normally not
Speaker 1: read quote in real life. It's just something to look
Speaker 1: forward to. Do you like to shop? Is there a
Speaker 1: shop at the airport? Some airports now have manicure pedicure
Speaker 1: places where you can also get a neck massage, you know,
Speaker 1: a back massage. Is that something that you want to do?
Speaker 1: Just make it like, oh, the vacation is begun when
Speaker 1: I get to the airport, and there's fun things in
Speaker 1: this little indoor Vaca Shian wonderland, this adult playground. There's
Speaker 1: there's trashy magazines. You know. I can maybe get a
Speaker 1: manny petty, I can get a massage. Incorporate all five
Speaker 1: senses if you can. So have things on the plane
Speaker 1: that you like to taste, feel, touch here and smell? Right?
Speaker 1: Do you have a little essential oil thing? You can
Speaker 1: put a little bit of it on a handkerchief. You
Speaker 1: can bring a little bottle with you. Do you want
Speaker 1: to smell lavender? Does that calm you down? Do you
Speaker 1: like the taste of gum? You know? Or just a
Speaker 1: favorite food? Or allow? Isn't anything something to touch? Do
Speaker 1: you want to bring a small, you know, cozy blanket
Speaker 1: on the plane with you, or some kind of big scarf,
Speaker 1: some kind of cashmere wrap. Anything do you want to bring?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't mean a bed pillow, but do
Speaker 1: you want to bring one of those neck pillows with you?
Speaker 1: Just something anything soothing? And plush. Do you want to
Speaker 1: listen to something? I mean, to me, that's the most
Speaker 1: important thing. What is going on between your ears, not
Speaker 1: just in your head, but what is going on in
Speaker 1: your ears? So do you want to make a playlist
Speaker 1: of your favorite songs? And I mean like just dumb
Speaker 1: songs that you'd be embarrassed for anyone to find out
Speaker 1: you're listening to, you know, just make yourself happy listen
Speaker 1: to those songs, or and maybe make a playlist of
Speaker 1: relaxing music, whether it's classical music or something you might
Speaker 1: just hear at a spa. Make a playlist of your
Speaker 1: favorite podcast that aren't about upsetting things like the news,
Speaker 1: but just anything, you know, can you get involved in
Speaker 1: a more of a narrative podcast that tells the story
Speaker 1: of something, or an interview, you know, with your favorite
Speaker 1: actors or whatever. But I try to, you know, I
Speaker 1: try not to ingest news when I'm on an airplane,
Speaker 1: because even though I feel like I'm not afraid to fly,
Speaker 1: sometimes that news stuff gets upsetting and it gets in
Speaker 1: there and you never know. If I'm on a six
Speaker 1: hour flight and our one I'm spending it watching news,
Speaker 1: who knows by our four something could have been rolling
Speaker 1: around in my brain and I might be priming myself
Speaker 1: for a panic attack because that, you know, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm keening into that lack of control feeling that obviously
Speaker 1: the news does give me. Now, something that I do
Speaker 1: when I get on an airplane, I don't do it anymore,
Speaker 1: but I used to do it every time, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of embarrassing, but I would go right up
Speaker 1: to the flight attendant and I would say, Hi, I
Speaker 1: have a phobia of flying. I have a bunch of
Speaker 1: things that I'm doing. I'm breathing, I'm meditating, I'm fine.
Speaker 1: But part of my recovery is saying it out loud
Speaker 1: to someone and I'm just telling you and they'll say okay,
Speaker 1: and they might check in on you, they might not.
Speaker 1: But getting over that fear of looking stupid, of being
Speaker 1: different than other people, that really helped me. You know. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I'm on stage every night as a comedian. I don't
Speaker 1: care what people think of me. But I'm on the
Speaker 1: flight and I think, oh my god, if anyone knows
Speaker 1: I'm having a panicchotect would be the most embarrassing. Then
Speaker 1: they could happen in the world and so I had
Speaker 1: to get over that by saying that to the flight attendant,
Speaker 1: and every single time everyone was so cool to me,
Speaker 1: to the point where it was like, no, I you
Speaker 1: don't have to keep checking in on me. I'm fine.
Speaker 1: But there's something about during a panic attack as well.
Speaker 1: I would even this just it still makes me embarrassed,
Speaker 1: and I'm sitting alone recording this, but I would turn
Speaker 1: to the person next to me and say, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: sorry if I'm acting a little strange. I'm having a
Speaker 1: panic attack, but I'll be okay now. I nobody wants
Speaker 1: to talk to the person next to them on a plane,
Speaker 1: but the adrenaline will drain from your body so fast
Speaker 1: if you do that, just let the embarrassment take over.
Speaker 1: It really helps with the panic, even if you're not
Speaker 1: acting strange. It's just a way to reach out to
Speaker 1: someone or don't say that, or just say to someone
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry to bother you. I I promised I
Speaker 1: won't talk to you the rest of the flight, but um,
Speaker 1: just make up something. Um, do you know what time
Speaker 1: this flight lands or anything? Just say words. You might
Speaker 1: want to change your atmosphere if you know, if it's
Speaker 1: that part of the flight where you can get up
Speaker 1: and walk around, Just get up and walk around, just
Speaker 1: anything to feel like you have a sense of control.
Speaker 1: I also bring a list of affirmations and you can
Speaker 1: hold them on a note card, put them in the
Speaker 1: notes section of your phone. But you need to replace
Speaker 1: the thoughts that are running through your head, and you
Speaker 1: need to replace them with things that are habitual. You know,
Speaker 1: in that in that way that these thoughts that you
Speaker 1: think are habitual, oh my god, the plane's gonna crash,
Speaker 1: but you need to replace it with things that are
Speaker 1: um that become as route to you. So it's really
Speaker 1: good to pick like five affirmations to say over and
Speaker 1: over instead of just trying to think up ones on
Speaker 1: the flight, because you probably think of some pretty disordered ones,
Speaker 1: like even though the plane's gonna crash, him at peace.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, that is not an affirmation. So you
Speaker 1: could say something to yourself like do not believe the
Speaker 1: things you tell yourself when you are afraid. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been here for I'm trying to find some that
Speaker 1: I have right here. I am safe, I am calm.
Speaker 1: Even if you're not calm, just say you're calm. You
Speaker 1: will become calm. I am safe. I am calm. You
Speaker 1: can write that one down. You can write down one's like,
Speaker 1: this is just a little anxiety. I am uncomfortable. I've
Speaker 1: been uncomfortable before. I'll be okay. You know something in
Speaker 1: that realm, even if you want to write something cheesy
Speaker 1: like I'm a grown as person on a flight. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're going to a work conference or vacation or
Speaker 1: I am going to enjoy myself on this vacation. And
Speaker 1: when you're in the air, think of things that you're
Speaker 1: looking forward to when you land. If there's anything you know,
Speaker 1: if it is a vacation, think of that, and then
Speaker 1: you'll realize, wait, I'm looking forward to something when I land,
Speaker 1: So there's no way I actually think this flight is
Speaker 1: going to crash. Another great affirmation is I feel anxious,
Speaker 1: but so what, I know what that feels like, and
Speaker 1: I'll get through it. Anxiety isn't dangerous. I'm just uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: I'll make it through this. It's only a thought, and
Speaker 1: a thought can be changed. The feeling of panic are
Speaker 1: leaving my body. I breathe in relaxation, I breathe out tension.
Speaker 1: I've conquered every attack so far, and this one will
Speaker 1: be no different. Your friends can write you letters of
Speaker 1: support emails, whether they're actually little cards, take them with you.
Speaker 1: It has to feel like you've got to be your
Speaker 1: own cheerleader and cheer yourself on, and you can't be
Speaker 1: embarrassed about needing a little extra care. I mean, think
Speaker 1: of all the times you've burdened friends with am I
Speaker 1: gonna be okay what's going on and burden them with
Speaker 1: something positive? Say hey, can you write me a few
Speaker 1: words of encouragement. I'm gonna keep it in my purse.
Speaker 1: If you have a lucky stone or some kind of
Speaker 1: crystal or some kind of religious object, but but not
Speaker 1: because you're in imminent danger. You know, you're not carrying
Speaker 1: around those things for good luck in case the plane crashes.
Speaker 1: That's not what we're doing here. You're carrying around those
Speaker 1: things because you're saying, I want some extra support in
Speaker 1: self soothing. I I don't want to have anxiety on
Speaker 1: this flight, and I'm taking every action I can. And
Speaker 1: this little stone reminds me that I'm going to have
Speaker 1: good luck with that, you know, or this religious symbol
Speaker 1: reminds me that I'm suffering. But I'll be okay, because
Speaker 1: I'm loved by you know, the the great universal whatever.
Speaker 1: We're not getting into superstition, right, there's a difference. One
Speaker 1: book I really liked too is called The Easy Way
Speaker 1: to Enjoy Flying by Alan Carr. He wrote a very
Speaker 1: famous book about quitting smoking. One thing he said in
Speaker 1: the book that that really just slapped me across the
Speaker 1: face was when you're outside walking around. Okay, so you've
Speaker 1: got this phobia flying. Okay, so when you're outside walking around,
Speaker 1: are you worried that planes are going to drop out
Speaker 1: of the sky on, you know, because your phobia flying
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the airplanes. And I just
Speaker 1: love that. It just kind of woke me up a
Speaker 1: little bit. So I highly recommend getting that book. It's
Speaker 1: also it's available on Kindle. So let's do it. Let's
Speaker 1: go into a progressive muscle relaxation, and that's how we'll
Speaker 1: end the episode. How about this, I'll end the episode
Speaker 1: here and then I'll just go into the progressive muscle
Speaker 1: relaxation and it will end there. So if you want
Speaker 1: the muscle relaxation, you can keep listening. If you don't,
Speaker 1: this is where we say goodbye anxiety. Bites, but don't
Speaker 1: forget you're in control. We'll be right back. As you're
Speaker 1: sitting here being a person with a body, just notice
Speaker 1: that you have a body. You don't have to try
Speaker 1: to relax it. You don't have to change how you're breathing,
Speaker 1: although if you are feeling a little hyperventilated, you of
Speaker 1: course may exhale your breath wherever you are and just
Speaker 1: wait for your breath to start breath eating itself on
Speaker 1: its own again. But your body breathes automatically all day,
Speaker 1: every day, and it will do that during this exercise.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy taking full breaths, that's great. You may
Speaker 1: do that during this but you are not required to.
Speaker 1: You don't have to do anything to relax until I
Speaker 1: start calling out the muscles that you are going to
Speaker 1: contract and release. But there's no pressure to relax. We're
Speaker 1: just contracting and releasing muscles. Start with your toes. Curl
Speaker 1: your toes as much as you can, tighten them to
Speaker 1: where you feel you could get a toe cramp, but
Speaker 1: not to the point of real discomfort. But your toes
Speaker 1: are curled up, maybe even your whole foot is tight.
Speaker 1: And count. I will count for you. Count to five.
Speaker 1: And release. Now, when you release, you don't have to
Speaker 1: do anything extra. You've tightened your foot and you're just
Speaker 1: releasing it. You don't need to think about over releasing it.
Speaker 1: You're just setting it back to where it was before
Speaker 1: you tightened it. But you might feel warm sensation, It
Speaker 1: might feel like the blood is moving. It might feel relaxing,
Speaker 1: and that's great, but there's no pressure. Now. Think about
Speaker 1: your calves. Tighten them. You might feel it in your
Speaker 1: ankle as well, but I think I think of it
Speaker 1: almost as the back of your calves, and just tighten.
Speaker 1: I'll count for you, and release your calves. Now, think
Speaker 1: about your knee, your knee cap the front of your calves.
Speaker 1: Tighten that area. I'll count for you, oh, and release.
Speaker 1: You might feel a sensation in the top of your
Speaker 1: legs that they feel different than the bottom half of
Speaker 1: your leg under your knee. They might feel like they
Speaker 1: wanted to get in on the action, too, So let's
Speaker 1: do the same thing. Think of your thighs. The front
Speaker 1: of your thighs tighten, almost as though someone is trying
Speaker 1: to lift your legs up from the top of your thigh.
Speaker 1: Tighten and release. Now, think of your butt tighten your
Speaker 1: butt muscles. Hold it there, Tighten them more as much
Speaker 1: as you can, and you might feel a little shaky
Speaker 1: even I will count this for you and release. Now
Speaker 1: the top half in the bottom half of your body
Speaker 1: might feel totally different from each other. Now you might
Speaker 1: even feel like your butt is flattening into the seat
Speaker 1: you're sitting. And so now we're going to tighten our stomach.
Speaker 1: And this might be something that causes people some discomfort
Speaker 1: because it might feel like it's restricting your breathing. It
Speaker 1: might just be a sensitive area. Just know that I'm
Speaker 1: counting for you. I will not keep you here long.
Speaker 1: You are totally in control of this. So if you
Speaker 1: just want to tighten up your stomach muscles, and you
Speaker 1: don't have to suck in your stomach, it's not like
Speaker 1: you're trying to pose for a picture and look like
Speaker 1: you've got to six pack. You're just tightening your stomach muscles.
Speaker 1: I'll count for you. You're completely safe, and release your
Speaker 1: stomach and feel free to just recover from that for
Speaker 1: a minute. If you want to just exhale, your body
Speaker 1: is breathing, and now let's go to your hands. Tighten
Speaker 1: your hands into two fists, hold it there tight as
Speaker 1: you can without discomfort, and release your hands. I'll think
Speaker 1: of your arms. Just tightening your arms. You might set
Speaker 1: in your bicep, you might feel it in your triseep,
Speaker 1: but from your wrist to your shoulder, just tighten every
Speaker 1: single muscle that you have access to and that you
Speaker 1: can feel. It might even be a sensation that your
Speaker 1: arms are pulling in towards your body. Just tighten and release.
Speaker 1: And now we're coming to our upper abdomen, our chest area.
Speaker 1: This might cause some discomfort because it might feel restrictive,
Speaker 1: but just sort of tighten your chest. You're totally in control.
Speaker 1: You're safe. I'm counting for you. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be here long and release. That helps to just take
Speaker 1: a man in here and let yourself breathe naturally. And
Speaker 1: nothing about your shoulders in your back. If you want
Speaker 1: to lift your shoulders up to your ears, picture your
Speaker 1: offera back and it's just tightened, tightened, tighten, pull the
Speaker 1: shoulders up and relax. And I did say relax, not release.
Speaker 1: That's okay, you can relax. Now. Let's think about your face.
Speaker 1: Take your mouth, can tighten it into a smile so
Speaker 1: that you're getting your neck muscles in there. You can
Speaker 1: scrunch up your mouth instead so that your nose is involved.
Speaker 1: Don't worry nobody's looking at you. If they are, they're
Speaker 1: probably wondering I'd like to do what they're doing. Tighten
Speaker 1: up that mouth and release. And now just tighten up
Speaker 1: your whole face. Scrunch your whole face up, close your eyes.
Speaker 1: Just tighten that face up. You're trying to move all
Speaker 1: of your you know, your eyes, your nose, your mouth,
Speaker 1: right into the center of your face, and just hold
Speaker 1: there and release. And now your head. It's hard really
Speaker 1: to tends your head up. But if you want to
Speaker 1: just picture the top of your head, and if you
Speaker 1: want to just picture that, there is almost like someone
Speaker 1: is cracking an egg over your head. There's just this
Speaker 1: feeling of something starting at the crown of your head
Speaker 1: and flowing all the way down from the top of
Speaker 1: your head through your face, down, your shoulders down, your arms, down,
Speaker 1: your abdomen, down, your legs, all the way to your toes.
Speaker 1: Just one big extra release. If there's anything you still
Speaker 1: think you might be holding onto, release You can repeat
Speaker 1: this exercise. You can go back down from the top
Speaker 1: of your head back through your feet and keep going
Speaker 1: up and back, Or you can just stop here For
Speaker 1: more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.