Aerophobia - An unwarranted
automatic fear response to the thought or the reality of air
travel.
Dictionary Definition of Aerophobia
Pronunciation
- air-uh-foh-bee-uh
Meaning - An abnormal and persistent fear
of flying. Sufferers experience severe anxiety even though
they usually realize that the flying does not pose a threat
commensurate with their fear. Aerophobia also means an irrational
fear of fresh air or drafts of air.
From - Derived from the Greek "aero-",
air or gas + "phobos", fear = literally, fear of
air.
Phobia
- suff.
Meaning - An intense, abnormal, or
illogical fear of a specified thing: xenophobia.
From - Late Latin, from Greek -phobia, from
phobos, fear.
Other terms that may be used for Aerophobia include:
Click the links below to learn more about
each term and proven, guaranteed ways to solve and cure your
phobia and fears. (Links will open in a new window)
– Acrophobia
– Alloxophobia
– Aviaphobia
– Aviatophobia
– Aviophobia
– Fear
of Flying
– Fear
of Flying Phobia
– Flying
Anxiety
– Flying
Phobia
– Nervous
about Flying
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here to learn more about aerophobia and how to cure it.
Understand Aerophobia
The first thing to understand is that fear
is a natural and normal human 'negative' emotion. The purpose
of negative emotions is to tell us that something isn't quite
right; an indication that we need to take some kind of action.
In the case of fear, the message is 'danger'.
While we are born with fear of loud noises and fear of heights
'pre-wired' in our nervous systems, and all other fears are
learned from 'experience'.
The catch is, our mind is so powerful, that
the 'experience' doesn't have to have been real, it could
just have been vividly imagined. (That's why you can get feelings
about flying just by thinking; you don't have to actually
be there).
Learned fear is an important survival mechanism,
but just occasionally the wires get crossed and we learn a
fear response for something where it doesn't belong –
where there isn't a significant danger – and Aerophobia can
develop.
The Root Cause
The root cause of Aerophobia varies from
individual to individual, and whilst no two individuals are
the same, most fall into one or more of the following categories:
A Single
Traumatic Incident:
A highly stressful or frightening real
event at which, instantaneously Aerophobia is created. Similar
to, say, a child being bitten by a dog and developing an
immediate phobia, a single traumatic incident is a one-time
experience at which there is such extreme fear - even if
only for a moment - that the nervous system 'learns' to
associate fear to help the individual avoid such situations
in future.
The initial fear, by the way, may be nothing
to do with flying. We often hear from clients that the problem
started at a time when they were under extreme stress for
something completely unrelated, but the mind somehow associated
the negative feelings to flying anyway.
An Associated
Traumatic Experience:
This is where the individual does not directly
experience the fear, but 'associates' to someone who does,
either in a real situation, or, more rarely, when watching
someone in a movie - or even a dream - experience a traumatic
event.
A Slow Build:
A slow build occurs when a mild case of
Aerophobia escalates over time to become a severe one. What
is happening here is that the individual is 'accumulating'
fearful associations to flying, so that the evidence used
by the mind and nervous system is becoming increasingly
irrefutable that fear is the appropriate emotion. That means
that anxiety is created automatically in anticipation each
time... creating a self-fulfilling prophesy.