Somewhere over the country, mid-flight, a work traveler named Nicolas gripped his armrests, felt his heart pounding, and found himself imagining what would happen if he tried to open the plane's window. It's an image that sounds almost absurd from the outside — and completely, viscerally real from the inside of a panic attack.
His story, shared (with details changed to protect privacy) in Barbara Spaulding's book Anxiety and Panic: Your Path to Recovery, is one of the clearest examples in the book of how fear of flying develops, and how it can be worked through methodically — without medication, without white-knuckling, and without giving up travel altogether.
How it started small
Nicolas had always found flying uncomfortable — sedatives, a drink before boarding, gritting through it. It wasn't until a flight where his anxiety escalated mid-air, complete with heart palpitations and a jaw clenched tight enough to trigger a headache, that things changed. He didn't tell anyone. He made a private, silent deal with himself: get through this flight, and I'll never fly again.
That deal held for months — until his son invited him to be there for his grandchild's birth, across the country. Suddenly "never flying again" had a real cost. As Barbara notes in the book, the moment he tried to book the ticket, his fear resurfaced in full force, and he couldn't complete the booking.
The turning point: realizing he didn't cause it
One of the most important moments in the case study is a simple question Barbara asked him: "What do you think you did to cause your anxiety?" Nicolas searched for an answer — and the honest one was nothing. He hadn't done anything wrong. That single reframe took the self-blame out of the equation and made room for actual problem-solving.
The logical questions that unraveled the catastrophic fear
Rather than arguing him out of his fear, Barbara walked him through a short sequence of very specific questions:
Do you have a clear image of how to open a plane window? No.
Do you know how you'd physically get through it? No.
Are you likely to break a safety rule? No.
Is it actually possible for that outcome to happen? No.
His logical mind already knew all of this. The problem was that in an anxious state, the logical mind can't be accessed — which is exactly why pre-planned exercises matter more than trying to reason your way out in the moment.
The step-by-step exposure plan
With four weeks before the flight, Nicolas and Barbara built a gradual practice schedule — the same core method used for any specific fear in her book:
Talk through his concerns openly with his wife.
Purchase the tickets.
Look at photos of planes.
Read articles about air travel.
Watch videos of planes taking off (this step spiked his anxiety — he went back to step 4 before trying again).
Drive to the airport and watch planes take off and land in person.
Go inside the airport and watch from the gate.
Alongside the steps, he used a "three words" technique — a short, personal phrase (his was breathe, safe, focus) to interrupt anxious spirals — and practiced replacing the image of panicking mid-flight with a specific, calm image of sitting with his wife, breathing evenly, jaw relaxed.
What happened
Nicolas flew two thousand miles and made it to the birth of his grandchild without any anxiety symptoms during the flight. Looking back at his earlier fear of the plane's tiny windows, he later laughed: "It is hard to conceive how I ever thought I would fit." What mattered more than the flight itself was what he took away from it — not that flying had become effortless, but that he now knew, concretely, how to bring himself back to calm if fear showed up again.
The takeaway if you're afraid to fly
You don't need to force yourself onto a plane and grit through it, and you don't need to give up travel to feel safe. A gradual, structured practice schedule — paired with breathing and grounding techniques — builds real, lasting confidence instead of a shaky one-time win.
This case study and the full step-by-step method are covered in detail in Anxiety and Panic: Your Path to Recovery by Barbara Spaulding, LCSW, along with techniques for panic attacks, driving anxiety, and more. She also leads a free biweekly Anxiety Relief Zoom group — details at anxietyandpanic.net.