Fear of Flying: Calming Yourself Before and During a Flight

To calm a fear of flying, ground yourself first, then work in small steps: slow, long-exhale breathing before the trip, plus short bursts of bilateral stimulation, alternating taps, tones, or eye movements, on one specific worry at a time. Use the same steps, more gently, once you’re actually in your seat.

Maybe the dread starts days out: you keep refreshing the flight-status page for no reason, or a turbulence clip you saw online keeps replaying behind your eyes. Maybe you’re fine right up until the cabin doors close, and then your chest tightens and every bump starts to feel like proof. Either way, you don’t need to argue yourself out of it before you can feel steadier.

Why does a normal flight feel this intense?

You’re not unusual here. The American Psychological Association notes that as many as 40% of U.S. adults report some fear of flying, and many say they’ve felt more nervous about air travel since widely covered aviation incidents. The APA describes it as rarely just one thing: usually a blend of feeling boxed into a small space, losing any sense of control once you’re strapped into a seat, a specific dread of turbulence, and sometimes general panic-attack concerns layered on top.

None of that is really about the odds. Repeating safety statistics to yourself at 35,000 feet usually doesn’t touch the feeling, because this isn’t a math problem. It’s a felt sense of danger that has to change, not an argument that has to be won. That’s what the steps below are built to do.

Ground yourself before you do anything else

Two things matter more than any single technique. First, ground yourself before you engage the fear at all: feel your feet on the floor, name a few things you can see, take one slow breath. A minute of that, or picturing a calm, safe place you can return to on cue, gives you somewhere to land if a step below stirs up more than you expected.

Second, work on one small piece at a time, not the whole flight. Fear of flying is really a stack of smaller triggers: the airport, the seatbelt sign, one specific memory of rough turbulence. Pick one, and stay inside what you can actually handle right now, rather than diving straight into the hardest part.

Know your stop-condition before you start, too. If your distress climbs above roughly a 7 out of 10 and won’t settle after a pause, stop, ground yourself, and consider working with a professional. That’s useful information, not a sign you did something wrong.

How do you calm down before a flight?

Start a day or two out, or the night before, wherever the dread tends to peak.

1. Pick one exact worry. Not “the whole flight,” one frame: turbulence over open water, the doors closing, a specific landing you keep replaying. Rate how strong it feels, 0 to 10.
2. Slow your exhale for about a minute. Breathe in through your nose, then let the exhale run about twice as long through your mouth. A 2023 study in Cell Reports Medicine found this kind of long-exhale breathing lowered physiological arousal and improved mood more than an equal amount of mindfulness meditation.
3. Add bilateral stimulation. While holding that one worry lightly in mind, alternate: tap your knees left-right for a steady minute, move your eyes smoothly between two points about shoulder-width apart, or use alternating left-right tones. Bilateral stimulation is the rhythmic left-right input at the center of EMDR; per the EMDR International Association, it’s used to help the brain process distressing material with less charge attached. A 2011 study in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders found that holding a distressing image in mind while doing this kind of rhythmic task made it feel noticeably less vivid, with a similar trend toward less emotional intensity. That’s exactly the kind of imagined worst-case scene that fuels pre-flight dread.
4. Re-rate, then repeat or stop. Check the number again. If it dropped and stayed down, you’re done for now. If it didn’t move, ground yourself and come back to it later or with support, rather than pushing through.

If you’d rather be walked through the pacing, EmEase, a self-guided EMDR app, runs the same left-right rhythm as a moving on-screen target or alternating tones at app.emease.com. Your own hands work just as well.

How do you calm down once you’re actually in the air?

In the air, the goal shifts from working through a worry to riding out a live sensation, so keep it simple.

1. Ground first, every time. Feel the armrests under your hands and your feet on the floor, and name a few things you can actually see and hear in the cabin. A live spike of fear isn’t the moment to reason with yourself; it’s the moment to anchor your body in what’s real right now.
2. Exhale longer than you inhale. The same slow-exhale pattern from above works seated, seatbelt on, eyes open or closed, for about a minute.
3. Add a quiet, hands-only version of bilateral stimulation. Cross your arms over your chest and tap each upper arm alternately, left-right-left, a version of the butterfly hug that’s easy to do without anyone noticing. Keep it slow for a minute or two.
4. Name the bump-panic loop if it starts. An ordinary jolt of turbulence can get read as proof something’s wrong, which spikes anxiety, which makes the next bump feel worse. That loop is close to the mechanism behind panic attack sensations generally, not evidence that anything is actually wrong with the flight. Naming it as a loop, even silently, can interrupt it.

Add bilateral stimulation once an acute spike has started to ease, not as a tool to out-argue a live wave of panic. Grounding comes first, every time.

When does fear of flying need more than this?

This page is built for the everyday version of the fear: pre-trip dread, a tight chest at takeoff, replaying one rough flight afterward. It’s a poorer fit if you avoid flying altogether, if panic attacks are tied specifically to flights, or if the fear traces back to one genuinely frightening flight, an emergency, severe turbulence, or a related loss. Fear like that usually has roots in a specific experience rather than flying in general, and it deserves more support than a solo practice can give it.

A diagnosable fear of flying sits under specific phobia, which the National Institute of Mental Health estimates affects 9.1% of U.S. adults in a given year. For that, a licensed therapist trained in exposure-based treatment, sometimes combined with EMDR, is the strongest evidence-based option. Our deeper look at EMDR and fear of flying walks through what that research actually shows. And wherever you land, if distress during any step above climbs past a 7 out of 10 and won’t settle, stop and ground instead of pushing through.

This same shape, ground first, one trigger at a time, add bilateral stimulation, works for most specific fears; our everyday fears guide covers the general version.

You don’t need to eliminate every ounce of nervousness to fly steadier. You need your body out of alarm mode long enough to get through takeoff, the bumps, and the landing, one worry, one round of grounding and bilateral stimulation, at a time.