Dear all,
I just found this forum today after going through the archived columns of Ask the Pilot (which I highly recommend, by the way) and finding a mention of SOAR in one of the columns. My last flight was about three weeks ago: the woman next to me didn't like turbulence, I didn't like takeoff, so between the two of us we were only one panicked person
.
I'm not flying again until October, but Delta at this moment is saying my husband is "awaiting takeoff" at DCA. Let me say now I've been doing a lot of reading about flying since I had a panic attack on a plane (in June, after a quarter-century of flying without problems, including multiple trans-Atlantic roundtrips). Delta has been through a lot lately, and I fear its pilots may be at least somewhat screwed by the Northwest merger. But my logical mind is saying loud and clear, "There is not a single person associated with Delta who doesn't want to see your husband safe and sound on the ground two hours from now." I've flown both Delta and AirTran since that panic attack, and in neither case was it anything that happened on the plane, or even at the airport, that caused me to freak out. So why are my hands cold and clammy right now?
I was reading the SOAR questions and this one really struck home for me. In my case the "trust betrayed" was not really a trust being betrayed as a really awful and unexpected event: the death of my husband's older brother in a motorcycle crash. He had a helmet and a lot of bike experience, but apparently a lot of motorcycle crashes involve men in their 30s with a helmet and some bike experience. We didn't know that at the time, and we wouldn't have been able to persuade him to give up a hobby he loved even if we had. But that was 14 months ago and my husband and I, as well as my husband's entire family, are still struggling with the big hole that got torn open in our lives.
The intervening time has seen my husband's great-aunt and my grandfather pass away, my grandmother suffer the effects of a debilitating stroke, and my husband's father undergo multiple hospital stays as a result of complications from COPD (emphysema). So I think what is going on with me is not a fear of flying exactly as a fear of death and unexpected loss, and it just happened to hit hardest at a time when I was feeling vulnerable, which was during takeoff on a flight that went perfectly routinely.
I suspect, given the presence of that question in the FAQ, that Captain Tom, Lisa, and the other people working with SOAR are familiar with this variation on fear of flying, and that other people on this board have dealt with similar issues -- flying fine for years, then to have fear of flying pop up in close proximity to a trauma that has nothing to do with flying. I suspect in my case that it's the loss of control that adds to my heightened feelings of vulnerability, the belief that I could die or lose someone I love at any moment. While I can collect information that I am highly unlikely to die by flying (my friends can tell you that I was the one saying about the Qantas plane, "Hey, look! You can get down safely even if there's a big ol' hole in the plane!"), I can't prove to myself that I won't wake up tomorrow and find out that I've lost my husband, or one of my parents, or my brother, or a close friend. You can't either. It's impossible to do. The only thing I can do is make my peace with it, and I haven't figured out how yet.
So if anyone has dealt with this problem themselves and has advice, please do post it. Even if you don't have specific advice, thank you for letting me vent here. And if you really want to track Delta #813, you can, although given that it seems to have cleared DC airspace safely, I really do think everything's going to be fine.
I just found this forum today after going through the archived columns of Ask the Pilot (which I highly recommend, by the way) and finding a mention of SOAR in one of the columns. My last flight was about three weeks ago: the woman next to me didn't like turbulence, I didn't like takeoff, so between the two of us we were only one panicked person
.
I'm not flying again until October, but Delta at this moment is saying my husband is "awaiting takeoff" at DCA. Let me say now I've been doing a lot of reading about flying since I had a panic attack on a plane (in June, after a quarter-century of flying without problems, including multiple trans-Atlantic roundtrips). Delta has been through a lot lately, and I fear its pilots may be at least somewhat screwed by the Northwest merger. But my logical mind is saying loud and clear, "There is not a single person associated with Delta who doesn't want to see your husband safe and sound on the ground two hours from now." I've flown both Delta and AirTran since that panic attack, and in neither case was it anything that happened on the plane, or even at the airport, that caused me to freak out. So why are my hands cold and clammy right now?
I was reading the SOAR questions and this one really struck home for me. In my case the "trust betrayed" was not really a trust being betrayed as a really awful and unexpected event: the death of my husband's older brother in a motorcycle crash. He had a helmet and a lot of bike experience, but apparently a lot of motorcycle crashes involve men in their 30s with a helmet and some bike experience. We didn't know that at the time, and we wouldn't have been able to persuade him to give up a hobby he loved even if we had. But that was 14 months ago and my husband and I, as well as my husband's entire family, are still struggling with the big hole that got torn open in our lives.
The intervening time has seen my husband's great-aunt and my grandfather pass away, my grandmother suffer the effects of a debilitating stroke, and my husband's father undergo multiple hospital stays as a result of complications from COPD (emphysema). So I think what is going on with me is not a fear of flying exactly as a fear of death and unexpected loss, and it just happened to hit hardest at a time when I was feeling vulnerable, which was during takeoff on a flight that went perfectly routinely.
I suspect, given the presence of that question in the FAQ, that Captain Tom, Lisa, and the other people working with SOAR are familiar with this variation on fear of flying, and that other people on this board have dealt with similar issues -- flying fine for years, then to have fear of flying pop up in close proximity to a trauma that has nothing to do with flying. I suspect in my case that it's the loss of control that adds to my heightened feelings of vulnerability, the belief that I could die or lose someone I love at any moment. While I can collect information that I am highly unlikely to die by flying (my friends can tell you that I was the one saying about the Qantas plane, "Hey, look! You can get down safely even if there's a big ol' hole in the plane!"), I can't prove to myself that I won't wake up tomorrow and find out that I've lost my husband, or one of my parents, or my brother, or a close friend. You can't either. It's impossible to do. The only thing I can do is make my peace with it, and I haven't figured out how yet.
So if anyone has dealt with this problem themselves and has advice, please do post it. Even if you don't have specific advice, thank you for letting me vent here. And if you really want to track Delta #813, you can, although given that it seems to have cleared DC airspace safely, I really do think everything's going to be fine.
