Anxiety and Flying w/Dr. David Carbonell (Episode 103)
Disordered: Anxiety Help
Josh Fletcher and Drew Linsalata
4.9 • 665 Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When working to overcome an anxiety disorder, the biggest challenge many in our community can identify is flying. For chronically anxious people, the idea of getting on a plane, being trapped for hours, and being terrified or out of control for that long seems like something they will never be able to.
Even for people that are well on the way to recovery, flying can still feel like the "ultimate test" of recovery. The fear that they will crumble and be in a totally uncontrollable, inconsolable state while in the air can be powerful. It leads some to avoid travel completely.
This week Drew and Josh had a chat with Dr. David Carbonell about the intersection of anxiety disorders and flying. Dave is well known in the anxiety disorder community and brings us not only a wealth of knowledge and experience in this area, but also a healthy dose of understanding and much needed humor.
We're covering all the usual issues:
- anticipatory anxiety
- struggling to decide if you should get on the plane or not
- the worry over losing control or being in a full panic for hours while at 35,000 feet
- storming the cockpit
- trying to get out of the aircraft while its in the air
- causing a scene and/or needing to be restrained in some way
- experiencing a psychotic break
- panic that leads to a medical emergency
If you're struggling with disordered anxiety and terrified at the thought of flying not because you fear a crash but because you fear your own thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations, tune in. This episode is for you.
For more on Dr. David Carbonell visit his website:
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Struggling with worry and rumination that you feel you can't stop or control? Check out Worry and Rumination Explained, a two hour pre-recorded workshop produced by Josh and Drew. The workshop takes a deep dive into the mechanics of worrying and ruminating, offering some helpful ways to approach the seemingly unsolvable problem of trying to solve seemingly unsolvable problems.
https://bit.ly/worryrumination
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Flying is inherently uncomfortable for pretty much the entire population. |
| 0:07.0 | The interesting thing is, for the great majority of flyers, the anticipation is the worst part. |
| 0:13.0 | Because in that last 30 seconds, all that's going on in their minds is, should I stay or should I go? |
| 0:18.0 | Should I stay or should I go? |
| 0:19.0 | Throw a blanket over my head and take me to the airport without letting me know where we're going. That would be better. Almost every person I speak to and worked with that says, actually, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was. And my anxiety is now calming down, even though I'm in the air. I haven't charged the cockpit and made a scene. I haven't had a heart attack and my head hasn't |
| 0:38.0 | exploded. I'm not experiencing or doing any of those horrible things I thought was going to happen. |
| 0:43.4 | And their anticipation was so bad that practically any kind of flight is going to be better |
| 0:48.3 | than what they anticipated. Welcome to Disordered. This is episode 103 of the podcast. And today we're going to talk about |
| 0:58.2 | anxiety and flying, fear of flying or anxiety over flying, with a special guest that we'll introduce |
| 1:03.8 | in a little bit. I am Drew Linzalata. I am a therapist that practices in the specialization |
| 1:08.2 | of anxiety and anxiety disorders in New York in the USA, former sufferer of anxiety disorders and depression and OCD for many years in my life |
| 1:15.3 | on and off an author on the topic social media guy educator advocate co-host of this |
| 1:21.3 | podcast dude with an expensive microphone and I'm joined as always by I'm Joshua Fletcher |
| 1:26.8 | also known as anxietyxiety Josh. |
| 1:28.3 | Like Drew, therapist, expert in anxiety and anxiety disorders, previous sufferer, author, |
| 1:33.3 | and I'm really excited to have Dave on the show today. |
| 1:36.3 | Yeah, we got Dave Carbonell, who is not only like a little bit of a legend in the anxiety disorder world, |
| 1:41.3 | but he kind of has a niche there with the whole intersection |
| 1:44.8 | of flying and anxiety is a really great workbook that both of us would highly recommend. |
| 1:49.7 | And he's decided to come on and talk to us about anxiety and flying and, you know, the specialness, |
| 1:54.5 | but a flight, but a flight, man, it's too much. |
| 1:56.5 | We're going to talk about that with Dave. |
... |
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