Dealing with those pesky automatic scary thoughts...

[@wretchedrider2157]

Thank you for continuing to create these videos for us, Les!! 🫡 🥂

[@carolinecoward469]

Good to see you again, Les, and happy new year. I always find your videos tremendously helpful. Thank you!

[@xoxoxoxoxoxoxo6921]

i wanna personally thank you and give a public testimony that you’ve helped me IMMENSELY in overcoming my fear of flying. watched lots of your videos and implemented it and i found myself far better off than ever before. Thank you so much

[@malikastone]

Happy New Year, Les! I have a flight coming up and I'm nervous yet again. Thanks for this help. You always post right on time🙏🏾❤️

[@readmelancholystrumpetmaster]

Thanks Dr. Posen. Great stuff as usual.

[@csillagtalan]

Watched from the airport 😊

[@tatianalivshits3522]

Hi Les, I start plane self talk as soon as I got the tickets. For me it is counting the time to my flight. Like it's 3 more months, okay I'm safe. Then it's 1 month, and I'm still safe. Then 3 weeks, 2 weeks, 1 week, 5 days, and it's stopped being safe. Like I have only 4 days, then, then 1 and then nothing. I could see how my anxiety is growing with this counting. I'm flying on Friday from SFO to Paris.

[@lesposen]

So as your logical mind is aware, your flight doesn’t become any less safe the closer it gets! What is increasing is your anticipatory distress - the current distress you feel in anticipation of a future distressing event. The flight will do what it’s designed and scheduled to do whether you’re on it or not, no matter how distressed you feel now or on board. Your task is to accept your discomfort based on prior events (“normal, but unnecessary”) and plan to control what’s in your control - what you think and do - and leave control of the plane's operation to the trained professionals.

[@tatianalivshits3522]

@@lesposen thank you. I'm just very scary to fly by Air France

[@lesposen]

@@tatianalivshits3522 Air France is a first tier airline, not third world. I’d have no problems flying them.

[@lesleymorgan01]

It's so hard to control one's thoughts when there are horrible stories in the news about planes landing on top of other planes and planes losing parts mid-flight. I still realize how low the chances are of anything happening on MY flight. But something is very wrong with Boeing and its planes, to the point that I wouldn't take a flight on any Boeing plane no matter what I might miss out on. At some level, is that a reasonable response for the foreseeable future? In my mind, based on recent history, there's a much higher likelihood of something going wrong with a Boeing flight, enough that I think it justifies my response. What do you think? I don't want this to turn into a "trash Boeing" conversation, it's about probabilities. Thanks for your videos, Les - they help with all my self-talk, not just my aviation-related self-talk.

[@lesposen]

Well, if it helps I’m flying on a Qantas 737 tomorrow and two Boeing 787 flights with Air New Zealand in a few weeks. Used on a daily basis, my Tesla has had a recent recall due to autopilot issues as deemed by the US transport department, even though no incidents have occurred in Australia. This recall is actually an over the air update which changes certain parameters to all Teslas fitted with autopilot, or better known as advanced cruise control. But I am very happy that the first serious test of how a composite material aircraft would handle a hull loss incident was so well managed that the A350-900 in Japan saw no casualties on board. The certification rules are everyone evacuated in 90 seconds with only half the doors operational and with no internal lighting and bags strewn over the floor. We will have to wait and see what the Alaska 737-Max 9 shows… not to be confused with the Max 8 which doesn’t have extra doors/plugs behind the wing. I’m guessing a local assembly issue rather than inherent design fault, but it’s the right thing to do to ground the aircraft type until definite explanations are available. Boeing shares dropped 8%, Airbus up almost 2% so your thinking has some backing from Wall Street. But notice that while 8% is a significant dilution, it is not catastrophic… even an emotional Wall Street still sees value in Boeing. The task is to keep our emotional responses in check… a very challenging proposition!