"Deep down", you admit yourself that your early experiences were perfectly normal and fine. Then why not say you have a fear of hangovers, or even a fear of leaving Ireland or travelling to England? Obviously because none of those things would even get you to first base, sympathy-wise



Quote Originally Posted by Burney View Post
Certainly. My first experience of flying was when I was 10 on an old BAC-111 to Majorca. I was fine. I didn't like take-off (still don't), but for the rest of the flight I was calm.

My fear of flying didn't develop until my early 20s, really. It was a flight back from Ireland, I was badly hungover and suffered what I now realise to have been a mild claustrophobic panic attack . After that, the floodgates were open. Deep down, I associated flying with the feelings I had experienced on that one flight and to some extent still do. The fear is not of crashing, it's of being in the environment where one experiences those feelings. Now of course, there is no better way of ensuring that one experiences those feelings than by harbouring a fear of doing so, but the human brain is a fúcker like that and breaking that cycle is easier said than done.