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Originally Posted by jorgelito
So even though air travel is very safe, so much more than driving, the few accidents are so gruesome and shocking, we are psychologically inclined to fear it or have anxiety over it.
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Yup, and ktsp has told me this very succinctly (when we were discussing this once)--if something goes bad, it's REALLY bad. There's no way out of it. And I am the type of person who is always thinking of a way "out" of things--in case of emergency, worst-case scenario, etc. I believe that I would be a survivor in most traumatic situations, but a plane wreck is one where I am not assured of my own personal ability to get out of a shitty situation. That bothers me.
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Originally Posted by jorgelito
I hope those union workers were thorough in the pre flight check up. Plus all the sounds of banging, whirring, clicking latching and we can't really see what's going on just adds to the anxiety.
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Yup. Things I never noticed, when I was younger. And I focus in on those things when they are happening--it really ups my anxiety level, when the engine is too loud, or there's a strange smell in the air (gas--which I discovered is a normal thing, after asking about it once)--and I have learned to mentally talk myself down from it, as someone else said earlier here.
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Originally Posted by jorgelito
There are other aspects too for some people I would imagine. Issues of faith, latent anxieties long buried or repressed, and these should be explored in a healthy productive manner.
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You know I'm all for counseling, and I've done a LOT of it (though not since living in Iceland)--but honestly, I don't think this is about the faith or about repressed anxieties.
I think it's me just plain getting older and more conscious of the various ways that I could die, and me not wanting Death By Plane Crash to be my exit from this world. A control issue, far and above anything else, I would say. I am not afraid of death, per se... but a catastrophic and extremely terror-filled death, yes. I am much more conscious of that now than I ever have been before. I think a lot about bad news, in general--how preventable things could be, or how random and unfair they are--and how no one ever deserves to die in those ways, and yet they still went through it, they are still dead, and nothing can be done about it now.