Planes didn’t make me anxious. I suspect that you were equally ready to jump on a flight from New York to Los Angeles for a long weekend, or from Sydney to Melbourne for a morning, or from London to really any European city. If my bank account allowed it, I didn’t think twice.
Life made me anxious, though. There were presentations to give and taxes to file and that one subway car without air conditioning in July and good God my phone bill and too many deadlines and my boyfriend’s cat’s depression, which is apparently a real condition, and friends’ birthdays I increasingly forgot to celebrate because there were too many deadlines. Did I mention the deadlines?
Airplanes removed me from all of that. The rules were different at 38,000 feet, where I could watch a documentary or finally read the latest Elena Ferrante novel or simply stare out the window from 9 to 11 a.m. on a Tuesday. WiFi rarely worked for the duration of the flight, so no one on the ground expected me to do any different. At the end was the promise of new discoveries at my final destination.
Ah, you noticed: I’ve been using the past tense. Because now, the thought of getting on a plane increases my heart rate and makes me ever so slightly nauseous. Since the coronavirus arrived, airports and airlines around the world have rolled out new safety measures: face coverings are required, free hand sanitizer stations are being added, touchless pay options are being incorporated, bus and shuttle operations have been scaled down, airplane boarding capacity has been reduced, in-cabin surfaces are being disinfected between flights. Still, though, deciding whether or not it's safe to fly is a personal choice, and even when we have a treatment for Covid, we might still have lingering doubts.
But we got back on planes after 9/11 and, eventually—likely sooner than we think—we’ll get back on planes after Covid. I won’t feel relief when I settle into my aisle seat like I used to, though. Not the first couple of trips.
Rituals can help. In a June study by the University of Connecticut and Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, rituals were found to play a key role in calming anxiety because they provide the brain with a sense of structure, regularity, and predictability. That's why if, say, you journal every day, then simply picking up the pen and opening your notebook will start to make you feel safer.
The easiest ritual for knocking out travel anxiety has always been in pill or liquid form. But again, it's 2020, the high-performance moment of Fitbits and sleep trackers: There are solutions that, instead of making me grumpy and groggy, leave me feeling fresh. Rejuvenated, even. Innovations such as CBD oil, meditation apps, and organic hand sanitizer (it need not be nuclear!) are part of my new in-flight ritual. I hope to perform it soon, when there’s a vaccine, and it’s safe, and and and....
"Wear a mask, keep distance from people as much as possible, and remind yourself of all the good reasons why you’re on that flight," Dr. Amelia Aldao, a clinical psychologist who specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy, told me. "Connecting to our values is a great way to fend off anxiety.”
