Nippoda adds that educating yourself on what is reality versus what your brain fears, or what you've heard in movies, can be useful in overcoming fear of flying. He suggests studying accurate information, such as the points listed below, to help you feel safer on a flight and put things into perspective.

Additionally, the real info I was looking for didn't start until around chapter 8 or 9. Somewhere in the middle is are a few (to me) irrelevant sections. One about how to manage fear of an elevator, and one about childhood trauma and how that can lead to fears/phobias. Those things may be interesting to some, but it wasn't what I was expecting - I was here for a plan of action for when I take my next flight. So many novels—Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary are but two examples—punish female sexuality with death. I found myself fantasizing that Isadora's answer to her dilemma would be suicide. I think I was influenced by the cultural archetype in which women die for sexual passion. But then I realized I had to transform that archetype. I thought it was important to grant women the possibility of passion without draconian punishment. Not that passion is easy or without conflict. But death seems an excessive punishment.

Erica Jong grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and attended Barnard College, where she majored in writing and literature, and she later received her M.A. in eighteenth-century English literature from Columbia University. She left halfway through the Ph.D. program to write her groundbreaking first novel, Fear of Flying, which went on to sell 20 million copies worldwide. She is also the author of many award-winning books of poetry, novels, and non-fiction including Sappho’s Leap, Fanny, Any Woman’s Blues, and Fear of Fifty. She lives in New York City and Connecticut. Her work has had a major impact on women’s lives all over the world. The Jewish science,” as anti-Semites call it. Turn every question upside down and shove it up the asker’s ass. Analysts all seem to be Talmudists who flunked out of seminary in the first year. I was reminded of one of my grandfather’s favorite gags:

I should have known. Why do analysts always answer a question with a question? And why should this night be different from any other night—despite the fact that we are flying in a 747 and eating unkosher food? I’m more nervous to fly now and the exercises are very basic exercises for people who suffer with anxiety. Maybe it would be helpful for someone who has no experience with coping techniques. While in Germany, Captain Tom raced a Lola Mk5 Formula 3 at the Nurburgring, Zolder, Zandvordt, and Rouen. When returning to the U.S., he converted the car to SCCA Formula C specifications, and won a U.S. National Championship in 1965.Women seem much freer today than they were in 1973. Why do you think Isadora’s dilemmas still have relevance? Isadora seems to feel most free when she’s experiencing sexual pleasure and when she’s writing. What’s the connection between these two aspects of her world? The book that started it all by the woman who started it all. The one absolutely necessary read for any women of any generation who wants to see herself as intellectually and sexually alive—or any man who wants to understand the smart, sexually lively woman. As fresh as the day it was written and unmissable.” The chapters that helped me the most were How Flying Works, Weather, Turbulence, and Anticipatory Anxiety. I think what I liked most about the book was that in may instances the author described my specific fears - details that I thought were unique and especially nutty are actually very common.

You said somewhere that when you were writing Fear of Flying, you thought of killing off Isadora but were determined that she not die for her sins. Why? Information about flight accidents in general (such as watching a documentary about an accident) can cause someone anxiety. This could even happen during a fictional film containing a flight-related catastrophe. There are courses you can take to help you overcome your fear of flying and flying anxiety. They are offered by various airlines such as: In Fear of Flying Workbook Carbonell explains the incorrect ways that most of us deal with our fears. To counter this vicious cycle he encourages us to explore the reasons behind our own fear. He does this by providing specific questions to help us uncover these reasons. There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I’d been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh. God knows it was a tribute either to the shrinks’ ineptitude or my own glorious unanalyzability that I was now, if anything, more scared of flying than when I began my analytic adventures some thirteen years earlier.Is this a book only a young writer could write? Is there anything in the book that embarrasses you now? Isadora became an icon for women searching for freedom. I wanted to show how she dealt with motherhood, divorce, addiction, new relationships. Because she was so important to so many readers, I felt her story had to go on.