Welcome to unfuck your brain. I'm your host Kara Lowentile, master-certified coach, and founder of the School of New Feminist Thought. I'm here to help you turn down your anxiety, turn up your confidence, and create a life on your own terms, one that you're truly excited to live.

Let's go.

Welcome to this week's coaching hotline episode where I answer real questions from real listeners

and coach you from afar.

If you want to submit your question for consideration, go to unfuck your brain.com forward slash

coaching hotline, all one word, or text your email to plus one 347-997-1784.

And when you get prompted for the code word, it's coaching hotline, all one word.

Let's get into this week's questions. So here's this first one. It's about a question about fear of flying, but it's going to work for a fear of anything, like public speaking or anything else you're scared of. Hi, Kara, I absolutely love your podcast. It's already helped me immeasurably. I found it at a time when I was lost and obsessive, jealous thoughts, and your talk on

the subject brought me around. There are so many other topics I'm working on, shame and boundaries are two big ones right now, but there's a huge one that I'd love some feedback on if possible. How do you address a phobia? I recently developed a fear of flying after 31 years of zero fear towards it. I'm still trying to figure out why.

When I have a flight, I get terrified that I'll have a panic attack mid-flight, end up freaking

out the other passengers, embarrassing myself, wearing an oxygen mask, and possibly forcing the

flight to land. So much catastrophizing. I'm also fearful of embarrassing myself in front of my

boyfriend who doesn't know about the fear of flying. Is the phobia a combo of a few things like catastrophizing, shame, and people pleasing? Or are there other tools to use in a phobia situation? What is my blind spot? Thank you so much for everything you do. Okay, so I have no idea why you've developed this phobia other than your thoughts, but I think even calling it a

phobia is not helping you. Because calling it a phobia is making it feel like this very intense,

serious thing that is like an emergency. And so I don't think that that's helpful. What we know is that

now, sometimes when you fly, you have feelings of anxiety in your body.

That's really all it is. A panic attack is just anxiety. But what is going on here,

partly is that you are fearing your own anxiety. So you create anxiety about having anxiety,

which is what a panic attack is. It's when you start

to get anxious about even getting anxious and you completely freak yourself out. And this happens

with kind of all fears, with fears of public speaking, with like anything that you anticipate

being scared about. And so the first thing you really have to do is just accept that you are

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