I travel therefore I fear

There are hundreds if not thousands of articles out there about how to get over the fear of flying. Tips galore await those intrepid travelers who yearn to explore the globe, but simply wish that they had an instant teleporter to deconstruct themselves at a molecular level and put them back together in another place.

Being a fearful flyer for me is ironic in a couple of ways. One, I live on the island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii. It is the most isolated place to live on the planet, being that the nearest point of continental land is 2,400 miles away in California. That’s a 5½ hour flight. Over 5 hours in a metal tube hurtling through the atmosphere with no landmass to touch down on, just the expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Five hours of white knuckle-gripping fear for a self-described aviophobic (one who has a fear of flying) accompanied by acrophobia – a fear of heights.

Maybe I’m just a fearful person by nature. When I look through the list of phobias, I see that I also have algophobia – a fear of pain – um, yes… don’t we all? Then there’s dentophobia – the fear of dentists and dental procedures. You can blame that one on my first dental experience as a child when I started to cry after seeing the dental chair surrounded by metallic contraptions and a tray of instruments that definitely looked like they could cause great pain. This was fifty-mumble years ago before dental chairs looked like recliners. The dentist tried to “calm me down” by grabbing my face and shaking it and telling me to shut up. Boy did I wail when he did that. Thank goodness my mom burst in like Wonder Woman and rescued me. Well, not before uttering some pointed expletives to the dentist first. Perhaps that was beginning of my personality being fearful prone.

In looking at the list of phobias I see that I also have glossophobia – a fear of public speaking, and maybe halitophobia – fear of bad breath – both from myself and others, gymnophobia – fear of nudity (you’d understand this one if you’d ever seen me nude and would consequently develop the phobia yourself), along with a bunch that I think we all should be able to admit we have, namely, hoplophobia – fear of weapons, hadephobia – fear of Hell, nosophobia – fear of contracting a disease, osmophobia – fear of bad odors, traumatophobia – fear of an injury, taphophobia –fear of being placed in a grave while still alive (people actually think about this?), and in today’s technologically-advanced world, nomophobia – fear of being out of mobile phone contact. No really, it’s called no-mo-pho-bia. But I digress.

Reason number two for the irony of my fear of flying is that I work in the travel and tourism industry. I could be flying to places at half the cost or even free on fam trips. These are trips for those who work in the field to have a host pick up most or all of your travel tab to explore and discover their destination so that you can go back home and sell trips based on your first-hand experience if you’re a tour operator or write about the place if you’re a journalist. I read the emails and offers and drool over them, fantasize about them, and then heave a big sigh as I file them away and take deep breaths to make the chest pains that signal the start of an anxiety attack go away.

I’ve read and heard all about the various ways one can get over the fear of flying. But educating myself about how safe flying is, how turbulence works, and accident statistics of flying versus everything else in the world, hasn’t alleviated my fear. Although I have to admit I haven’t tried hypnotherapy, a group program, or desensitized myself in a flight simulator, mainly because I don’t know where I could get access to a flight simulator, but I don’t think those will work either. All I can do is fly only when I absolutely have to and make sure I have a full prescription of Xanax pills in my purse and my BFF on speed dial. She’s the only one that can calm me down when I’m being irrational. Believe me, if I had the funds, I’d fly her to me here in Hawaii so she could accompany me on every flight I ever had to take.