6 ms·

Nervous flyer here. I tell myself this on a loop while flying and my lizard brain just does not care. Weirdly, I've flown hundreds of times and this didn't st

by jraines 10y ago

Nervous flyer here. I tell myself this on a loop while flying and my lizard brain just does not care. Weirdly, I've flown hundreds of times and this didn't start until I was near 30. I think one aspect is not the fear of death, but the fear of being in a situation of knowing death is certain for minutes as you fall out of the sky. (Which is a situation I also know is a small fraction of the already tiny chance of dying in an airplane).

NullCharacter 10y ago
Completely agree with you. I fly tons for work, and was just fine until I got into my mid-late twenties when I started to have horrible anxiety. And like you, I don't necessarily fear death, but I definitely don't want to see death coming. More than anything, I fear helplessness.
- gist 10y ago
  When I was a teen (long time ago) I remember telling my dad that I thought it would be great to take a flight with many stops because that way we got to takeoff and land multiple times! What fun! A bit later of course it became exactly the opposite and not just for time travel reasons, price or schedule.
henree 10y ago
I think that is pretty common and has to do with that dying isn't concrete enough for our brains. Telling people to drive slower so they don't die usually is less efficient than making them consider spending months in a hospital bed and never properly walk again etc. That said, that fear is largely irrational too since essentially no "helpless scenario" won't first have developed into an emergency. So you don't have to fear being helpless before there is an actual emergency. But you don't really have to fear emergencies either, since the far majority of emergencies (or even crashes) end well.
bbarn 10y ago
Ditto. Was traveling for a living, and didn't care at all about it for years, then I got worse and worse, and had to change careers. I think part of it was the increase in stress overall after 9/11 in travelling, but maybe another part of it is doing it enough times, having enough unpleasant experiences that it's added up to me just hating everything that can happen on a typical flight. Also, dropping 10-20 feet and seeing/feeling the frame of the aircraft flexing about is just plain unsettling.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  > dropping 10-20 feet and seeing/feeling the frame of the aircraft flexing about is just plain unsettling. If it helps, Boeing tests the wings to failure by mounting them to a diabolical torture device that bends them. They have to be bent near vertical before failure. A little turbulence flapping the wings is about as dangerous as your car's suspension flexing over rough roads.
bdamm 10y ago
Have you tried taking a flight lesson to see if it helps?
WalterBright 10y ago
I used to be a white knuckle flyer until working at Boeing. Knowing how the systems are designed and how they work and how they are designed to be resistant to failure helped a great deal. I tried to explain all this to a friend who was also a nervous nellie flyer, and he told me he didn't want to know - he felt safer with it being a black box.

by jraines 10y ago

NullCharacter 10y ago

Completely agree with you. I fly tons for work, and was just fine until I got into my mid-late twenties when I started to have horrible anxiety. And like you, I don't necessarily fear death, but I definitely don't want to see death coming. More than anything, I fear helplessness.

gist 10y ago
When I was a teen (long time ago) I remember telling my dad that I thought it would be great to take a flight with many stops because that way we got to takeoff and land multiple times! What fun! A bit later of course it became exactly the opposite and not just for time travel reasons, price or schedule.

henree 10y ago

I think that is pretty common and has to do with that dying isn't concrete enough for our brains. Telling people to drive slower so they don't die usually is less efficient than making them consider spending months in a hospital bed and never properly walk again etc. That said, that fear is largely irrational too since essentially no "helpless scenario" won't first have developed into an emergency. So you don't have to fear being helpless before there is an actual emergency. But you don't really have to fear emergencies either, since the far majority of emergencies (or even crashes) end well.

bbarn 10y ago

Ditto. Was traveling for a living, and didn't care at all about it for years, then I got worse and worse, and had to change careers. I think part of it was the increase in stress overall after 9/11 in travelling, but maybe another part of it is doing it enough times, having enough unpleasant experiences that it's added up to me just hating everything that can happen on a typical flight. Also, dropping 10-20 feet and seeing/feeling the frame of the aircraft flexing about is just plain unsettling.

WalterBright 10y ago
> dropping 10-20 feet and seeing/feeling the frame of the aircraft flexing about is just plain unsettling. If it helps, Boeing tests the wings to failure by mounting them to a diabolical torture device that bends them. They have to be bent near vertical before failure. A little turbulence flapping the wings is about as dangerous as your car's suspension flexing over rough roads.

bdamm 10y ago

Have you tried taking a flight lesson to see if it helps?

WalterBright 10y ago

I used to be a white knuckle flyer until working at Boeing. Knowing how the systems are designed and how they work and how they are designed to be resistant to failure helped a great deal. I tried to explain all this to a friend who was also a nervous nellie flyer, and he told me he didn't want to know - he felt safer with it being a black box.