Aerophobia: when the fear of flying is pathological

If the technological advances of the last 100 years have been noticed in any field, it is that of interconnection and globalization. Today we can be on the other side of the planet in a matter of hours, and we can even live in two countries at the same time, if money allows us. Passenger planes make that possible.

However, not all people benefit in the same way from the benefits of international flight. People with fear of flying, or aerophobia, can go to the extreme of not getting on the plane out of panic and the stress that these types of experiences produce.

What is aerophobia?

Aerophobia is a type of phobia in which what produces a intense fear It is the situation of being inside an airplane that is flying or that could take off. What is frightening is the idea that a plane crash could occur, which by its nature is associated with a very high risk of death.

However, not all cases of fear of flying are considered a sign of aerophobia. As in almost everything, in fears there are different degrees of intensity, and aerophobia will only exist as such if the panic is so intense that it is a limiting element of the quality of life of the person.

That is why, although it is estimated that approximately 25% of people are afraid of flying, among these the proportion of people with aerophobia would barely reach 10%.

Emotions take control of the phobia

Sometimes this fear goes further and extends even to airplanes that for different reasons will not fly, either because there is no scheduled flight or because they are imitations of airplanes and do not work, for example. In these cases there is a generalization.

As it happens in all types of phobiasThis fear of flying is not based on a sense of danger that is based on reasonable fears, but is basically irrational. It occurs despite being aware that flight safety measures are optimal.

Although reason understands the safety guarantees of the plane, emotions follow a totally different path, and at They often exert a great influence on the former, distorting it and causing almost delusional thoughts to appear.

Symptoms of the terror of airplanes

Among the symptoms of aerophobia there are many of those that are typical in the rest of phobias:

• A lot of sweating
• Rise in heart rate and respiration.
• Dry mouth.
• Sickness.
• Headache.
• General discomfort.

Causes of flying phobia

One of the elements that best explain the appearance of aerophobia is the fact that having experienced a traumatic event related to airplanes in the past. That means that a plane crash may have been experienced firsthand, or one has been seen, or someone you know suffered its consequences.

In other cases, aerophobia appears when certain personality traits interfere with the way the situation is managed.

For example, people with a high tendency to control they can feel a lot of stress at times when they have no control over what happens, and flights aboard an airplane are one of those contexts.

In the same way, a general propensity to anxiety causes what happens in the environment to be analyzed in a that there are many clues that can be interpreted as indications of an accident that is about to happen. All of this increases stress, which in turn keeps you looking for false signs of danger.

Treatment

The most common treatments for extreme fear of flying include gradual exposure to the terror-producing situation. The objective of this strategy is to create a progressive desensitization.

In this way, accompanying a person to a real or virtual plane and letting them make small progress, the person learns to stop associating these situations with the extreme fear that usually produce.

Virtual reality-based scare exposure programs are very useful because they are cheap and easy to use. performed by not depending on owners of a real plane, and also allow you to control everything that happens on the flight and end the session at any moment.