Lets see...
I have never read a FoF thread so I dont know what is appropriate and what not, just let me state the following is serious and wellmeant.
Fear as such is nothing bad, its healthy. Being able to feel fear of certain things is a sign of intelligence and fantasy: You need to prevision and be able to imagine *future* delevopments from a current situation to see a threat and get worried.
When I learned parachuting in the military (so long ago that the chutes were still round and training was stretched out over 2 weeks) I recall being super-afraid of my first jump. I kept always wondering whether I would really be able to jump when the moment came, and was afraid to make a shame of myself. AFAIR the majority of my fellow course participants felt more or less the same, w/ one exception: There was that farm type of guy who eats an ox in the morning, afterwards solo ploughs the field because the ox is dead etc, who simply couldnt understand what problem we had: He would laugh at the sheer thought of being afraid, call us sissies etc, more or less in that plan (but amiably still).
Well, the big day came, all lined up... One refused to jump, guess who?
What I understood that day was that he simply had not had enough fantasy to be imagine what earth looks like when viewed in air current from 600 mtrs and to be afraid of a situation he couldnt "imagine", so also he hadnt had the time to prepare for the shock of looking down from there and asking yourself: "What the hell am I doing here????!" like we others, we had mentally gone through the agony and death fear several times and were prepared for the moment and could execute despite fear when he couldnt.
So, to repeat: Fear is a good thing because it stops you from doing stupid stuff (like jumping from planes) and more than often its just the sensible condition to have, and being afraid is a sign of intelligence and intuitive capabilities.
Now, another thing is how to deal with it and overcome if you need/want to.
Here I have a special take: What are you afraid of? "Simply... crashing" and, I assume, the following associated red card for further active participation on this planet.
You got fantasy, intelligence and imagination? Fine:
Sit back, close your eyes, and imagine a horrible death by drowning... AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!
Or how it is to burn to death in a car wreck, the smell, the panic!.... Or slowly dying by liver cancer, the pain, the horror when your flesh starts fouling up...
Point is:
One of the infinite ways to die will be yours.
Period.
Tomorrow a car runs you over and most probably you will still have the time to hear your bones crushing and wonder what *that* sound was?... Try and imagine them all in gross and crude detail: What you feel, what you hear, what you see and smell, make it three-dimensional and as livley as you possibly can, like for 10 days imagining how a first jump off a perfectly intact plane will feel like...
Now, that done (and having come out of resulting therapy
), take a plane crash death for comparison: No big deal, one of the better ways to go: If youre extremely unlucky its 5-7 minutes of spiralling down while conscious and (for g forces) not able to move a muscle... and then its lights out. Pffflllattt!! . Finished. There are worse ways...
I think the way to go is not to be less afraid of flying (heck, myself having moved one or the other a/c have a funny gut feeling today sometimes when flying as an impotent pax in the rear!) but instead to learn to be more afraid of the other risks of the day that you take w/o thinking twice and relativate the fear this way.
Try and explain to your husband one day (while already boarded) how you imagine a crash exactly in this plane would progress ("...see the fat lady over there? Will she shriek or rather shout?....") in normal voice, you will forget all fear, simply for bursting out in laughter when you see the faces of the above mentioned managers around you that have overheard your 3-d live description...
Fears are relative and overcoming them can be fun, at least thats how I treat mine.
Rattler
We just booked the trip on Friday night so I really don't have to wait that long.
)
