Eight years ago, sitting on a flight like I am right now would have been unthinkable. Five minutes after takeoff and I’m chill. My heart is beating normally. No sweat. I genuinely enjoyed watching the desert landscape disappear beneath the plane. Just a few minutes of anxious rumination and guilt pangs before takeoff. No weed or alcohol or whatever Rescue Remedy placebo crap to lean on. No hand squeezing or terrified tears.
How did this happen?
One of the turning points in “treating” my anxiety was when I realized – I’m never gonna get away from this shit. It’s you and me to the bitter end, baby. Even before I did anything about it, that simple act of surrender made it easier. Instead of tensing around the tension I started to learn how to relax everything I could. Maybe there’s nothing I can do to avoid my shoulders getting tight when I’m stressed, but maybe my legs are fine. My face can relax. My belly can be soft.
Acceptance. Counterintuitive but so powerful.
With flight anxiety specifically, there were several separate pieces to accept. First – transitions are tough for me. When I turn into a lunatic the week before a flight, I’m not surprised anymore. Ah, right, of course I’m feeling off. There’s tension building. Makes sense. You got this. Simply knowing and accepting and expecting this takes a huge edge off. Puts the stress in context, rather than giving it free reign to run rampant in my mind and body and relationships.
The next piece to pick apart was the flight itself. A full 24 hours of anxiety each way to Australia is seriously fucked, even more than the week buildup. For a long time alcohol was my solution – a dehydrating solution but a solution nonetheless. But when I stopped drinking – and became a mother – the spike in nerves was palpable. To me, but also to my then-husband and young son.
I know what it’s like to grow up swimming in a parent’s anxiety. I didn’t want that for my kids.
So I dug in. Interviewed my brother, a pilot, for hours, forcing him to explain how planes work, every noise from the engine, ding from the plane, cryptic messages from the flight deck. Got myself a basic understanding of what causes turbulence, learned to see it as bumps on the road rather than a sign of imminent death.
And it worked. To the point that the sometimes hours-long bouts of turbulence on flights to Australia and the US can now actually lull me to sleep. Me. A terrible sleeper at the best of times. Enjoying turbulence.
And of course throughout all of this, the acceptance and the understanding, I employed every mindfulness technique I could to staple myself to the present moment. Because up until now, no matter how overrun with anxiety I might feel, I have never actually found myself to be plummeting to a certain death. Right now, everything’s okay. I’m safe. I focused on my breathing, felt the pressure of my body on the chair, counted things I could see and hear and smell. Played sudoku to force my mind out of spiraling rumination and into active analysis. Body scan after body scan after body scan.
If this was the only fruit of my thousands of hours of practice, it would have been worth it.
The bit that’s left for me now is still about my kids – but I no longer worry about them growing up nursing on my anxiety. Well, not flight anxiety, anyway. But I do still worry that the plane will crash and they’ll lose their mother just because I thought it was important enough to go on whatever trip. And again – now I know it’s going to happen. I see the thoughts coming from afar. The feelings of guilt. The pricks of tears in my eyes as I picture their little faces. I watch the thoughts and sensations getting closer. Do my best not to hang onto them when they appear, to watch and listen but not get involved, not stir the pot. To hear the thoughts telling me how selfish I am, feel the pain in them, and then let it all go.
Which of course, they always do. Everything passes eventually. Like the ground pulling away from the plane at takeoff. They get smaller and smaller and smaller until… they seem silly.
And then they’re gone, and something else appears. Excitement to see them. Wonder that things can be different like this. Even a little bit of pride, that my kids have a mother who gets on the fucking plane anyway. Even if she feels shaky and selfish and teary. Like I’m doing my part to chip away at this intergenerational legacy of anxiety. Setting an example so that hopefully, when they’re grown up and leaving their kids and partners and whoever else to fly around the world and do their thing, they won’t have to schlep this extra luggage onto the plane with them.
Mama in the Moment 