A message was posted on the SOAR Fear of Flying Message Board about a crash caused years ago by a maintenance error by Boeing. The person posting the message asked to me tell them that this could never happen again.

Many people who flying believe, as this person seems to, that the only way to deal with anxiety is to replace uncertainty with certainty that what is feared can't happen. That is NOT the way the brain is supposed to work. If things were absolutely certain, we would have no need of high level thinking that assesses how safe our various options are.

To deal with fear maturely, the first step is to understand that there is no such thing as ABSOLUTE safety. If a person must have absolute safety—such as it can't happen—it becomes impossible to navigate through life. The person RETREATS from life, and becomes agoraphobic.

The problem is serious if progressive. To end feelings of anxiety, the person backs off just a bit, and then feels relieved. But the relief doesn't last. Anxiety returns. The person backs off just a bit once again. Again they feel relief. Again, it doesn't last. This continues until it is no longer possible to back off.

I know a woman who did exactly that. She stopped working and retreated to an apartment. She became fearful of fumes, so she sealed the floors and windows. Afraid of toxins in food, she restricted her to tofu. Then, to only one brand of tofu. Since she could not leave her apartment, my partner at the time (who was a therapist) brought the specified tofu to her. I told my partner she was enabling her friend. My partner objected that the fear was real, and if she didn't provide the tofu, her friend would eat nothing. In time, as she continued backing off (made possible by my partner's enabling), she became unable to eat at all. She was taken to a hospital and admitted to the clinic. After a few days, they transferred her to the unit—with her kicking and screaming that there was nothing wrong with her mind—as, after all, before she retreated, she was a therapist. But, the hospital persisted. They treated her need for absolute safety.

We can go in one direction or the other. One direction is to recognize that safety is relative, and that we need to use our thinking to assess how safe something is. We need to balance risk and safety to have a good life. The other direction is to back off when to temporarily relieve anxiety. If that backing off continues, we back off until life is severely limited.

I suppose most of us go back and forth between backing off and pushing forward. If so, I'd encourage you (a) to keep confronting the fact that safety is relative, (b) to accept the anxiety that causes, (c) allow the amygdala to get used to the experience, so that (d) that particular thing no longer triggers the release of that cause feelings of arousal that are automatically (mistakenly) thought of as anxiety. This keeps life from shrinking.

Anxiety expert David Barlow had some interesting things to say about this in a recent interview. He says clients must develop mindful awareness of their emotional experiences. That is 180 degrees out of phase with what people with anxiety do, which is, according to Barlow, "to repress and avoid their own emotion."

Second, he says a person must develop a less limited appraisal of the meaning of emotion. It is a huge mistake to automatically assume that feeling highly aroused equals fear. It doesn't.

Arousal—whatever the level—is just arousal. It has no meaning. Why? The part of the brain that causes arousal is unrelated to meaning because it can't think. An anxious person needs to learn that arousal has no meaning. It is rather the reaction of a very primitive part of the brain—a part that existed in reptiles that had no ability to think—to change or the unexpected.

Think of a sunflower. It has an ability to turn toward the sun. It would be giving a sunflower a lot of credit to say it does that based on meaning. If that isn't clear enough, what about a Venus Fly Trap plant? If an insect crawls on the plants leaves, it closes up, trapping the insect. I don't think that is based on meaningful thought. When a doctor taps your knee with his rubber hammer, your foot kicks forward. There is no meaning. That's just a reflex. When the amygdala releases stress hormones, there is no meaning. It is just a reflex. So if you give meaning to feelings of arousal caused by those stress hormones, you are giving credit to the amygdala for something it can't do: think.

But, what if the amygdala could think? Let's assume it does. If so, how smart is it anyway? It is only the size of a nut, an almond, for which it is named (amygdala is the Greek word for almond). So, don't insult your own by thinking that the tiny amygdala is so smart that you, with your huge cortex, need to think it knows more about risks, threats, or dangers than you do. It doesn't.

The next part of this flexibility issue is does fear equal danger? No. You can be totally safe and think you are in danger. You can be in great danger and have no fear. Why? Because you don't know about the danger. So, get it. Fear is fear. Danger is danger. If you can identify what the danger is, then—because of your identification of danger—there is meaning and thus fear is legit. If you can't identify a danger, then fear makes no sense. If you are just automatically thinking arousal means fear and fear means danger, that has to stop.

The next thing Barlow mentioned is avoidance. There are many ways people avoid intense emotion. He cites distraction, changing the subject, getting out of a situation that causes feelings. You might argue that avoidance and distraction make sense. Sure, if you don't mind your life contracting. Sure, if you don't know any better way to regulate arousal and emotion. But avoidance and distraction keep you from learning better ways to regulate. They keep your amygdala from getting used to intense feelings. Which brings us to Barlow's last point. He calls it "emotion exposure." We need to have emotional experiences in order to become used to them.

Read more at this link.