Eyes on the prize

As a child and a teen I flew a lot taking overseas holidays with my family and, after my parents separated, visiting my dad in Manila where he had been posted for work. After my first panic attack, flying became extremely difficult for me and my anxiety grew with each and every flight. Over time, it wasn’t just the flight itself that made me anxious but everything to do with flying—airports, thinking about airports, seeing planes in the air or on TV, even thinking about a holiday or packing a suitcase.

My husband and I honeymooned in a motorhome in beautiful Tasmania and we flew there and back despite my elaborate proposal to get from our hometown across Bass Strait without having to hop on a plane or take our own car. My proposal involved buses, trains, and a very large boat, but in the end my husband talked me around and we flew.

I panicked on the flight to Tasmania and spent the three weeks of our honeymoon stressed and dreading the flight home. I got through the flight home by telling myself that once we landed, I never had to fly again if I didn’t want to, and for the next four years I didn’t.

My husband likes to enter online competitions in his spare time and he is very good at writing witty little entries. He has won some fantastic prizes over the years, and I had been dreading the inevitable phone call from him telling me that we were heading off on a holiday. When that call came I cried for days. We had won an all-expenses paid trip to Canada and all I could do was cry. I was going to the Canadian Rockies to see some of the most magnificent scenery on earth and all I could think about was the very, very long flight across the Pacific Ocean.

I was feeling disappointed in myself for being so ungrateful so I made the decision to invest in a fear of flying course. I had toyed with the idea for a decade but had never signed up for a course because, well, I would have to take the graduation flight at the end of it. Logical, right?

On the first night of the course my husband had to drive me to the airport as my general anxiety pretty much prevented me from driving anywhere but work and driving to an airport was out of the question. By the time I graduated I had been driving myself to and fro for weeks, which was a major achievement in itself. In the space of a few months I went from bursting into tears at the mere thought of getting on a plane to speaking to groups of fearless flyer participants as a successful graduate.

My most significant learning in becoming a fearless flyer was that my fear had nothing to do with flying at all, it was just a symptom of my anxiety in general. I finally realised that my other fears and worries were also symptoms of the anxious, emotional state I had been experiencing for so many years.

Conquering this fear was literally going to change my life.