If you haven’t already, I suggest reading my first post about this and how my fear developed, which can be found here.
Bringing Me Closer to Flying:
Now, I just need to start off by saying how proud I am of myself. If anyone who has a fear of flying and still gets on a plane and is reading this, you should be proud of yourself. And for those that are not yet ready, but want to one day be ready, you are also included in this ‘proud’ category.
When I suddenly became afraid of flying, I didn’t know what to think. But what I did know was that one day I would go back to soaring in the air.
As I mentioned in my prior post about this, my grandfather passed away and I missed his funeral because it involved me traveling down to the Caribbean and I just couldn’t bring myself to fly. Ever since that day, I became pretty sad and beat myself up. However, I knew that my family would all go down there after one year and have a special memorial ceremony for him and visit his tomb. And for this, I knew I just had to go.
So within the year leading up, I did my homework and I learned that my personal fear of flying could be overcome with just two things: listening to yourself and confidence.
As I watched the water fountains splash water into the air, I couldn’t help but be happy. I turned to my husband and told him:
“It’s weird; I deeply appreciate the life around me. I am crying because I can feel the wind on my face, I can hear the splashes of water crash back down into the fountain and I notice the leaves dancing with the direction of the wind on the trees. I think the reason why I appreciate this so much is because I can finally appreciate stillness. I am just so happy; this is a taste of what I have been working so hard for and it’s slowly arriving. I love it, I feel so blessed.”
In a world where there are a lot of fast-paced decisions, dinners, and footsteps, it becomes very hard to appreciate the little things sometimes. I told him that if this was me a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to just sit there and enjoy my surroundings. I would have just been thinking about the 101 things I needed to do and 101 things I should have done; I wouldn’t have been appreciating the moment, the present.
As I ate my sandwich I continued to cry because I could taste every bite of my it, I could enjoy the sun peeking through the clouds and warming my cheeks. And all of this was amazingly nice.
It’s such a different feeling and I cry because I appreciate it. I didn’t need my phone to distract me at that moment. I actually didn’t want my phone at all. I secretly wished we were back in the early 1900s, in the countryside, with no technology. Just nature.
I can’t believe it has been one year!
I must say, when I think of ‘365 days’ it seems quite overwhelming; but, the beauty is that I didn’t think like that while getting to this point, I honestly took it one day at a time. And here I find myself, one year later, better.
The past year has definitely been a work in progress. And while I am not 100% yet, I feel so much better than I did back when it first happened. There were struggles, yes, but they were all tests of how far I have come and grown. The beauty of it all was that I learned to control my anxiety so that if I felt an attack come on, I could just calm myself and nip it in the bud.
One of my hardest times dealing with anxiety during the past year, I must admit, was last week.
Being Your Own Worst Enemy
To be honest, I have been living anxiety-free for a couple of weeks, actually, and it wasn’t until last week, when I realized that my ‘one year’ was coming up, that I started to panic. I kept thinking believing that the attack was going to anniversary itself. It was as if the world was going to end and I, only I, knew it. It just built this giant fear inside of me and I knew I was being overtaken by it.
While on my way home last Thursday, I almost lost it on the train again. My mentality and way of thinking was “This is too good to be true, I have been able to fight the anxiety for almost a year and it is just going to come back and slap me in the face, I know it.” So, naturally, thinking like this had me a bit paranoid for the whole week because I was just waiting for it to happen. It was as if I wanted it to be a one-year anniversary. But that was the thing: why was I waiting for it again? Why was I putting myself in this prison that it will happen again? Because if we think like that then, chances are, you will find yourself making it happen… again.
