Every time I get onto an airplane, I experience the same sensations.

I feel butterflies in my stomach. My hands get clammy. My face gets red. My heart starts to pound and my pulse starts to race. And it gets progressively worse until the plane is in the air and the captain turns off the fasten seat belt sign.

You see, I have a fear of flying. It’s not something I talk about a lot, and given the amount of travelling I do, also not something I’m all that proud of. I grew into this in my early twenties (sort of the reverse of outgrowing childhood ailments really) and have been unable to shake it ever since. It hasn’t really gotten any worse, but despite all of my efforts, I haven’t been able to make it any better either.

I’ve tried informing myself. I’ve read as much as I can get my hands on about the safety of flying, the amount of training that goes into a career in aviation, the multitudes of tests and retests an aircraft must pass before it is certified safe to fly, etc. I’ve also read about the different levels of turbulence and how inherently difficult it actually is for a plane to fall out of the sky.

Unfortunately, I am also morbidly drawn to media reports and stories every time there’s an aviation disaster and can’t help myself from reading everything about it. In my head, those accounts help me justify to myself why I have this irrational fear.

And really, that’s what this is. It makes no sense to me why I am afflicted by it – especially since I am also a sufferer of textingwhiledrivingitis, a horrible habit I am trying very hard to break, all the while blaming it on the ever increasing user-friendliness of my beloved Blackberry with its Facebook and Twitter applications.

My husband’s theory is that I have control issues. I seem to have no problem taking my life into my own hands every time I get behind the wheel, nor do I seem overly concerned about the possible consequences of aforesaid textingwhiledrivingitis malady. And yet when I have to entrust myself to the care of fully trained, capable aviation professionals, all hell breaks loose inside my head.

If I’m honest with myself, he’s probably right. I’m very used to making my own decisions and taking responsibility for those decisions (good or bad). I’m not very good at depending on others or at letting others take charge without at least some input from me. Funnily enough, no one seems to neither want nor care about that input when I step onto an airplane!

For a while, I also thought that perhaps I could cure myself by just flying an awful lot. Surely then, I would get used to the many different sounds and motions of an aircraft in flight and I would no longer have to freak out every time the engine noise goes up a sixteenth of an octave.

That worked – for the three week span in which I took about a dozen flights, but as soon as I took a break from the travelling, the silliness came back. And it is true that longer the “down time” I have between flights, the more difficult that next flight is for me.

I’ve also tried medicating myself by taking sleeping pills or other relaxants to keep me from getting all wound up. It actually works fairly well on long overnight flights because it makes me sleep, but on daytime flights, all it does is make me groggy and crabby. Not fun for anyone who has to travel with me. And sometimes, a nice glass of wine helps take the edge off as well. And as lovely as that sounds, honestly, I’m not so sure that pills and alcohol are the answer I’m looking for either.

Funnily enough, as I write this, I’m on an Air Canada flight from Toronto to Edmonton. How can I write this if I am really as caught up in my fear as I say? Well, the time leading up to a flight and ending at post take off leveling out is the worst for me. Once we’ve reached cruising altitude and the captain switches off the seat belt sign, I am ok with flying.

I’m also very much okay with landing, even though according to the stats, it’s one of the more dangerous or stressful times during a flight. Again, to my logical brain, this hardly makes any sense, but nothing about all of this really makes any sense as far as I’m concerned.

So is there any hope or help for me? I’m not sure – but I’d be very interested in any tips, tricks, hints or secrets anyone may have on this subject, short of stopping travelling altogether. Although I guess that would be an option too, but I am not yet ready to throw in the towel and let my fear get the best of me.