Want to hear something scary? Tomorrow at 9:20 p.m. I'm going to be getting on an airplane. I'm just getting frustrated because I feel like I've done everything right to overcome this fear and yet I'm not overcoming the fear. I thought that the way that you overcome fears is by facing them. And I face my fear of flying all the time and yet I'm still deeply frightened to get on a plane. I've done all the research on how safe planes are. Listen, nothing's perfect, but planes are pretty safe. I feel like I've tried everything and it's not getting any

better. And it's a huge issue because I like traveling and there are a lot of things in my life that require traveling. It's causing me so much unnecessary psychological pain being so afraid of flying on an airplane. But I think I figured out the problem. Since I developed this fear of flying, I picked up an emotional crutch specifically for when I fly on airplanes. And this emotional crutch is bringing other people with me on the airplane. When I start to have a panic attack, I have someone's arm to grab. When I start crying, I have someone there to look at me while I'm crying cuz there's something really like comforting about that. I have someone there to comfort me. And I think that's why I haven't

been able to overcome the fear. And so I'm going to New York tomorrow and I'm not bringing anyone with me. I am going to get on that plane by myself so that hopefully I can get over it. This is so annoying. It's annoying. Like having a fear of flying is annoying. I'm just hoping that this helps. Hi. This is our last night hanging out because tomorrow I'm going on the plane and I wish you could come with me because then we could be scared together. But I usually try to take redeye flights so that I'm not awake during the flight. Like if I get on the plane at 9, 10, 11:00 p.m. I'm too tired to stay awake anxious. And it's weird like considering I have such a fear of flying. It's interesting that I can fall

asleep on the plane. Well, I guess it kind of makes sense. It makes sense because the part of flying that scares me the most is the takeoff and the landing. Once we're at cruising altitude, I relax significantly. And it's also interesting because my flying anxiety doesn't usually start until I'm on my way to the airport. Like I feel pretty chill right now. It's the night before. Maybe it's starting to creep in a little bit, but I feel fine. It's going to get bad tomorrow. Or maybe it won't. See, maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe because I expect to be anxious, it actually makes me more anxious. Like, what if I just decide, no, I'm not going to be afraid of flying. What if I just decide that? I mean, I guess maybe that could work. Although,

I keep forgetting that I'm doing this by myself. I'm so used to having someone on the plane to rely on. It's weird because there are some flights sometimes that for whatever reason just feel fine to me and like I'm not as anxious. It's not like I cry and have a panic attack on every single flight. It's just the majority of them. But it's inconsistency confuses me. You know, it's interesting when I think about it. I feel like the times when I've been more relaxed on a flight is when I'm with somebody that I'm less comfortable having a panic attack in front of. I'm like, Emma, you can't panic in front of this person. That's embarrassing. So, I have the self-control to like calm myself down.

It's in me. Like, I have that in me. Ideally, doing it alone will force me to figure out how to overcome it because I'm the one that's going to have to calm me down. Nobody else is going to be there to do it. I have to do it. And if I have to do it, then I'm going to approach the whole thing differently. I already am. I'm already planning how I'm going to calm myself down. I'm already starting to calm myself down now because it's in my control. I was putting it in other people's control. I'm feeling a bit dissociated today. Like I'm not panicking, I'm just dissociated. I traveled somewhat recently, like a month and a half ago, and that's helping me a bit. I found that the less frequently I travel, the more anxious I get when I travel, but I

wouldn't say I'm in a great mood right now. I'm not having a bad day, but I feel a bit off. I have a few things that I'm going to pack in my bag that I think will help calm me down. I'm going to bring this in my carry-on. It's this little facial wand, depuffing wand. This is an anxiety relieving wand. You can make it cold, you can rub it on your face, or you can make it hot. and just rubbing it on the face is so relaxing. There's something about this that just makes me feel calm. I'm also going to be bringing my iPad. On this iPad, I have downloaded 5 hours of YouTube videos. With that, I have my AirPods. And then last but not least, I'm bringing a sleep mask. So, imagine me on the plane, AirPods in, iPad,

playing a YouTube video, this thing on, rubbing my face. like the plane's going to take off and I'm not even going to notice cuz I'm going to have so much going on. It's almost like my brain was anticipating the anxiety I have today and so just shut off and now I'm just there's there's like nothing like knock who's there like nothing's in there right now. I'm getting quite superstitious. My anxiety can sometimes manifest itself through superstition. Like for example, I was just talking on the phone with somebody and I was like, "All right, I'm getting on this flight. Talk to you

later. Bye." And then I was like, "Wait, not bye. Not by talk to you later. Bye." Insinuates that we're not going to talk again and that something bad's going to happen. And then I'm knocking on wood and then I'm doing so I'm definitely feeling superstitious which is annoying but I'm not having a panic attack and I've been sort of plotting my plan. I feel like when I get on the plane I should just try to fall asleep immediately so that I'm not awake for the takeoff cuz that's one of the parts that makes me anxious. But I'm also kind of feeling like that might be a bad idea because if I fall asleep before I take off and I don't experience the discomfort of taking off, I'm just avoiding it. I'm not facing it headon.

So, I'm sort of conflicted on whether or not that's a good idea. Does kind of feel like a copout. Maybe I'll wait. I'll stay awake through the takeoff, handle it, and then reward myself with some sleep. And I could also reward myself with the piece of banana bread. Funny story about this banana bread. I got in the car, started driving, and then realized, "Oh, wait. I have one more piece of banana bread in my fridge. I would be so sad if that went to waste. I need to go back home and get it and bring it on the plane and eat it as a little dessert." So, I fully turned my car around and went back home to get that one slice of banana bread. It's not

even like a thick slice. I've always been an anxious person since I was a child. But as a child, I wasn't afraid of flying. Even though I was an anxious kid, I had this sort of beautiful delusion, this blissful ignorance that prevented a lot of anxieties for me. This delusion and blissful ignorance made me feel like rare tragedies couldn't happen to me. But it seems the older I get, the more terrified I become of the general dangers of day-to-day life, the firmer I grasp that bad things could happen to me or to anyone I love at any time. And this is a reality that has been very challenging for me to accept. And I think my fear of flying is a great example of this fear and anxiety

manifesting itself in my day-to-day life. Anyway, I was too impatient to wait until takeoff to eat my banana bread. So, I ate it. My thought process was, you know what, once we're in the air, I'm going to want to go to bed immediately, so I'm just going to eat this now so that the second we're in the air, I can go to sleep immediately. Or perhaps that was just me justifying eating my reward early. Whatever. The panic didn't start to set in until the plane started moving, until we started taxiing. But then it really set in. Usually at this point, I would rely on the person or the people I'm traveling with to calm me down. But for the first time in a very long time, I was alone and I had to find a way to calm myself

down. So, you want to know what I decided to do? I decided to pray, which is something I do occasionally to combat really bad anxiety. Even though I'm not technically a religious person, I'm not aligned with any specific religion. I don't go to church. I consider myself to be spiritual. I have my own sort of religion going on in my head. And when I'm scared, I will pray to whatever higher power there may be out there. I don't know who it is. I don't know what it is, but I don't care. When I'm scared, I will pray to it. It's like praying to a bunch of question mark. I don't know what I don't know whoever. I don't know who's listening. I don't know what's listening. I don't know if

anything's listening, but it doesn't even matter because the act of talking to some sort of higher power hopefully is comforting to me and it helps. But despite the praying, I still panicked. The second we started taking off, my heart started racing. My eyes welled up with tears. Every bump in sound from the plane convinced me that I was literally going to die. And I was filled with terror as per usual. However, I will say that having to deal with it alone made the emotional response far less dramatic than it is when I'm traveling with somebody I'm comfortable with. But I still had a tough time and I was still really upset until eventually I wasn't.

My heart rate slowed down and my eyes welled up with tears again, but this time, as ridiculous and dramatic as this sounds, with gratitude that I was alive. To my surprise, I was much more calm during the landing. Compared to takeoff, I was feeling much better. I was definitely on the edge of spiraling, but I wasn't in a spiral. To keep my emotions regulated, I prayed again and I took deep breaths and it worked pretty well. No tears, no shaking. The landing went pretty smoothly. And I will say, even though I had some challenges, especially on the takeoff, this flight felt much easier than usual. As I

suspected, relying on myself to regulate my emotions was significantly more productive than how I usually rely on others to regulate my emotions. Heat. Oh, I did it. Yay. I'm here. I am so happy to be here. Yay. I was only supposed to be here for like 48 hours. I'm so excited to be here, though, that I feel like I'm going to want to extend my trip. I mean, listen, it's the first day. I've been here for

one hour and I'm like, wait, I want to extend my trip. The reason why I came to New York is because I have a meeting today, an in-person meeting, hence why I flew to New York for the meeting. And so, I'm doing that today. And then other than that, I'm just hanging out. I am I didn't even know this when I planned this trip cuz it's a work trip. My two best friends are in New York right now and they live in LA and right now and they're in New York. So, not only do I get to hang out in New York, but I also get to hang out with my friends. I'm so stoked. I'm actually so tired. I'm like, I'm so stoked, but I'm actually exhausted.

This is also so me. So you it's actually never been less me. That's cute. Here's the thing. I do have a bald spot on the top of my head. So this is really triggering for me. I'll blur it out. I have to go like this. I'll blur it like I have pit stains. I'm not going to show you, but I do. Very hot. Very hot out. It's sweaty. Do we turn right or no? No, we keep going straight. Okay. Oh, it's okay, Emma. You can cross. There's no one come. Emma has a fear of crossing the street. I don't know how to cross.

It says walk right. She looks both ways as you're supposed to and then stops in the middle of the street to make sure no one's I go. Well, now you're going to get hit. Are you going to put it back in after? Mhm. No, you're not. You're going to have a new one. Are you going to have a new one? You going to put that back in? For some reason, the Zin and the Parmesan. Here's the deal. My favorite time in life is when I'm in New York with Emma. Me, too. We don't ever have a destination and let's just walk and we didn't even know we were going to be here together. This was not planned.

Coincidence. Coincidence walking around at the same time walking around. No plan, no agenda. No, like literally no agenda. We have a full agenda and a full night plan. Love you. All right. I had my fun, but the party's over and now it's time to go home. And I'm feeling kind of the same way I did when I was coming here. I have brain fog. I feel dissociated. I feel weird. There's a few things causing me anxiety. Number one, I'm taking a really late night flight. My flight's at like 9:40 p.m. and I land at 1:00 in the morning.

The idea of flying in the darkness for 6 hours makes me uncomfortable. For some reason in my brain, the idea of taking off at night and landing in the morning with daylight feels less scary to me than taking off at night and then landing late at night, which honestly makes no sense, but this is a great example of how irrational and illogical anxious thoughts can be. Okay, even though I don't think it makes a difference at all. I don't think it's like any more dangerous. I don't want to Google it and I will not be googling it. That is the worst thing I could do. But another thing I've been reminding myself of is that Delta Airlines does this flight, this night flight on a weekly basis. This is a routine flight. They've done this so

many times. It's fine. It's going to be Um, what else? On the last flight, I lost my eye mask and so that's a bummer. It would have been worse if I lost my AirPods and didn't have time to replace them cuz those are so important to me. But I feel like this flight is going to be easier because I just proved my anxiety wrong literally a few days ago on the flight here. I just did it the other day and it was totally fine. It's when I haven't traveled in a while that I think it gets really bad. Uh I walked so much today that I'm so tired. I'm going to sleep really well, I think. Oh, wait. Do I have to go now? Oh, [__] Okay, my car is here and I'm leaving. Okay, bye.

It's all right. You want to hold the door? I was feeling much more confident for this takeoff compared to the last one. I was pretty relaxed. I was just going on my phone, texting people, going on Pinterest. My heart rate was nice and low. My breathing was steady. I felt pretty good. And I decided, you know what? Maybe I'll hit a little prayer real quick. Why not? So, I prayed a little bit. I was feeling good. And then the lights flicker and immediately panic set in. Why did the lights flicker? What does that mean? Is there something wrong with the plane? What's wrong with the plane? Should I get off? Should I ask if I should get off? I want to get off the plane. I don't want to be on the plane

anymore. Obviously, these thoughts were irrational, but in the moment, it really truly felt like to me the lights flickering meant something was going terribly wrong. That's how my brain works when it's in an anxious state. Even though I felt really good when I first got on the plane, I was in a fragile state of mind. So, the second something slightly off happened, I lost it. But I did force myself to go back to thinking positive thoughts and saying prayers. I was definitely feeling restless, though. That light flicker really did not sit right with me. And unfortunately, this led to a dreadful takeoff. I was already feeling paranoid from the light flicker, as we know. But

to make matters worse, during takeoff, the plane was making a horribly loud rattling sound. It was so loud that I actually couldn't hide my fear. I was looking at the flight attendants trying to read their faces to see if they were scared, too. Obviously, they weren't. I was looking at other passengers to see if anyone else was panicking. I was squirming. I was on the verge of loud crying, like crying like I was on the verge of that. I was not in a good place. But eventually, we hit cruising altitude and I was able to take a deep breath. Everything was okay and I finally relaxed.

Listen, I still have a lot of work to do if I want to get over this fear, but I'd like to believe that this was the First step.