CBT aims to retrain or recondition the irrational thinking patterns and habits that cause the phobic person's life-crippling anxieties and baseless fears. Based on its results, CBT is considered to be the most effective treatment for many anxiety disorders. Anxiety in a situation of actual danger is normal and in fact useful for keeping us out of trouble. But air travel is not actually a dangerous situation. Commercial airline crashes are in fact extremely rare occurrences, and the reality is that one is in much greater danger when traveling in a car than on a plane.
Terrifying thoughts spin out of control, and logic takes a back seat.
Mary, for example, had a number of scenarios, one more terrible than the next, which become more exaggerated and less realistic as her anxiety grew. Changes in behavior are then possible. In fact, one of the unfortunate aspects of this phobia is that people who suffer from it become veritable experts on such details as the structural challenges of engines, stories from the black box, the exact speed at which 50 tons of aluminum free-falls, and other terrifying tidbits gleaned from flights gone wrong. What You Can Do On Your Own Finding out that you're not in fact crazy or cowardly, but that you suffer from the simple phobia known as fear of flying is an important first step. Start with what are known as self-control strategies.