WHY IS FACING A PLANE CRASH WORSE THAN OTHER FORMS OF DEATH?

Though flying is safer than driving, some avoid it due to anxiety and fear of panic attacks. Airline captain and licensed therapist Tom Bunn explains why flying is a problem and what can be done about this phobia. Links to free help included.

"I know flying is a hundred times safer than driving, but if I crash my car, it doesn't fall 30,000 feet first."

Though flying is clearly safer than driving, many people avoid flying because of certain feelings. According to airline captain Tom Bunn, a licensed therapist who treats anxious and fearful fliers, people say, "I know for me it's worse because I can imagine how I might feel if I had to sit, stuck in a plane, for several moments KNOWING it was going to crash."

But," Capt. Bunn says, the feelings people expect to have in an emergency do not develop as expected. There are many diaries, notes, and other records made by people facing certain or nearly certain death, and the experience you have in mind is NOT what happens in real life facing real death," he says. "Think of the people on the planes hijacked on 9/11. Their cell phone calls were calm and they reported calm -- not panic -- on the plane."

A main concern is having a panic attack onboard and being unable leave to get relief. "Panic," he says, "is always about imagination! When facing an actual emergency, there is only ONE thing you are face-to-face with, and one thing cannot 'flood you, or overwhelm you. Research has demonstrated that when a person is facing real death, on a scale of zero to ten, the highest anxiety is between three and four. Many people have even less."

It is only AFTER a brush with mortal danger -- or IN ANTICIPATION of a brush with mortal danger -- that we 'flood, he says. First we think of the danger, which takes us to about a 3 out of 10. Then we think 'what if. Each 'what if we bring in can take us to another 3 out of 10. So just a few 'what ifs -- if vividly imagined -- are enough to cause panic."

Capt. Bunn cites an axiom in neurology, "neurons that fire together, wire together." This means that once a person has repeatedly imagined a particular sequence of "what ifs" the sequence becomes a unit. Then, imagination of just one of the thoughts in the sequence may cause the whole sequence to "fire" and cause panic.

"Phobia is like firecrackers strung together; you start the sequence of firing by lighting just one," Bunn says. But here is how phobia is different. With firecrackers, the pop is gone as soon as it sounds. But with phobia, each 'unit of emotion that pops persists for some time as each additional 'unit of emotion is elicited. Instead of a series of 'pop you get an explosive emotional upheaval."

In phobia," he continues, when you produce a sequence in imagination, you 'train your mind to 'fire a rapid sequence of thoughts -- each with its own bit of emotion -- which build until you are flooded."

The way Capt. Bunn approaches phobia therapy is to break the sequence apart, and to make sure that each imaginary experience in the sequence is redirected away to cause a different -- and positive -- though and feeling which blocks the sequence that would otherwise take place.

Free help for dealing with phobia can be downloaded at http://www.fearofflying.com. The site provides a message board on fear of flying. Captain Bunn provides a free help live chat on the site every Wednesday night from 9:00 PM until 11:00 PM Eastern time.