Are you perhaps suffering from an extremely common fear which is the fear of flying? Do you count yourself as one among those chosen few who typically dreads the holiday seasons? Does the mere thought of steeping on board an aircraft and flying in it more than enough to make you sick to your stomach? Do you often find yourself shaking and trembling in fear as your mind gets filled with so many awful and nasty things as you go and recall all of the airplane crashes and accidents that you have seen in the movies or heard in the news?

People who are afraid of flying usually base their lives on the “what if’s” like for example what if someone hijacks the plane that you are riding and chooses to blow the plane off in mid-air? What if suddenly there was an on board accident and a fire broke lose? What if the plane crashes upon taking off and killing you as it plummets back into the earthen ground? What if a panic attack hits you during the flight and you cannot breathe? You know, this list can go and go if you like. These are the very thoughts and ideas that people who have aviophobia or the fear of flying on an airplane or other air-bound vehicle for that matter share in common.

Aviophobia, aside from being the relentless fear of flying can be best described as a form of anxiety disorder and just like in almost all types of phobias it normally results from contemplating about the things which can or might happen; instead of focusing on the things that are happening! The mind and body are intrinsically linked or connected, which means, if you inject fearful or scary thoughts in your mind, your body will respond as if those which you are thinking of are indeed happening.

By picturing catastrophic and disastrous events in your mind, you trick your body into believing that such events are actually occurring and that is why you are having that kind of physical reaction. Almost all people are terrified by the idea of dying while a hundred or thousand feet up in the air – who is not right? However, the only difference is that those who are not plagued by aviophobia are not continuously playing those horrible mental movies unlike those who are scared of flying.

The main reason as to why you have this phobia is due to the fact that you keep on picturing such horrendous events in your head and constantly fantasizing about what could or might happen. If you can change your negative thinking patterns, your body’s reaction would also change and not for long you can count yourself amongst those who can board the plane and fly easily and comfortably.

One approach that can help you in achieving just that is with NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming. NLP has been proven effective not just in helping people in overcoming fear of flying, but in getting rid of other types of phobias as well. It involves various techniques which are geared towards clearing your mind of unwanted and unproductive thoughts; thus liberating you from the chain of fear.