Managing fear of flying and anxiety in skydiving

Although this page is written to help those wanting to go skydiving, the points in it could well be useful for anyone who feels anxious, suffers fear of heights, fears of flying or other anxieties.

If this is your first skydive (or even if it isn’t) there really are no magic cures however there are strategies for managing fears of flying and anxieties around skydiving, some of which are more succesful than others for different people. I had sweaty palms and was anxious for my first dozen or so jumps and it wasn’t until then that I started to properly enjoy the whole thing and this was when I started to see it as a sport. Why did I carry on? A combination of group pressure from a bunch of testosterone driven seventeen year old young guys and a wish to prove myself to friends and family. Effectively this became a kind of ‘rites of passage’. I’ve gone way past that phase and since then I’ve done things that I never would have dreamt of, so now its time to give something back and look at those who are still trying to pass the milestone. What follows is a discussion of strategies, and I'll be pleased to receive feedback and updates either by email or by using our blog.

Strategies for managing fear and anxiety

This is a pragmatic summary, based on the ways I've seen and heard of on a number of dropzones over the years and also listening to other instructors and students;

• Facing your fears
• Avoidance
• Clinical Treatments
• Alternative Remedies

Before we continue, I’ll emphasise that in skydiving we don’t just ‘stick our head in the sand’ and deny the risks – actually quite the opposite. In fact I wrote the article on ‘Risk’ first and I  recommend anyone reading this article to help overcome anxiety, should also read than one. Only by fully accepting the risks and consequences do we ever fully overcome our anxieties and fears of flying.

Facing your fears - head on

The idea of facing our fears has been around for as long as - well.... fear. The military have called it ‘external leadership training’ and it refers to the idea of training for war, but without bullets or bombs and with the objective of desenstising us to fear and axieties and increasing ‘courage’ ₁ The opportunity for me to go skydiving as a young soldier was a great chance to overcome my own fear of heights. For the Military, it was a chance to develop and test an expensive resource (me) to see if he would be likely to ‘deliver’ under active service conditions. There are other activities to overcome fear of heights such as abseiling, wall climbing, rock climbing, gliding, balloon flights, pilot training tasters and the list goes on.

I wondered whether this approach only worked on macho military types?  So I asked Dr Todd Snyder, a Clinical Psychologist who specialises in helping people to overcome anxiety.  Dr Snyder was crystal clear and summed it up for me  "facing fear, is the way to beat fear" . His website is a must read for any anxious potential skydivers and also provides more tools for skydiving instructors who want to enhance their student management skills.

If you are interested in self improvement and personal development, skydiving and the other activities mentioned above are a way to de-sensitise ourselves to the fear of flying and once you've achieved any of them, everything else seems just a little easier. An important change takes place within us and we start to see these activities as ‘fun’ and we search for the next ‘thrill’ and we can even say that we are developing ‘courage’ ₁. Of course, to get to this stage we have to start somewhere....

The motto of No 1 Parachute School is “Knowledge Dispels Fear” and it’s still true. Training to carry out any activity reduces the concept of ‘fear of the unknown’ which is probably the most potent fear that petrifies the strongest of us. Fears of flying can be compared to other fears and managed in a similar way, with 'understanding and training' being an important part of the process. Many human beings have to overcome an irrational ‘fear of the dark’ which thousands of years was a good way to help ensure ‘survival of the species’ by avoiding being eaten by predators or falling off a cliff because we didn’t have well developed night vision. It’s not the darkness itself which is the issue, but ‘what is lurking there’. A few years ago I took my six year old son through an exercise in the forest to overcome exactly this fear. To ensure this became a full part of his personality I asked him about it a few times and threw in some small tests along the way just to make sure it wasn’t forgotten. You’ll guess that when I’m asked whether we are born with courage or whether we develop it, my answer is ‘both’.

Avoidance -“If we fail to plan, we plan to fail”

When we draw up a plan of any kind, at some stage (if we’re doing it properly) we’ll list a set of options and then reflect on the merits of each. It’s always important to list the ‘do nothing’ scenario in each list because there are times when it’s almost certainly the right one for us. Of course times change and people change, and if we have actively taken a decision to ‘avoid risk’ then paradoxically we may well already be on our way to moving on to another strategy. On the other hand if we haven’t even considered the issue and we simply float along with some nagging fear and sweaty palms and do nothing about it, it’s quite likely that the time we do think about it will be when we are too old and frail to do anything about it. I call this the ‘death bed scenario’ when look back on life and say to ourselves ‘why didn’t I try this, or that?’. What price quality of life? The strangest and even most positive thing that may come out of the process could well be the statement “I didn’t even know that I had a problem”. If after all, you decide to ‘just say no’, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. As long as you are completely honest yourself and please don’t try to cover it with bluster and accusations against those who are motivated enough to engage in personal development.

Clinical Treatments for anxieties

As a society we have become over-dependent on drugs and doctors, and I know Dr Synder would forgive me for saying this. That’s not to say tthat  Doctors don’t have their place, just that there are many other approaches which may yield better results, and which we could try first. If your Doctor advises you not to go skydiving then you should take the decision regarding your own life according to that advice and in relation to your own principles, priorities and beliefs. Whatever decisions you make, you should be ready to justify them to yourself based on full understanding of the facts and under the most extreme conditions, because that’s where they will surface. If there is true doubt in your mind, then perhaps avoidance is the way to go.

Alternative Remedies for Anxiety in skydiving

Helping to reduce anxiety by improving our physical, emotional, mental or spiritual wellbeing are all facets of exactly the same issue. Some would argue that it doesn’t matter how you approach the matter, as long as you actually do something. I can personally buy this highly pragmatic perspective . Sometimes you just need to find the approach that ‘feels right’ to you, and guess what? It probably will be right (for you). I’ve seen each of the approaches below yielding excellent results and when used together as a systemic approach they can be life changing in the most positive ways. Therefore this is a list which I hope will continue to grow, and form a greater resource for those looking for more help to overcome their anxieties related to making a first skydive (or even thereafter). As I find more resources related to each of these, I’ll link them in.

Visualisation and other NLP related techniques

This is one of the most powerful tools in the box and works pretty much every time and I teach it to all my students. In addition to helping reduce anxiety, it also helps them to reduce errors and mistakes, making their jumps more successful and helping them to progress faster and with less costs for rejumps. It draws heavily on Neuro Linguistic Programming, and variants of this ‘Head Diving’ (as we call it in skydiving) are used at the top levels in every competitive sport on this planet (and I’d guess on others too). I’ll cover the ‘how’ of visualisation in the next article (this one is getting too long).

Reiki

The concept of reducing blockages in our 'Qi' (pronouced 'Chi') or life force may sound a little esoteric, but its been around for thousands of years and there must be something in it. Specifically, Reiki is  healing massage, which can be carried out with contact or non contact. My Reiki Master taught me the non-contact approach primarily and thats the ay I tend to use it mostly, however when getting through kids problems (tantrums at 3 years old) I reverted to contact Reiki. 

Let me warn you, if you go into it with an open mind Reiki is truly life changing stuff and once you learn to unblock Qi, you'll never want to go back.

Meditation and Relaxation techniques

Running and other forms of exercise

Homeopathy

Health Foods and supplements

Counselling and Talking

After ‘unfreezing’ our own ability to change, we take part in some activity and we are forever changed by it. Whether we see the whole thing as positive or negative is entirely up to us, no matter what the physical outcome. Being around ‘glass half full’ people is an experience in itself and energy attracts energy. How do you feel after doing that skydive? Amazing buzz right? “Never felt so alive” is a phrase I’ve heard many times and overcoming a fear of flying is a significant personal development milestone. Eastern cultures acknowledge that our own well being comes from a physical ‘life force’ which flows through us and through our whole environment. It’s not too hard to accept that we are all conduits through which this Qi  flows and can also become blocked. It’s to our own advantage to ensure this Qi to flow, then our own flows better too. Reiki, yoga and other vehicles helps us to 'unblock' our own life force and to also help others become unblocked. I’ve heard similar comments made by Runners at the end of the London Marathon (I experienced the same feeling) and from scuba divers, skiers and also after erotic and sexual experiences. 

Whatever works for you, then do it, and as long as you maintain strong flow in your life force, you’ll ensure a positive mind set which will work to control and even prevent anxieties from building up again. Skydiving is one of those sports that keeps the Qi flowing.

"Fear of flying and fear of heights can be overcome if you want it badly enough"

Stay in touch - bookmark, rss, blog, email

I'll be updating this with more resources and links as I find them. I hope it will grow as a resource for ways and means of getting over the anxieties which prevent us from doing what we want to do and I'll be pleased to receive your suggestions and comments. If you're not quite tready to take the plunge yet, then thats OK but just be clear with yourself about what stage you are at and try not to just 'drift along' in managing anxieties. Please therefore hit the bookmark button in your browser or alternatively click the RSS button because we'd like to stay in touch. If you like the idea of skydiving but don't feel ready to take off in an aircraft then why not take a look at indoor skydiving instead.

Next steps

If you're feeling pretty good about making a skydive but don't want to be 'in control' of the process, then a tandem skydive could be just what you need. If thats the case you might want to read this article to know more.

If you are feeling much better prepared (dare I say even totally raring to go?) and something here has helped, then I am absolutely delighted. Maybe you're thinking about an Accelerated Free Fall course? If thats the case, then you might like to take a look at this article to find out more about your instructors and how to get the best out of them.

If you're anxious about costs for doing all this, don't be! In this article there are are some very useful ways to manage the costs and even reduce them to zero.

You'll make it, just persevere

If you have some feedback, comments or ideas to leave us with, please feel free to register and blog with us. If you want to keep things more private then feel free to drop us an email. If you're working yourself up to making that skydive, why not blog out the story and let us work through it with you?

_{1. The definition of courage that I use is "Being afraid, but doing it anyway".}