Aerophobia

What is Aerophobia?



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

Click 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.

Sometimes Aerophobia can simply be developed from seemingly harmless experiences, or seem like 'its always been like this'. The truth is it hasn't always been that way (there's no such thing as a new born baby with irrational fears and phobias) but it may have started way back in an early childhood, possibly school, experience.

A 'Learned' Response, like Aerophobia can Always be UN-learned...

In all the years we've been helping people overcome the most extreme fears and phobias, we have never found a case that could not be overcome, provided the individual was determined to do so.

The human system is capable of learning new responses incredibly quickly (how else could a single incident lasting only a few seconds or minutes create a problem in the first place?) and with the correct techniques a fearless, comfortable response can always be restored.

The first step to overcoming Aerophobia is to
take this quick – free – self-assessment now.

 

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