For many of us, the festive season means travelling to be with friends, family, and loved ones. While it is wonderful to spend Christmas with those closest to you, if you struggle with a fear of flying or general travel anxiety, getting to your destination can be a serious problem.
Fear of Flying and Travel Anxiety: What’s the Difference?
Fear of flying (aerophobia) is a common phobia that affects people of all ages. It’s characterised by an acute, sometimes debilitating fear when flying or considering flying, and symptoms can include:
- Racing heart
- Sweating
- Nausea
- Trembling
- Shortness of breath
- Panic attacks
- A sense of doom
By comparison, travel anxiety is a broader but equally common type of anxiety which can also affect anyone. Travel anxiety is characterised by intense feelings of fear, worry, or panic concerning the entire travel process, such as:
- Constantly rechecking things like packing and documents
- Reluctance to leave home
Excessive worry about the trip or missing details - Feeling disconnected from your body or surroundings
- Difficulty sleeping before travel
Understanding the Root of These Fears
Fear of flying and travel anxiety can look different on the surface, but the symptoms often overlap, and the body reacts similarly in both cases, which is why the approach to working with both is essentially the same. They can show up as a mix of physical sensations, frightening thoughts, and learned associations from earlier experiences. While you can try to push those reactions aside or hope they will go away, understanding where the fear comes from gives you more control.
Instead of treating it as one big, overwhelming feeling, start by breaking it down and noticing what triggers it:
- Is it the buildup before the trip?
- The idea of being in the air?
- The movement of the plane?
- Feeling trapped?
- A loss of control?
A past event that still feels active in your system?
When you understand the specific pattern behind the fear, the reaction becomes easier to work with because you’re no longer fighting an invisible threat.
How to Start Working With These Fears
Once you understand the pattern behind the fear, the next step is helping the body and mind respond differently. You can’t think your way out of panic because fear lives in emotions, not logic. To interrupt the cycle:
Calm the Body
When fear builds, your breath becomes shallow and your body tenses, so slowing the physical response helps the nervous system settle. Square breathing is a good place to start. You do it like this:
- Breathe in for four
- Hold for four
- Breathe out for four
- Hold for four.
- Repeat the pattern until you feel more in control
This doesn’t remove the fear entirely, but it reduces the intensity so you can work with it rather than against it.
Work With the Trigger and Gain Clarity
Instead of trying to face your fear all at once, come back to the specific thing that triggers it. Start disrupting the pattern by visualising that one part while your body stays calm begins to break the link between the trigger and the fear response. From this point, you can gain clarity and start to figure out what triggers you using questions like the ones above.
Change the Internal Experience
Once you’ve identified the cause and the fear feels less overwhelming, you can begin shifting the way your mind holds it. This might mean adjusting the mental image, changing the size or distance of the feeling, or altering the way your brain replays the moment. These subtle shifts help weaken the intensity of the old fear pattern and create room for something new.
Reinforce the New Response
Every time you calm your body during something that would normally trigger fear, even for a second, you teach your nervous system a different outcome, and that repetition builds a new pattern over time.
Reflect and Build Confidence
After you land or complete the journey, take a moment to notice what actually happened. This isn’t about telling yourself that everything will be fine next time or trying to force positivity; it’s about giving your mind accurate information so it knows what to expect in the future.
Ask yourself:
- What did I feel, and where in my body did I feel it?
- What helped me settle?
- Which moments were more challenging?
- Where did I cope better than expected?
Noticing these details gives you a clearer picture of your real experience rather than the worst-case version your mind imagined beforehand. Celebrate the small shifts. If you calmed your breath sooner than usual, or stayed steady during a moment that would normally set you off, acknowledge it. These small changes are what you build upon to create long-term progress as you teach your nervous system a new way to respond.
With steady practice and a clearer understanding of what triggers you, the idea of travelling at Christmas can begin to feel far more manageable.