Actually it wasn\u2019t a phobia about planes or flying, it was about noise.\u00a0 Here in Franconia there is a small airport and in the summer they give glider rides.\u00a0 The plane that tows the glider makes a louder, longer, more obnoxious noise than a small plane by itself.<\/p>\n
I became sensitive to the sound in the summer of 1984.\u00a0 It made me feel scared and angry and nauseous.\u00a0 I remember screaming and banging my head on the floor.\u00a0 I began reacting even to the word airport.\u00a0 I was only able to relax on rainy days.\u00a0 I felt sick most of the time and had finally been diagnosed with systemic yeast.\u00a0 This was in the days when doctors were still claiming it wasn\u2019t a disease (it can be caused by over-use of antibiotics) and the only available substitute for bread was rice cakes.<\/p>\n
Finally I began leaving the area on days when the planes were flying.\u00a0 I would take my food \u2014 I couldn\u2019t eat wheat, dairy, sugar or yeast \u2014 and my journal and something to read, and go to the house of a friend who lived out of the area.\u00a0 The whole thing was a horrible experience.\u00a0 I hated having to run away. I was angry at the people who thought the planes were fun, and at myself for being so sensitive.\u00a0 I tried earplugs and ear protectors designed for people running heavy machinery.\u00a0 I could still hear enough of the noise to react.\u00a0 I began wearing a Walkman with earphones.\u00a0 The only music that worked was something called Music for 18 Musicians<\/a>.\u00a0 The sound was continuous and had a vibratory quality so it could absorb the noise of machinery.\u00a0 If I tried to listen to music with breaks in it, invariably there would be a plane during the 4 seconds of silence.<\/p>\n I tried many things to heal it, NLP, a very expensive program to retrain my hearing, chiropractors, psychic healers, nothing worked.\u00a0 People who didn\u2019t understand would say things like \u201cWhy don\u2019t you go down to the airport and see that they\u2019re just ordinary people?\u201d Just the word \u201cairport\u201d would freak me out.\u00a0 I remember one day, standing in the house, I heard something that sounded like a chainsaw, and my heart went into adrenaline through the roof, and then I saw it was just a fly buzzing on a window.\u00a0 I was horrified to see how sensitive to noise I was.\u00a0 I suffered from this thing for 13 years.<\/p>\n Finally in 1996, I realized I was dealing with severe depression.\u00a0 I tried Paxil, which was a horrendous experience.\u00a0 In the summer I discovered that one effect of the airplane noise was to plunge me into deep depression.<\/p>\n Looking back at it, I can see better how it became so horrendous.\u00a0 Hypersensitivity to sound is a symptom of PTSD, but I still had no idea that I had been traumatized.\u00a0 One thing about an obnoxious and very loud sound, you can\u2019t look away as you can from an ugly sight.\u00a0 Your only recourse is to go far enough away.\u00a0 Finding it impossible to live in your own house, in your own town, is depressing in itself.\u00a0 I felt hopeless and helpless. The planes were triggering flashbacks to a helpless, terrified infant.<\/p>\n Healing from the phobia happened literally overnight.\u00a0 I had started taking Imipramine (Anti-depressant medication) in February and after a few months was beginning to feel\u00a0 better.\u00a0 I had started therapy with Dr. Cynthia Rankin in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.\u00a0 She was a specialist in mood disorders.\u00a0 I had been seeing her for several months.\u00a0 It was May and the planes were starting up.\u00a0 On Friday I had a session with Dr. Rankin.\u00a0 I asked her if it was OK to \u201cwhite-knuckle it\u201d through the noise.\u00a0 She said \u201cOf course.\u201d\u00a0 Then she said she had observed a pattern in my behavior.\u00a0 I would start a project that had several steps.\u00a0 I would do the first two steps just fine, but if I ran into trouble on the third I would conclude that I \u201ccouldn\u2019t do it.\u201d I would fail to see that I had already managed to do part of it successfully, in fact I would even define those first steps as failures.\u00a0 This was enormously interesting to me.\u00a0 I knew something about training dogs and that the principles worked for human beings also.\u00a0 I figured I could retrain myself about the planes.\u00a0 I would write down each one survived with white knuckles as a success, and see how many I could survive before I had to leave the house.\u00a0 Saturday was rainy, and I went to the first level Reiki training.\u00a0 I had the oddest feeling afterward that my immune system had \u201cswitched on.\u201d I could almost feel a protective field around me.\u00a0 Sunday was sunny and I sat down with paper and pen, waiting for the planes to start.\u00a0 Each time one went over I would say \u201cthat\u2019s one survived\u201d and make a little airplane symbol on the page.\u00a0 By the end of the day, I had survived 13 planes, and I knew the phobia was over.\u00a0 Dr. Rankin had given me my power back for which I am eternally grateful.\u00a0 I still hated the sound, but I no longer freaked out, and gradually the sound began to fade into the background.\u00a0 Every now and then I notice a plane towing a glider and think \u201cGod! I suffered from that for 13 years, and now I don\u2019t even notice them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Actually it wasn\u2019t a phobia about planes or flying, it was about noise.\u00a0 Here in Franconia there is a small airport and in the summer they give glider rides.\u00a0 The plane that tows the glider makes a louder, longer, more … Continue reading