My daughter lives abroad. She has recently been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. She is receiving regular psychiatric treatment and counselling.
She chose to go overseas for many reasons. She was seeking better career opportunities and the chance to live in very pleasant surroundings. She knows I have a lifelong fear of flying.
The problem is my daughter wants my husband and me to fly out. She fears being lonely in the holiday season. In the past, she has arranged for friends to visit, or has come here. I suffer from anxiety about travelling, even on motorways, and have avoided flying all my adult life.
I know my fears are irrational. My life has been coloured by my childhood. I have learned to manage my life, taking into account the limitations imposed by my anxieties.
My husband is a very kind man but he is caught between my daughter and me. He does not know how to respond to the complex emotions that have swirled about our family. I worry that my anxiety, together with our daughter’s disorder, is a heavy burden for him to carry. He is reluctant to make the visit on his own.
Even though we have not booked the flights, my anxiety is getting worse. It is beginning to impinge on my daily life and is making me short-tempered. The worst times are early mornings. I wake very early with a feeling of dread and cannot get back to sleep. The best way to describe the worst mornings is that it is as if I am waiting to be executed.
I love my daughter and care deeply what happens to her; but must I sacrifice my own mental wellbeing to avoid letting her down? What damage will I do if I do let her down, given her very volatile state? I did, foolishly, promise to try the trip.
There is no point in trying to explain my fears to my daughter. She finds it very hard to empathise. I have spoken to my GP and have arranged some telephone cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) offered by the NHS. I appreciate that psychotherapy would help in the long term, although it is probably beyond our budget. If I am to fly, it has to be a quick fix, which I assume would mean drugs.
Should I try to overcome my fears and visit my daughter? I can try to push my fears into the background and take anti-anxiety medicines, if my GP will prescribe them. My husband believes that a failure on my part will lead to poor consequences for the relationship with our daughter.
To answer your question in a nutshell: no, you don’t have to fly (I know your daughter lives too far away for you to realistically get there any other way).
It is awful feeling that you want to do something, that you ought to do something, but you can’t. I don’t think anyone can really understand how utterly wretched it makes you feel until you have experienced it. Fear of flying is a real thing. I know even seasoned flyers who have developed a fear of flying (I was one). You’re not alone. Drugs are a solution, yes. And some people get prescribed something from the GP for when they take off. But they don’t work for everyone and it doesn’t address the build-up to the trip. You really don’t want to be drugged up from now until takeoff!
A few practical things for you to try. I know lots of people who have had great success with fear of flying courses and I urge you to try one before you do anything else – they can be a quick fix. If you Google “fear of flying” plus an airline name you will see that most of the big ones offer them. You can also check with your local airport. CBT isn’t great for everything but it can be fantastic for breaking patterns of thinking and behaviour. So it’s definitely worth a go. Psychotherapy doesn’t need to cost lots – many places offer it on a sliding scale depending on what you can afford. See the links below.
Your anxiety sounds very real and tangible and of course, if you are anxious, then your stress responses are set fairly high, so it doesn’t take much to trigger them again.
I’d like you to read The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk. It looks at how the body responds to trauma and stress and shows that it’s not just about being weak or pathetic if you find certain situations terrifying.
I think you have to take responsibility for your anxiety, your husband has to take responsibility for whether he goes, and your daughter needs to take responsibility for her life and where she lives. All you can do is your bit. I don’t think your fear of flying is helped by the fact that what lies at the other end is probably a rather difficult scenario. If you managed to control your fear, of planes would meeting in the middle be an option? You would show you are willing, but the journey would be shorter, you would be less far from home and it would be neutral territory.
If you decide not to fly there are ways you could support your daughter: phone calls, video calls, etc. I’m sure her psychiatrist could help her to understand why you can’t make the trip this time. But if you could conquer your fear of flying – and it really is possible you could with the right help – imagine how liberating it would be for you.
bacp.co.uk; psychotherapy.org.uk; bpc.org.uk
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