One Perception at a Time
To respond better in tough situations, start practicing before they happen.
Flying feels less safe today.
The coverage of Wednesday night’s tragic crash and the subsequent in-depth reports cloud our perception of the dangers involved. My heart goes out to the families of everyone involved in this tragic accident.
Our collective curiosity about the details is understandable, but the more information we consume, the more fearful we can become. The paradox is that high volumes of distressing content can distort our ability to assess the actual risk.
Someone I’ve worked with on emotional awareness and regulations strategies for years reached out after yesterday morning's tragic plane crash. She is starting to spiral about an upcoming flight, and I can relate.
The next time we fly, we’ll board carrying vivid, emotionally laden baggage that is imperceptible to others. We can’t unsee what we’ve seen, and we can’t unfeel our reactions to so many lives being unexpectedly cut short. Unexpected delays and strange sounds could amp up our emotional intensity.
Turbulence will be more loaded for a while.
Encountering turbulence when flying can be a high-level challenge for many of us. We all know the statistics about being safer in a plane than in a car, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it when you’re bouncing around in the sky.
Objectively, the danger of another accident like this will be extremely low because everyone involved in keeping the skies and airports safe will be even more vigilant than they already are. Accidents happen, but it’s staggering to consider how safe flying has become.
However, logic doesn’t remove the challenge of palpable fear in the body.
What does?
Breaking the experience down into sensory components and observing them briefly and with less internal interference. I’m referring to the components of the physical senses and their mental and emotional counterparts.
seeing what’s in front of the eyes and images on a mental screen
hearing sounds around us and verbal thoughts only we can hear
feeling sensations in the body that are comfortable, uncomfortable, physical, and emotional
When a flight is smooth, we can read a book, listen to music, or watch a movie. When things get bumpy, the pull of our thoughts and feelings can make it impossible to focus on anything else.
When turbulence hits, the sooner I start to track the details, the better.
Sometimes, focusing on the sensations of breathing or emotionally neutral places in the body can help, but not if fear-related feelings are intense.
When trying to calm down isn’t an option, we can briefly shift to trying to sense one component detail of the disconcerting whole—one at a time.
There is a difference between watching a scary movie and editing the scenes. When you shift to sensing mode, you move from a person in the theater—or a character on the screen—and go behind the scenes to zoom in to closely observe the sensory details and zoom out to see how they work together to create a gripping narrative.
What details could you imagine tracking in situations like this?
sights: the seatback in front of me, a window, other people, my hands
sounds: mechanical sounds, murmuring passengers, music in my earbuds
physical sensations: temperature, the touch of clothing, the breeze from an overhead fan, clenched jaw, relaxed legs
mental images: crashes, explosions, crash sites I’ve seen on the news and in movies, people I love, funerals, my home, my dog,
internal talk: what I want to tell people I love, words conveying reassurance to myself, vague flight safety statistics, important conversations I’ve avoided, that list of things you’re supposed to say to people when they’re dying
emotional feelings in the body: sadness around the eyes, fear in the stomach or chest, embarrassment in the face, hope, vulnerability, yearning for help,
There is no universal place in the body where people feel specific emotional feelings. The opportunity here is to start becoming more familiar with sensations in the body that signal feelings that fuel emotional stories in your mind.
What helps me the most is to steer away from big, abstract feelings and worst-case scenarios and toward observable perceptions. One at a time. Lingering on each for a handful of seconds and trying to establish momentum in sensory noticing, even though the pull of troubling narratives can be intense.
This isn’t an intellectual exercise. It isn’t about trying to talk yourself into calming down. It requires attention skills for relating to thoughts and feelings differently than we’re used to. It requires being able to decide what to notice (agency), making distinctions about it (perceptual clarity), and letting it unfold without internal interference (equanimity).
These skills don’t emerge automatically on their own. They have to be developed. With lots of practice, navigating emotional challenges becomes increasingly doable.
Don’t wait for the most challenging circumstances to start. Start with the mild and moderate emotional triggers of daily life instead.
Flying isn’t more dangerous today. Neither is turbulence.
The irony is that the passengers who died yesterday likely didn’t have even a second to feel terrified. They were alive and landing, then gone.
It’s shattering to consider the grief their families face, but that is an entirely different scenario than navigating the subsequent fear of routine flying.
Our current political discourse feels more dangerous, but that has nothing to do with physics and everything to do with leveraging fear, anger, and vulnerability to maintain or regain power.
This tragedy reminds me that I won’t be alive forever. Am I living my life in ways that align with my values?
Am I willing to be uncomfortable in ways that lead to thriving sometimes?
More often than never?
Can I engage in physical and attentional exercise and have those difficult conversations while we still have a chance?
Can I let myself feel what I feel when I learn details about the lives of the passengers who died?
I don’t want to die. I don’t want the people I care about to die. Not today. Not yesterday. Not ever. I don’t want others to experience these kinds of loss either.
How does it feel in my body to acknowledge that what I want or don’t want doesn’t always factor into how things play out?
When circumstances don’t make sense or can’t be quickly resolved, I can work on feeling more alive while I’m alive.
Sometimes it really hurts.
