Acceptance Is Healing

I have PTSD & my two main symptoms are hypervigilance & catastrophising. They just sort of exist in the background of my life, making me immediately aware of the most dangerous outcome of any & all situations. I’ve pretty much come to terms with that, with the exception of how it impacts plane trips. I am terrified of flying. Like spending the entire time convinced that I’m about to die, terrified. Like routinely sobbing silently to myself terrified.

My original PTSD therapist believes that something about planes is a trigger for the night of the accident. My theory has always been that being afraid of flying is more socially acceptable than being afraid of being in a car so I transmuted all my fear about being in a car (whether I’m driving or not) into being afraid of airplanes.

I’m afraid of airplanes & yet I fly a lot. The year is not over & already I have been on 7 flights, with 3 more planned for the rest of the year. My planned 2020 has 10 flights in the first half of the year.

I’ve been working on overcoming this fear for years. I was going the alcohol & booze route for years until I overdosed on Xanax. I now use a nerve tonic tincture for the day of flying plus anemone & skullcap for acute anxiety during the flight (read “turbulence”), but I still long for the day when a plane trip is no big deal for me.

I recently completed a package of 4 EMDR sessions (well turned into 3 EMDR sessions & 1 sensorimotor therapy session) to try to deal with this fear. And in the second or 3rd session the therapist said something that had such a profound effect on me. She said “You are never going to be convinced that flying is safe.” And this great ball of tension that I’d been carrying around with me relaxed.

It became clear that even though I talk a big game about healing from trauma not meaning that you become the person you were before (I used to love flying as a kid), and I fully believe it, I was somehow only applying that to others & not to myself. I hadn’t realized that in the back of my head I was still thinking that I was gonna find the magic lever that would make me believe that riding in a plane is completely safe. She gave me permission to reframe my desire into one that was actually doable: to not let my terror guide my experience. And this makes the EMDR & the ST more likely to have a positive impact. And I can already feel a difference, however slight.

This also gave me permission to stop beating myself up about why I can’t get over my fear of flying no matter how much “logic” I apply to it, or how long I’ve been working on it. I can just accept myself & the reality of my situation. I want to stress that acceptance doesn’t mean I’m giving up, it just allows me to work the problem from a different angle, one that has a higher probability of success.

What pattern are you beating yourself up for? And what would happen if you just accepted what was & did something different?