Going out of my mind!!

[Strange333]

Hi All,

So after much thought I have decided to book a ticket to Ohio. Up until now I have found ways to avoid it, even cancelling a flight. Once I was even at the gate and didn't get on the plane, but SWA was nice enough to let me fly out the next day.

I read this board and I am ok, but then I go to bed....

I have always had vivid dreams and when it is time to fly I always dream about you-know-what.

Last night I was in an enchanted forest hunting huge flying pigs (I am totally serious) and that part was fine and dandy. Then we found some sort of Egyptian artifact and had to fly it somewhere on a Northwest Airlines flight. In my dream all I could think about was July 25, 2000 and I was flying NWA that day. If you don't know that is where my uncontrollable fear comes from.

So here I am on this plane. I think it was a 737 or something like that. We have to make an emergency landing in a road-side ditch.

There were other aspects of the dream, but as I get farther into telling this the crazier it sounds!! I even thought about not posting this for a minute, but I really nead some feedback. Does anyone else have strange/scary flight dreams before a flight? Do they bother you? For me, I think the dreams are worse than the flying.

Someone tell me I am not going crazy, even if it's not true!!:drool

Thanks, love ya, mean it

Nich

[MadScientist]

First, stop eating pizza before you go to bed. That'll help with the pig hunting dreams.

Second, I too have recurring dreams about crashing and have had them for many years. I still have them about every 2 months or so. I think it's quite normal for your fear to manifest itself in your dreams and I don't think anything of it. Your subconscious mind is just acting out the fears you have. I have a bet for you......I'll bet you never die in those dream-crashes do you?

You might want to ask Barb about the artifact stuff though. :jump

Rest assured, you're completely normal. Then again, this is coming from ME. :shocked

[sengelin]

Not only are you not crazy, but I'm going to give you a trick for getting those disturbing images out of your head. I'm the visual type too... lots of planes have gone down in flames in my head, but never in my reality.

Here's the trick. Buy a bunch of visually-stimulating magazines as soon as you get through security. There's always a newstand there somewhere. It doesn't matter what the magazines are about as long as they have no intellectual value whatsoever. You're looking for total fluff here... travel, fashion, entertainment, whatever... the key thing is you want lots and lots of pleasant, vivid color pictures. The fewer words the better. You're not going to read the words anyway. You don't want to think about what you're reading, you just want your brain to go "ooooh, pretty!" While you're waiting for your flight, start at the beginning of your first magazine and look at every picture. Really focus on every picture and notice every detail. Play "spot-the-badly-concealed-blemish" on every fashion model. Spend at least a minute on every picture and look at every picture in the magazine. When you run out of pictures in one magazine, move on to the next one. I find that your typical travel or fashion magazine is good for about an hour of mindless distraction. Keep looking at the pretty pictures as your flight takes off and until you feel settled. If you find yourself having visual disaster fantasies, go back to the magazines! If you're on an airline with video entertainment, you may be able to do the same thing with it.

The neat thing about your brain is that it's really pretty dumb when it comes to visual things. It can only process one image at a time, it tends to fill in details that are missing, and it tends to throw away details that aren't important. The bottom line is that when your brain is full of pictures of pleasant things, it can't conjure up its own pictures of unpleasant things.

[xiknal]

oh yeah...hold the pizza! Might want to see if there's any Vitamin B6 in any supplements you are taking, too...

I am fascinated by dreams, and have kept a dream journal for a long time. I don't necessarily accept that there are standard meanings that you can go look up--such as 'pigs' and 'flying pigs' in some dream symbolism book, but when we pay attention to dreams, we find recurring patterns that really click into focus.

Now, your mention of the hunt and also of finding an Egyptian artifact that has to be flown somewhere...these are both suggestive (if I dare) of your wish to take control. In the first case, you are stalking the flying critters (why pigs? beats me! was it a funny or a serious mission?)...and the artifact and having to put it on a plane are definitely suggestive of a mission--something important and only partly revealed, maybe something from the past (heh heh :lol )...so your need to take charge of these scenes is now pitted against the image of your 737 coming to an ignoble stop in a ditch! Oh no...someone else dropped the ball and let this thing happen! :nono

I agree with Ken...you are living through these crash scenarios, even walking away...so those probably are just a surfacing of your smoldering fear. I don't want to get too analytical here (and I am no analyst!) but I agree that your fear is rising up in dreams as a sort of nyaah nyaah message, thumbing its nose at your desire to be in control.

It is hard to give up control!! That is a common issue with FoF. Your task is to somehow build a strong enough bridge between yourself and the pilots of your flights that you are willing to let them fly the plane, since thay are not gonna let you ride on the jump seat and supervise.

It's not just about supervision; it's also about having an intuitive relationship between control inputs and the plane's responses. This is what we have whenever we sit at the controls of a small plane: roll the yoke left (add a touch of left rudder) and voila--the plane banks left. No surprises. We also have that full forward view which helps us relate to the *whole* plane and not just the bit we can see out of a tiny side window. :airplane

I don't know what the reference to July 25, 2000 is...did an accident, or a bad flight of yours, happen on that day? I'm not as current on accident lore as I used to be when I hated to fly.

I used to occasionally have crash dreams. I was either a witness or I woke up before the crash actually happened. They tended to marry my FoF together with other negative things in my life--as in witnessing a crash and seeing an ex standing next to me. :shocked

I don't think that crash dreams are foretelling the future--not for me, or in general.

I would ask you, finally, to think about how it is that reading this board helps you feel better. This might be the enchanted forest, and the flying piggies might be the tricks and knowledge you need to make the big change that you want to make. If that interpretation zeroes out, that's OK...just maybe give some thought to *how* this board works for you and help us help you move forward.

Ah, yer not goin crazy...:dragonslayer you are just facing fear!! Keep the faith.

Barb