The Phobia Fixer

Lydia is a charming young woman whose fear of flying had become completely overwhelming – these are her own words:

Before I met Lucy Waters, I was absolutely petrified of flying.

Even the idea of flying made my stomach lurch and my eyes well up. 

It started off as just nervousness on planes, and not liking the sounds they made, but as I began to fly more and more each time I had to fly became a living nightmare.

I would have nervous breakdowns weeks or in some cases months before the flight, and I would break down in tears before we left, begging to be left behind and not forced to face this horrible experience.

This fear not only impacted myself, it also impacted my family. My family are very keen on travelling to far off places, and it was obvious that my fear was beginning to make the stress of preparing for a holiday even more intense for everyone around me.

I found out that my parents were planning to go to Brazil for our summer holidays in May.

As usual I researched the airline we were intending to take, and found that it didn’t have a particularly clean safety record. This led me to become extremely paranoid, and at every opportunity I would sit in my room and mull over my ‘certain death’ on that plane.

Then a friend of my Mothers recommended Lucy to me.

Not sure what to expect, and knowing how firmly my aerophobia was locked into my head, I didn’t have particularly high hopes.  But almost instantly the various tapping techniques and Mental pictures she showed me began to break up the lump of fear into 3 main parts of flying which I particularly disliked.

Lucy helped me to address these fears, and by the end of the session I couldn’t say I felt confident or comfortable about flying but upon arriving home that afternoon I began to realise that I really wasn’t as scared as I had been before, it felt to me like the fear just didn’t matter. It was still there, but I found it hard to get scared thinking about it.

Normally when I am dragged on to the aircraft kicking and screaming all that is running through my head is solid fear, I find it impossible to contain my emotions, and the tears often last the duration of the flight.

But when I got on the Boeing 777 to Brazil a few weeks later I didn’t make a sound. I found my way to my seat at the back of the plane and closed my eyes.

I began rooting through my brain trying to find the factors of planes, which sent me into my nervous wreckage, but it wasn’t there. It felt as though I almost couldn’t be bothered to be scared, I simply couldn’t find the logic in it, and then a new emotion set it. Excitement!

I began to feel a rush of excitement at my upcoming holiday, and I started looking forward to the dinner we would get once the plane had taken off.

When we took off now I was still nervous but it felt like the nervousness you feel when you get on a ride at a theme park, and I found I could control and restrain the fear from filling my mind.

This brand new rush I got from being on a plane recurred throughout the rest of the 7 internal flights, and although I cant say I looked forward to the flights I was taking, I wasn’t nervous about them either, they just didn’t seem to matter anymore.

Now I think back to the fear I used to feel on planes, and it seems unbelievable that I let myself get into that state.

Lucy really has changed my life, and I can’t thank her enough for what she has done for me.