Fear is a debilitating thing. It creates the same effect in a human as broken wings do to a bird. It means that your world remains smaller than it could; it holds you back in so very many ways. Fear can affect many areas of one's life, and each instance creates a major impact. How can one small thought trigger off such a very great impact?

I wonder how many people there are in the world who suffer from a fear of flying. I suspect that the number is increasing as the years pass, if only because more people have the financial ability to fly and there is an increasing choice of flights to choose from. It is inevitable that with more flights there are likely to be more accidents, in the same way as more cars upon roads leads to more motor accidents.

You can look at statistics in many different ways. If you simply count the number of accidents, then the number will increase. If you worked out the number of accidents as a ratio to the number of flights, or cars using the roads, then the result will clearly differ. You may have heard quoted that you are more likely to be killed by a donkey than by an airplane. As I said, there are many potential interpretations which one may make with regards to number of accidents, or likelihood of crashes.

The cause of a fear of flying, however, rarely focuses upon a fear of crashing. You probably think that this is at the root of your fear, but this is rarely the case. Ask yourself do you allow your husband or wife, brother or sister, mother or father, son or daughter, friend or acquaintance to fly? Do you feel as fearful when these people fly as when you yourself plan to fly? For most people, they worry a little bit about other people flying but are absolutely petrified when it comes to themselves.

This doesn't mean that you don't care about these people enough; it just highlights the fact that a fear of crashing is not the real cause of your fear of flying. A fear of flying may be a symptom caused by a fear of being out of control, or being stuck or trapped, or perhaps related to social phobia, or a fear of heights. There are many reasons why a fear may be learned, but whatever the reason, you can cure fear of flying with the help of hypnosis.

Fear is an instinctive reaction, triggered automatically and therefore outside your conscious and logical control. This is why it does not respond well to logic. Fear is not logical, it is emotional. Fear comes from your subconscious mind, not from your conscious thought processes. Hypnosis provides access to your subconscious mind and hence a methodology with which to cure fears.

Roseanna Leaton, specialist in phobia hypnosis to help cure fears.