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Fear of Flying: Is It Helpful or Hurtful to Watch Airplane Videos?
This is a question I receive quite often from people, and it's actually not a simple answer. While sometimes it can provide some comfort to see videos of planes flying, or pilots talking about flying, and it can at times help normalize the experience a bit if the videos are benign enough, I find they can often be more harmful than helpful to people's fear of flying.
Not All Normalizing Experiences Are Created Equal
People sometimes hope they can provide themselves with some form of exposure therapy when watching airplane videos. However, exposure therapy has never been great for fear of flying for a number of reasons (some of those being limited access to exposure, graduated exposure, and repetition that you'd find with CBT). Fear of flying doesn't seem to follow the same rules as other phobias, and it has meant that traditional phobia treatments have never really done a great job with resolving people's flying anxiety. This is why I studied this phobia and came up with a different way of approaching this issue many years ago now that has worked well to help people overcome this issue.
Within this approach, there are four major components that need to be addressed when working to overcome fear of flying and flying anxiety: normalization, underlying causes, emotional regulation, and passenger flying education. I've discussed these components in depth in many articles and interviews in the past (and a book will eventually be on the way). So I won't go into the latter three here.
Understanding Normalization
Creating normalization is a bit more complex than it sounds (and no, it's not the same as what's known as "exposure"). The idea behind a normalization-based approach is that you're trying to make the experience of flying feel indifferent (or even fun and exciting in some instances). Kind of like the indifference you may feel when you get in the car if you drive every day. You likely just don't think about it because you're so used to it.
In order to create normalization, the basic concept is that you have to be taking in (to your mind and body, consciously and unconsciously) more of the routine elements of flying than anything else. If you end up taking in more negative or anxiety inducing flying elements, even unknowingly, it can result in "reverse normalization" and actually set your normalization meter the other direction, leading to increased anxiety instead of calm. This reverse normalization happens when people are taking in more negative than positive, and for every person, how "negative" and "positive" flying elements are experienced depends on their own emotional history and current place. Some people will be impacted by elements that others are fine with.
A Video of a Calm Flight Can Still Be Triggering
It can be tempting to think that a helpful or benign flying video is watching a plane flight where no bad turbulence happens and everything runs smoothly. However, sometimes hearing certain sounds may be more triggering than expected, or seeing various airplane movements, seeing people moving around the plane a certain way, seeing the plane full of people, and more that shows up in videos can actually unexpectedly hit the reverse normalization button. While some might say, "Well, you have to get used to all this before flying, don't you?" There is some truth to this line of thinking. However, if what you're watching becomes unexpectedly too overwhelming or overstimulating for any reason it can actually create anything from panic attacks in response to a significant setback that doesn't easily resolve with repetition. I have had people show up to their sessions clearly impacted after they decided to watch live flight videos that they weren't ready to encounter.
Different Types of Airplane Videos and Reverse Normalization
There are a lot of different types of airplane videos online nowadays, more so than just videos of planes flying that passengers put online. There is also an ever-growing pool of pilot-made videos for the sake of teaching the public about planes and flying, and explaining incidents that come up. And while these maybe are intended to be helpful -- sometimes it is really unclear -- I would venture to say that many more videos lend to reverse normalization, as opposed to normalization. When you're afraid of flying, it is much easier to be stimulated the wrong way than the helpful way. The interaction between the fearful flier's brain and content that highlights things going wrong, or that shines a light on the exceptions to flying, or shows the mistakes (even if things turn out okay, in the end) only leaves most people who fear flying feeling less good about flying and more worried. Even if the pilots are explaining why you shouldn't be nervous, it is the interaction with the anxiety and flying that ratchets up the fear.
The Less Obstacles to the Fear of Flying Brain, The Better
In my approach, stemming from my work as a therapist, I created the normalization exercises I use when working with people specifically to be sure that what you're taking in is most likely to lend to normalization and not the opposite. And this never includes videos. There are times that people have brought videos into our sessions to watch with me so their reactions can be monitored and understood. But I would not specifically point people towards any videos you'd find online for the purposes of normalizing flying. There are too many variables that can work against you. In fact, it is really the opposite. I would normally tell people not to watch videos they find online (including flying news videos). It doesn't mean certain video have never helped people -- I'm sure some people will respond to this article and say how watching videos was helpful for them. But it isn't a reliable approach.
The mind of the fearful flier can be delicate when it comes to anxiety and flying and easily impacted the wrong direction. If you're wanting to overcome the fear, the less obstacles the better. This is why the more flying related content that pops up online these days, the more care is needed around what you're taking in.
It is also the case that if there is something in the underlying causes area that is blocking normalization from being internalized that trying to push too hard on the normalization button can actually increase flying anxiety as well. So if you're watching videos hoping it's going to desensitize you, but something underlying is in the way, it can actually increase the block and you may start to feel more anxious. (This is why overcoming fear of flying has always been complicated. The needs aren't the same from one person to the next and the process needs to adjust for the person, not the other way around).
Overcoming Fear of Flying, and Handling Videos
If you enjoy watching airplane videos, passenger videos, or pilot explanation videos, just keep in mind that while they certainly can be interesting, don't be surprised if you're noticing yourself wanting to fly less as you watch more of them. It doesn't really mean that flying has become notably more dangerous or higher risk (I know this is a hot topic right now), but it more likely means that you're experiencing reverse normalization if you're finding yourself backing away from flying or becoming more uncertain about it. This may be a sign it's time to put the videos aside or scroll past them in your feed for a while.
#fearofflying #Anxiety #Phobia #PanicAttacks #Claustrophobia #flyinganxiety
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