Hi everyone,

This issue has been going on in my life for the last year, year and a half I would say. And it has been awful. The fear, crying and panic I feel when even boarding a plane is unreal and it’s something I have noticed I am not the only one dealing with so I thought I would open up my own experiences about this issue and what I am doing to help my self, and maybe it will help someone else too.

When I was a child I used to fly a lot, around three holidays a year. It was all fun and games because I didn’t really understand the concept of a flying piece of metal in the sky, so I wasn’t concerned about it’s risks. I enjoyed flying and always had the window seat, enjoyed take off, landing, everything. My mom was a bit of a nervous flyer so me and my dad would even laugh at her sometimes, I could comfortably walk around the plane, eat, drink, play games on my iPad etc. It was all easy until all this flying stopped. My parents started to have financial issues and other problems also came up so I stopped flying from the age of 15 to 18. Three years without flying.

During this time I also developed serious anxiety due to on going family and personal issues but it never occurred to me it would mostly effect me during flying as I did not fly during that time. But then after three long years I decided it was time to go see some family in Poland, I saved some money for a ticket and booked the flight with no problem, no worries on my mind. I got to the airport and started to feel dizzy and sick as I started to hear the anxious voice in my head. I tried to push these out of mind and boarded the plane. As I sat down I felt worse and worse. The plane started to take off and I clenched my seat and fear and didnt understand why I was feeling like this. For the rest of the flight I sat curled up in my seat with my earphones in watching something on Netflix I downloaded, trying to block out the noise of the plane and pretend I wasn’t even on it. Once I landed I felt 100x better but still quite confused as to why I felt this was all of a sudden.

The way back was the same. Same sick feeling in my stomach clenching of the plane seats.I still don’t know to this day why I feel this way and what might have caused it. I flew again a few months later with my boyfriends family (photo below) but this time it was worse. I couldn’t breath, I was crying, refusing to unbuckle my seat belt or even get up from my seat to go to the toilet while the plane was in the air. I was having panic attacks every time the plane even moved slightly while in the air, over the period of a two hours flight.

Sitting here, writing this post, thinking about flying is making me physically sick to the bottom of my stomach. I hate it so much that if I didn’t love to see new places and learn new things, I would never fly again. My boyfriend talks about going to New York constantly, I’m going with him to Italy next year and at the end of August I will be flying back from Poland as tomorrow I am leaving to go there but by car, thank god! I would take a 26 car journey over a 2 hour flight, I’m not even as excited as I should be about a holiday with the one I love the most either, that’s how difficult it has gotten.

I have tried some natural remedies such as Valerian and some other stress relief medicines, it worked for a short period but not well enough. I have been using this and pushing this to the back of my mind for the last year but now it’s too much. I have decided to start some behavioural therapyand see how that works out, I will give an update later on.

I honestly recommend doing this. Don’t suffer. Some may think it’s stupid but if you suffer from flight anxiety as much as I do, you know it’s not lightly taken or in any way an over exaggeration. Speak out and get help, we all deserve to explore the world and see new things but for some of us, it’s just a tad harder.

Love, Kasia x