Here at Flourish Psychology, we work with a lot of individuals that find themselves in a position to travel often. Whether it’s for work or for pleasure, many of our patients live lives where travel is either:
Necessary for their work.
A luxury that they want to enjoy.
Yet many people experience “aerophobia,” more commonly called a “fear of flying.” For some people it is minor, affecting their desire to fly but not preventing them from doing so. For others, it is severe, making it almost impossible – if not completely impossible – to go onto a plane.
Flying is the safest mode of travel we have. Yet, many people experience fear that affects not only whether or not they can fly, but their ability to control their stress before, during, and after. Even mild anxiety can have a significant impact, because if you feel fear getting onto a plane, chances are you are not feeling ready for your vacation when you get off.
The fear is real, and it often develops gradually – shaped by past experiences, physical responses, and the mind’s interpretation of unfamiliar situations.
Therapy is one of the most effective ways to address this fear. A therapist helps you understand how the fear took hold, why it continues, and what steps can slowly reduce its impact on daily life. Treatment is not about forcing you onto a plane, but rather it is about building the internal tools that make the experience less overwhelming and more predictable.
If you need help to address a fear of flying, please reach out to Flourish Psychology, today.
Why Fear of Flying Develops
A fear of flying affects people in many different ways. Some individuals feel mild discomfort during takeoff or turbulence. Others experience significant distress days or weeks before a flight is scheduled. For a smaller group, the fear becomes so strong that they avoid air travel entirely, even when opportunities, obligations, or personal goals require it.
There is no wrong time to seek help. But that help starts with an understanding of the situation.
A fear of flying does not have a single cause. It often starts with a combination of personal history, stress sensitivity, and the way the brain processes sensations that feel out of your control. Even when someone intellectually understands that aviation is extremely safe, their body continues to respond as if danger is imminent.
Several factors contribute to this pattern:
Learned associations from anxious caregivers during childhood.
Early flights that included unexpected turbulence or loud mechanical sounds.
Exposure to news stories or media that exaggerate the frequency of aviation accidents.
Physical discomfort from tight spaces, pressure changes, or restricted movement.
Difficulty managing anxiety when normal coping outlets – fresh air, walking away, or changing environments – are unavailable.
Past panic attacks or distressing moments in unfamiliar environments that create lasting emotional memory.
Extensive fear of death and the idea of a loss of control over that death.
These experiences gradually shape how the brain interprets flying, turning normal sensations into cues for fear or alarm.
How Therapy Helps You Understand the Fear
A therapist begins by helping you map out the specific parts of flying that trigger anxiety. For some people, the fear arises from loss of control. For others, it is related to turbulence, takeoff sensations, altitude, confined spaces, or even the anticipation leading up to the trip. For many, it is a combination of several factors.
Therapists break down the experience into manageable components, making it easier to understand which elements are creating the strongest emotional response.
This process typically includes:
Exploring the history of the fear and identifying patterns.
Understanding how the nervous system responds during flights.
Differentiating between realistic concerns and anxiety-driven predictions.
Clarifying which sensations are misinterpreted as threats.
Gaining clarity is often the first step toward reducing the intensity of the fear, so that you know what to target and what to work with your therapist to address.
Psychoeducation: Learning How Planes and Flights Actually Work
Once you understand how it develops, you can then work on knowledge. We call this “Psychoeducation.” It is *extremely* effective as a part of the treatment process for plane related anxiety.
To do this, we talk about how a plane works, and then talk about your feelings as you think about these things. This may include discussions about:
How aircraft are engineered to withstand turbulence, lightning, and extreme conditions.
Why mechanical sounds change throughout the flight and what each sound typically represents.
How pilots train for unexpected scenarios and why common concerns (such as single-engine capability) are manageable.
Why turbulence feels alarming but is not structurally dangerous to the aircraft.
The technology on board to prevent crashes and danger.
When the unknown becomes familiar, the nervous system has fewer opportunities to react as if a threat is present.
Developing Practical Coping Strategies for the Flight Environment
A key part of therapy involves creating realistic strategies for managing anxiety in environments where escape is limited. Because you cannot step out of the situation once the plane is in the air, the goal is to build a toolkit of skills that you can rely on throughout each stage of the process.
These strategies may include:
Controlled breathing and grounding exercises designed for enclosed spaces.
Techniques to redirect attention using sensory cues, sound, or structured tasks.
Planning predictable activities for each phase of the flight, such as listening to familiar audio during takeoff or using visual focus points during turbulence.
Identifying early signs of rising anxiety and practicing interventions to prevent escalation.
Therapists also help you prepare for the broader process – packing, traveling to the airport, and waiting at the gate – because anticipatory anxiety often begins well before boarding.
Gradual Exposure and Rebuilding Tolerance
Fear of flying functions much like a phobia. Avoidance strengthens it, and slow, supported exposure helps weaken it. Therapists design exposure plans that match your comfort level and focus on manageable steps rather than forcing sudden change.
Exposure may involve:
Imagining the physical sensations of the flight until the associated anxiety decreases.
Watching aviation videos or listening to recordings of common flight sounds.
Practicing small exposures near airports or inside grounded aircraft when possible.
Taking short flights once earlier steps feel tolerable.
The goal is not to eliminate fear immediately. It is to give your nervous system repeated experiences that contradict the belief that flying is dangerous. Over time, your mind begins to react more accurately, with reduced alarm.
Addressing General Anxiety That Influences Flight-Related Fear
Many individuals with a fear of flying also experience broader patterns of anxiety, even if mild. Worries about health, control, or unfamiliar environments may appear in other areas of life and become amplified during flights. Part of therapy involves strengthening overall stress-management skills so that anxiety remains more stable regardless of the situation.
Improvements in baseline anxiety – better sleep, regulated breathing, healthier stress responses – often lead to significant improvements in flight tolerance.
Why Working With a Therapist Matters
A therapist provides structure, accountability, and evidence-based tools. They help you understand the fear from multiple angles – physiological, cognitive, and emotional – so that you are not battling it alone or relying on willpower during the flight.
A therapist also helps you:
Break down fears that feel vague or overwhelming.
Practice coping skills in a controlled, supportive environment.
Reinterpret sensations that previously triggered panic.
Build confidence through repetition and realistic preparation.
Develop a plan tailored to your needs, your history, and your anxiety patterns.
Most importantly, therapy offers a space where you can talk openly about fears that may feel embarrassing or irrational. The process creates a foundation for long-term improvement rather than short-term reassurance.
Taking the First Step Toward More Comfortable Travel
A fear of flying does not have to prevent you from traveling, visiting family, or experiencing new places. With structured therapeutic support, gradual exposure, and tools designed to regulate your nervous system, the experience of flying can shift from overwhelming to manageable.
Progress takes time, but it is achievable. Working with a therapist gives you a clear path toward reducing distress, rebuilding confidence, and preparing for flights in a way that feels grounded rather than reactive. If you are ready to begin addressing your fear, reaching out for support is a meaningful first step. Contact Flourish Psychology today to get started.
Uncertainty can often be the enemy of comfort, and while there are many things in life that are uncertain, it is often helpful to have more clarity on some of the things that we do have control over.
That is one of the reasons that the holiday season can be a useful time for families to come together and address various forms of uncertainty. The conversations that you have today can go a long way towards reducing conflict, preventing anxiety, and improving outcomes in the future.
What Are Some Tough Holiday Conversations Worth Having?
First, a caveat. There are certainly many family relationships where communication and trust are a struggle. There are those that find the holiday season to be immensely stressful, because seeing family brings back these memories, stresses, and challenges that have been experienced in years past. In these situations, healthy boundaries are important, and there is no requirement to talk about heavy or important things that fall outside of your comfort zone.
But for those that are open to having important conversations with their families, these important holiday conversations can help you not only during the holidays, but long, long after. Examples include:
Long Term Plans – If you have aging family members, or you are aging yourself, knowing and talking about your long term plans and strategies is often forgotten and yet *extremely important.* Proactively talking about medical issues, long term care, funeral needs, and more can be extraordinarily helpful in avoiding stress and anxiety when needs arise.
Healing and Growth Together – If you and your family have had issues in the past or have felt disconnected or apart, talking about that now, over the holidays, when there are many opportunities to sit and have these important conversations can be a great way to start the healing and growth process. That’s something that can provide social support that will make your upcoming year much more emotionally manageable.
Providing Honest Life Updates – Sometimes, it’s the things that are “unsaid” that are so difficult to manage. In situations where there is emotional, social, even financial news that might be something your family wants to or needs to hear, telling them can reduce that psychological burden of keeping that secret.
Some people even find “loving” conversations to be difficult. Many families do not say “I love you” enough, avoiding compliments and words of affirmation. But hearing and saying those words can have a very powerful impact on our mental health in the future, especially if unexpected difficulties arise.
Moving Forward Together
There is no requirement to be close to one’s family. Individuals with a history of trauma in their family, for example, should not feel like they “need” to have these types of conversations. If you have had difficulties with your family in the past, please consider reaching out to Flourish Psychology, today.
But for families that *can* have these tough conversations, consider prioritizing them. The longer you wait, the more likely an issue arises that is difficult for you to manage emotionally. If you know your family’s long term care needs, for example, then you can prepare for them as they arrive and know that you’re more ready for the road ahead. For those that are prioritizing their mental health, conversations with family over the holidays can be a part of what is needed to make sure that they have less stress in the future.
Flourish Psychology is a private practice in NYC that works with patients from diverse backgrounds and a wide range of personal and mental health struggles. We have an incredible team of therapists that are kind, caring, educated, and create a safe space for you to be seen.
Like many therapists in New York, we treat conditions like depression, anxiety, relationship issues, work stress, and other issues and challenges that affect so many of us. But we also have specialty services that are available to those that need extra or specific help that may not be addressed through traditional therapy.
Examples of Our Specialty Services
Flourish Psychology works with many high profile clients, as well as those with higher level needs. As such, we’ve begun providing additional services and support for specific situations – each one designed to provide a different and often higher level of care to those that are the right fit. These include:
Exclusive Therapy – Exclusive therapy is a popular option for high profile clients that may require more ongoing, personal care. Exclusive therapy is a service where patients are given more significant, customizable access to a therapist to help them with ongoing needs, such as executives struggling with work stress or celebrities consumed by perfectionism.
Eating Disorder Intensives – Our eating disorder intensives are, as the name implies, services that provide a more intensive level of care. Patients that are stepping down from high level care or are looking at alternative options may find that these intensives provide them with the support and resources they need to thrive.
Career Counseling – Although we are not here to specifically help you find a new career, we are here to help those that are feeling stuck in their current professional world discover who they are and what would be most fulfilling. We can also help those in high stress jobs work through those issues to make better decisions for their future.
Art Therapy – Art therapy is not necessarily a “specialty service” as it is a highly regarded form of therapy that offers an alternative to cognitive behavioral therapy, among other treatments, but it is a form of therapy not many people are aware of. Through art, patients are able to learn more about themselves and how they see the world,
We are also, both within our practice and in the mental health world, moving away from diagnoses as much as possible, in favor of understanding that you are uniquely you and so too are the struggles and needs that you have. That means if you need something a bit more customized to help you thrive, we can be there with options and ideas.
Learn More About Our Specialty Services
At Flourish Psychology, our belief is that it is truly important to provide our patients not with cookie cutter mental health, but with personalized approaches that meet them where they are. If you’d like to learn more about our specialty therapy services, we encourage you to review the links above or contact us at any time with your questions.
Therapists, like our team here at Flourish Psychology, are here to help you manage your mental health. We are also here to guide you and act as a sounding board for your thoughts, concerns, and needs. It is that latter service that brings people to therapists when they’re looking for a career change.
Our therapists are able to provide a service known as “career counseling.” Career counseling helps individuals navigate their professional paths, make informed career choices, and address challenges related to job satisfaction and career development.
With career counseling, we provide support and strategies that help clients understand themselves, their goals, and the various factors influencing their career decisions, using techniques that:
Facilitate Self-Discovery and Self-Awareness
One of the primary roles of a therapist in career counseling is to help clients gain a deeper understanding of themselves. This involves exploring personal values, interests, strengths, weaknesses, and personality traits that can influence career choices. Through assessments, guided discussions, and reflective exercises, therapists help clients identify:
Core values that drive motivation and job satisfaction
Skills and competencies that align with specific career paths
Personality traits that may affect workplace dynamics and job performance
Long-term goals and aspirations
By fostering this self-awareness, we are able to enable clients to make informed career decisions that align with their authentic selves, leading to greater fulfillment and success in their chosen – or new – professions.
Address Career-Related Anxiety and Stress
Career transitions, job searches, and workplace challenges can be significant sources of stress and anxiety. Our therapists use our experience in mental health to help clients manage these emotional hurdles by providing coping strategies and emotional support. Techniques such as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness practices, and stress management tools can help clients overcome anxiety related to job interviews, career changes, work/life demands, and more.
Help Clients Develop Decision-Making Skills
Those in high profile careers are often tasked with making difficult decisions both in their jobs and for themselves, personally. Making these decisions can be overwhelming, especially when faced with multiple options, uncertainty, or profound financial risk.
Our career counseling therapists guide clients through structured decision-making processes, helping them evaluate their options, weigh the pros and cons, and consider the long-term implications of their choices.
Provide Career Assessment and Exploration Tools
Therapists that provide career counseling use various assessment tools to help clients explore their interests, aptitudes, and potential career paths. These tools include personality assessments, interest inventories, skill evaluations, and values assessments, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), Holland Code, or StrengthsFinder. By interpreting the results of these assessments, therapists can:
Help clients gain insights into suitable career options
Identify areas of growth and development
Align clients’ strengths with potential job opportunities
Create personalized career development plans
These assessments offer a structured approach to exploring career possibilities, helping clients feel more informed and confident in their choices.
Support Career Transitions and Change Management
Many individuals seek career counseling during times of transition, such as changing industries, returning to work after a break, or navigating job loss. Therapists guide clients through these transitions by offering emotional support and practical strategies for adapting to change. This includes:
Helping clients redefine their professional identity and goals
Assisting with resume building, job search strategies, and interview preparation
Encouraging resilience during periods of uncertainty
Providing tools to manage the stress and emotions associated with change
Our therapists help clients view career transitions as opportunities for growth, enabling them to adapt more effectively and embrace new challenges.
Identify and Addressing Workplace Issues
Therapists often work with clients to address challenges they face in their current work environment, such as conflicts with colleagues, workplace bullying, burnout, or a lack of job satisfaction. In this role, therapists help clients develop communication and conflict resolution skills, establish healthy boundaries and work-life balance, address imposter syndrome or feelings of inadequacy, and explore strategies for coping with workplace stress
Enhance Soft Skills and Professional Development
Soft skills, such as communication, teamwork, adaptability, and leadership, are essential for career advancement. Therapists help clients develop these skills by identifying areas for improvement and providing strategies for growth. This can involve:
Role-playing exercises to improve communication and interpersonal skills
Coaching on leadership and management techniques
Providing feedback on professional behaviors and attitudes
By focusing on soft skills development, therapists contribute to clients’ overall professional growth and readiness for career advancement.
Promote Long-Term Career Resilience and Adaptability
In today’s rapidly changing job market, adaptability and resilience are key to long-term career success. Therapists play a vital role in preparing clients for ongoing career development by helping them:
Embrace a mindset of lifelong learning and skill development
Adapt to changes in the job market or industry
Set realistic career goals and action plans
Cultivate resilience to bounce back from setbacks or challenges
By instilling these qualities, therapists enable clients to navigate the ups and downs of their careers with greater confidence and flexibility.
The Comprehensive Role of Therapists in Career Counseling
Therapists in career counseling serve as guides, mentors, and coaches, helping clients navigate the complex and often stressful world of career development. Their roles extend beyond simply matching clients with job opportunities – they address the psychological, emotional, and practical aspects of career planning, ensuring clients are well-equipped to make informed decisions and manage the challenges that arise.
Flourish Psychology is a boutique private practice that works with those looking for more out of their career. We spend most of our lives working. You should be able to love your job and make decisions according to your own values. If you’re in the NYC area and you’re ready to gets started, please reach out to Flourish Psychology, today.
Flourish Psychology is a boutique private practice that often works with those in the public eye – celebrities, CEOs, lawyers, politicians, and other high profile clients. It is that work that we do that often makes us one of the leading therapists for influencers – a career that is directly in front of the public 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Influencers and content creators, for their careers, often live on their phones. But this can be a problem for their mental health.
Beyond Social Media
Many people – including right here at Flourish Psychology – have discussed the mental health challenges that can come from being a social media figure. It can be a very difficult profession. Negative comments, perfectionism, exploitation – content creators often struggle with issues such as anxiety and depression that come from such a public facing career.
We encourage you to view our “influencer therapy” page or blog posts like our phone addiction post if you’d like more information about those topics.
However, some of the issues that people experience when they’re influencers go beyond the comments, judgement, and other social media challenges. Many influencers – and non-influencers – also struggle with what’s known as “Digital Overload.”
Digital overload affects anyone that is on their phone too often. It refers to the constant, massive consumption of digital content that many of us engage in every day.
Our brains are not designed to consume that much media at once, on that many topics, in this type of means. Every day, those that are on their phones or tablets too often – which includes not only social media influencers, but also most adults these days – are consuming massive, massive amounts of media right in front of their eyes, cutting off the outside world in the process.
This is too much for our brains to handle. We aren’t built with the ability to process that much information. It’s important to remember that, while it can feel like this information is easy to consume, our brains find this level of processing to be stressful. As a result, we become more likely to develop:
Stress
Anxiety
Poor Concentration
Depression, and More
When our brains are overloaded with this much information, it can also lead to fatigue, insomnia, forgetfulness, and more. All of this can also occur subconsciously – meaning, you do not realize it is happening, and may feel “fine” or even relaxed while you’re on your phone. But behind the scenes, your brain is becoming more and more stressed.
Everyone, regardless of profession, benefits from reducing their information consumption and, ultimately, their digital overload.
But influencers are in a rough spot – you work online, which means that you need to be not only on a screen, but specifically on your phone. In addition, the more interaction you have and the more you do online, the more you can create content and build your brand.
Already at higher risk for depression, anxiety, and perfectionism, this added screen time and digital overload runs the risk of continuing to create more and more stress while also making it more difficult to cope with online and offline life.
What Can Be Done?
Unless you plan to give up being a social media celebrity, it will instead become important to have a strategy that you stick to with managing your online life. Examples may include:
Limit your working hours. Make sure that you’re only on your phone intentionally and be completely offline when you’re not working.
Limit your unnecessary content. Only follow people that are good for your career and follow friends/family, limiting all other unnecessary interactions and content.
Fill your “unplugged” time with outdoor activities, exercise, friends (without the content), and other things that reduce stress.
We also encourage you to reach out to Flourish Psychology. We’ll work with you on stress coping, time management, anxiety reduction, and how to log off when you lead a largely digital life. Through therapy, we can help provide support to give you back control and aid in your long term mental health.
If you’re struggling with digital overload, or you have anxiety, stress, phone addiction, or other issues potentially caused by being online too often, reach out to Flourish Psychology, today. If you’re interested in more personalized support, learn more about our exclusive mental health services.
Panic attacks are intense. They are difficult. They can be so powerful and so immense both physically and mentally that many people start to fear them.
They are also very hard to stop without help, and one of the reasons they are so difficult to stop is because panic attacks – and the fear of having another panic attack – cause a cycle that makes it very difficult to stop future attacks without the support of an experienced therapist.
The Cycle of Panic Attacks
All anxiety has physical symptoms, but panic attacks are specifically physical events. Although they do trigger symptoms that affect thoughts and emotions, it is their physical symptoms that are most disruptive:
Rapid Heartbeat
Chest Pain
Trouble Breathing
Weakness
Sweating, and More
The cognitive symptoms also are connected to the physical ones. People experience “feelings of doom,” for example, that enhance the effects of these physical symptoms. There is a reason that many people seek out medical professionals when they have panic attacks, because it can be hard to believe something like anxiety can trigger that type of reaction.
Because panic attacks are so physical, we start to fear them. And like most things we fear, we become both:
Easily triggered when we think a panic attack is coming.
More likely to monitor our bodies for signs of an attack.
These have names: “hypersensitivity” and “self-monitoring.” We see them with most people that have frequent panic attacks. When we struggle with panic attacks and panic disorder, we tend to be more sensitive to sensations our bodies experience and more likely to notice them. Once we do, they can trigger more anxiety.
Finally, panic attacks are also stressful on the body. Over time, they can cause physical symptoms related to chronic stress, and chronic stress itself causes a variety of physical symptoms – including strange ones that may not normally be associated with stress.
So what typically happens when someone has panic attacks is the following:
Person experiences a very minor sensation of some kind, possibly caused by stress.
They notice the sensation immediately due to their self-monitoring.
They immediately react with fear as though a panic attack is coming.
Their hypersensitivity means their anxiety symptoms feel more pronounced.
Their fear that a panic attack is coming increases, causing more anxiety.
Their anxiety triggers a panic attack.
It’s also not a cycle that is easily in someone’s control. It is very hard to talk yourself out of it without help. Because the person is also living with frequent stress, they are likely to always have triggers – for example, the stress from recurring panic attacks can lead to breathing poorly, blurry vision, a jump in one’s heartbeat, and all of those trigger the fear that a panic attack is coming.
People with panic attacks may also develop health anxiety and other challenges as a result of these attacks, leading to even more anxiety-related triggers.
Stopping the Cycle
It is for these reasons that panic attacks often benefit from and require professional help. It is very, very difficult to stop this panic attack cycle without support, because your body is essentially primed to experience panic attacks. The work that is required to stop this cycle takes time – it requires retraining your mind, teaching yourself to relax, helping you cope with stresses, and more.
During that time, a person may still have panic attacks – although hopefully much less frequently. But with a therapist there with you, it’s also possible to address those without struggling with setbacks and gain those reminders that all the effort you are putting into reducing the attacks is worth your time.
Working with a therapist that specializes in anxiety is one of the best ways to make sure that you can stop that cycle. At Flourish Psychology, our therapists can make sure that you’re getting the support you need for panic attacks, anxiety, stress, and more, all with evidence based techniques. Get started today in NYC with Flourish Psychology, a boutique private practice.
Location: 300 Cadman Plaza West Floor 12 - Brooklyn, NY 11201
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