Word: hsia
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Classic. My mind had leaped in the space of a nanosecond from a waiting room in Logan Airport to a death spiral over the Atlantic. Dr. Curtis Hsia of Boston University's Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders calls this automatic thinking. It was even worse a few hours earlier when, as part of my treatment for a debilitating case of aviophobia (fear of flying), Dr. Hsia had booked me on Exposure Airlines. It's the newest thing in phobic therapy: a virtual airplane of hardware, software and fancy head-mounted display screens that feels like the real thing...
...window. Not good. We're in the middle of a thunderstorm. The seats ahead of me are shaking. I can feel the thunder in my bones. I know this isn't real, but I can't seem to control my fear. Through the din, I hear Dr. Hsia ask me how I'm feeling on an anxiety scale of 1 to 10: total relaxation to panic. I'm pushing 9. The storm thunders on. I am hating this...
...pilot saying anything?" I ask Dr. Hsia. I crave reassurance. The pilot must be fighting to stay aloft, I think. Maybe he's drunk...
...What about the co-pilot?" Dr. Hsia asks...
...What do you think would happen if lightning did hit the plane?" Dr. Hsia asks. I don't know. It would break apart. "Has that happened before?" Not that I know of. "If the pilots are flying through this, it's because they know the plane can take it," he says calmly...