A full colour brochure about my work - take it to your GP



f you've decided to visit your GP to have an assessment (allow 30 minutes at least for a 2710 item visit - and tell reception this is what you're after), take the sample treatment plan with you. But also consider printing out and taking with you this full colour brochure to leave with your GP. It's two pages, so print it on both sides of a single sheet so as not to waste paper. It's large (1MB) because it's full colout PDF (you'll need Acrobat or Preview installed - almost all new PCs and Macs come with these applications). The file is called "GP FoF info.pdf

File Name File Size File Link
GP FoF info.pdf 979.5 KB Download


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Sun - March 7, 2004

Hullo, let me tell you a little about me...


After all, if you think I might have some knowledge useful to you, it might help to know how I accumulated that knowledge.

With a life-long interest in aviation, and with twenty years as a psychologist, it's not too surprising that at some point in life, these two vocations would come together.

In 1990, I completed further training in Clinical Psychology allowing me to register for membership of the College of Clinical Psychologists of the Australian Psychological Society. One of my supervisors during my hospital-based training at the time facilitated a Fear of Flying Program with Ansett Australia, now no longer flying.

The previous year, 1989, United Airlines had suffered an inflight incident with a flight from Honolulu to Sydney. A cargo door blew out, a number of passengers were lost, and the aircraft suffered a frightening decompression, an infrequent but hazardous event. That incident has not re-occurred as a result of the measures taken n the aftermath. One of those lost was in business class (above the area where the cargo door came away) and had refused to put on his seat belt.

A colleague eventually came in contact with a family who had been passengers on board, and who suffered some measure of post-incident stress as a result. She contacted me knowing my interest in aviation, and through my supervisor and the co-operation of Ansett Australia, we were all able to instigate a treatment plan for the family.

Later, my supervisor resigned her position with Ansett Australia, and in 1994 - as a full member of the College of Clinical Psychologists - I took over her role as Ansett's Fear of Flying psychologist in Melbourne, which I ran until 2000, prior to Ansett's demise in 2002. During that time with Ansett, I did further consultancy with regard to helping develop its Human Resources Disaster recovery program, and trained for this with its Star Alliance partner, United Airlines in Chicago, and Continental Airlines in Houston. I also participated in round table discussions in New York and Hong Kong with world airlines in the wake of incidents like TWA 800. (See here for the latest on TWA 800)

In 2001, I became the only Australian-based psychologist to use the Virtually Better virtual reality exposure system. I continue to employ the techniques I learnt and employed with Ansett, together with ideas I developed myself over the years of meeting and treating hundreds of fearful travellers. Virtual reality exposure has been a real clinical boon, saving clients and myself travel time to airports. Indeed, after 9-11, it has become very difficult to get clients onto stationary aircraft in order to give them some exposure treatment. And, while it may be a cliche, it remains true that the most dangerous part of treatment has always been the drive to and from the airport!


What happened in the fear of flying programs I ran, and what do I continue to do?

When I ran the Ansett course, I always tried to offer group participants the following:

1. Accurate information from...
2. credible sources in a way that was...
3. easily accommodated and...
4. assimilated.

Let me go through these important ingredients of change one at a time.


1. Accurate information: really doesn't need explanation, but it's part of a process of unseating long-held and often untested assumptions about flying, and your responses to flying or the thought of flying. Or it might be the provision of new, previously unknown information presented in a way that makes sense. It might be about aerodynamics, pilot training, air traffic control, weather and so on. Or it might be about the phenomenon and function of anxiety, the physiology of fear, the meaning of panic, etc. In other words, it could be aviation-related or person-related.

With occasional exceptions most clients welcome accurate information as long as it is presented intelligently and respectfully. The occasional exceptions are those who have devoured every webpage item on aviation incidents and are walking encyclopedias of incident knowledge. Sometimes it's not possible to help them budge from their seemingly fixed ideas. Fortunately, most others are more open to prevailing ideas about safety.

2. Credible sources: The information your receive which challenges your inaccurate assumptions is more helpful if it comes from people or books or articles in which you have some faith. That is, the source is deemed to be accurate, without attempting to deceive you, misguide you, or leave out important details. Moreover, the source has no particular investment in your flying, so their information is considered more trustworthy. Information about how planes fly which comes from pilots, safety and maintenance data from engineers, weather info. from metereologists or flight planners, ought to considered as credible sources. As should information about the psychology and physiology of fear and anxiety from psychologists!

3. and 4. Accommodation and Assimilation These expressions refer to how human beings absorb novel information. Based on the work of Swiss child psychologist, Jean Piaget, it refers to how we process unfamiliar information - do we add it to our existing knowledge base, and reinforce what we already know; or do we throw something out because the new information better explains what we "know", and the "old" knowledge is incompatible with the new.

Think of it this way: Perhaps you have listened to a song for many years, and think you know the lyrics well. Then one day you hear another version, and this time the lyrics sound different. You think the singer made a mistake, only to discover that others have always heard the lyrics to the original song that way! This is known as a mondegreen, and it takes some mental shifting of gears to admit this new information and throw out years of hearing the song "your way." But once you hear the new way, and it makes sense, then you can't go back to hearing it the old way - you have to hear it the new way - just being told you are wrong won't change much for you.

Because so few of us fly for a living, we don't get a chance to test out new flying information, so it has to be absorbed through our existing knowledge base, which can be quite tough to change. This is especially the case each time we choose to avoid flying, as it offers some reinforcing relief from anxiety. But the relief is temporary only, and makes the preparation for the next flight more difficult because our fears go untested and avoidance behaviour is strengthened. Eventually, avoidance becomes the "only" solution to the "flying problem". And it can then lead to other problems, when people develop ever-more sophisticated or convoluted "explanations" why they don't fly. All the while secretly wishing they could head off on some romantic holiday or go to those important workplace conventions.

By the way, the same change of thinking style can be applied to any other fear that appears to be getting the better of us. This is why many people who learn to overcome their fear of flying and become better flyers, go on to tackle - unassisted - other fears. Their flying training is, to use the jargon, transferable and generalisable. I've known patients who've applied it to their fears of tunnels, bridges, heights, elevators, and so on. Flying is a good fear to tackle as it can encompass so many other fears. So not just do you get a boost to your, "Hey, I did it!" thinking and sense of achievement, but the techniques you learnt along the way can be used to tackle other fears.

Posted at 07:32 PM     |

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