My first 'attack'
Question: "I had my first claustrophobic panic attack on a "small" 6.2 feet ceiling, 2 seats ea side, very narrow aisle, fully booked commercial plane yesterday.
I have been on these planes many times before without problem. It happened in 30 seconds. I was amazed. Two minutes after sitting down I suddenly had to get off, and I did.
After about 5 minutes just outside the plane door, I got back into my seat, scared s***less, but convinced I had to deal with this. I was 1000 miles from home on Sunday and I had to work Mon.
I read intently, and was annoyed with everyone who closed their shades or walked by in the incredibly narrow aisle, but I survived. Horrible.
Any suggestions as to what type of treatment is best? What medicine, hypnotherapy, desensitisation should I consider?
Response: What type of treatment? I'd suggest that you look out for an NLP-trained professional. My guess is that you live in North America and I cannot offer you names there. So instead, I suggest that you use a good search engine like Google and check out "NLP mytown/state".
Then telephone the listed institutes or organisations and check out their experience in specifically working with flying phobias OR, preferably, with panic attacks.
Sounds like you had a panic rather than a phobic reaction. (This could quite easily develop into a fully fledged flying phobia - but treat the panic and you'll soon be comfortable flying again, I'd say).
Panics often occur as the result of a period of fairly intense worry or stress or disruption of one's lifestyle.
Check out the Panic and the Fear of Flying sections.
Check out our section on Claustrophobia
Important: please read our caution regarding all health-related advice.
NLP
NLP or Neuro-Linguistic Programming was used to develop the ideas and themes on this site. I have been using it for nearly three decades to help me understand how I and other people tick and in my work as a consultant and trainer - and it continually impresses me. See the NLP links below for more information.
