Problems with Nerviousness

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Sudodo

Filing Flight Plan
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Sudodo
Hey everyone! I'm looking for some advice from the more experienced members to give me some perspective on a problem I'm currently facing. I seem to have a bad case of nerves before pretty much every flight. Not to the point where it stops me from flying, but bad enough that it's making me look critically at whether I can continue to pursue my lifelong dream of commercial aviation.

To give context I am in my 4th year of a part 141 aviation-focused college degree. I have my Commercial and Instrument and am just past 200 hours. When I started flight training I was PETRIFIED, super nervous in the plane and before flights. I talked to some people and read some stuff online so I decided to stick with it and I found that the VAST majority of that fear during flights went away around the 50-80 hour mark. I was still, however, left with that anxious feeling before flights and some very manageable but still present nerves during flights. Importantly I found that the more often I flew the less nervous I'd be both before and during flights. So overall I decided to keep going and power through.

Recently I've had a very bad instructor who has truly done a number on my passion for aviation. He is an Airline pilot teaching a simulator class and possibly has the worst combination of attributes I could ever dream up for an instructor to have (His lectures are just sessions where he talks about how hard being a 121 pilot is and how good he is at it and how bad everyone in his class is for not being able to do it). Sorry, rant over and back to the topic at hand! This combined with HORRID flight time (seriously just 3 flights in 3 months) due to plane availability/wx has made life difficult.

I had sorta expected the nerves before flights to go away by now, but they haven't and so I've been left contemplating if I'm just not cut out for this (this has only made that anxious feeling worse). I find that I start to get worried about a day in advance but the nerves only really hit hard about 4 hours beforehand. They seem to greatly recede either right after engine start or at rotation. It's gotten to the point where I really sort of feel dread for flights up until the point that I'm in the air which has taken a lot of the fun out of it. As I near the end of my multi I'm at the point where I have to decide whether or not I get my CFI and I don't want to be in the position of being a CFI who hates showing up to work because I'm nervous.

Are there any CFI's or 121 pilots who were in the same position as me? Have you found that it went away with time, if so at what point did it or what caused the change? If there's a light at the end of the tunnel I'm very much willing to push through and accomplish what I've always wanted to do, but it's been very hard to find motivation to push through as of late.

Thanks for reading and any advice would be appreciated,
Sudo
 
turn anxiety into your superpower. Channel it, don’t fight it. Anxious people are exactly the kind of people we recruited for intelligence work. Careful, checking & double checking every detail, scouring every report or database, coming in early or staying late because they were afraid they’d left some analytical stone unturned. We’d have to pry their report from their hands.

I’d posit that you relax as soon as the engine turns over because you’ve done all you could possibly do. I’d say that makes you a better pilot than the devil may care pilot and the guy I’d want up front of my airline seat. The secret, though, is keeping it under reasonable control. Exercise, in particular, seems to help. There are, of course, activities you might engage in that relieve he anxiety in the short run but are ruinous in the long term. Get a little councilling.

(And get rid of that instructor as soon as you can.)
 
You need to fly more. Rent at another airport if needed. Plan flights and use the system every time, IFR or flight following.
 
rhkennerly said:
turn anxiety into your superpower. Channel it, don’t fight it. Anxious people are exactly the kind of people we recruited for intelligence work. Careful, checking & double checking every detail, scouring every report or database, coming in early or staying late because they were afraid they’d left some analytical stone unturned. We’d have to pry their report from their hands.

I’d posit that you relax as soon as the engine turns over because you’ve done all you could possibly do. I’d say that makes you a better pilot than the devil may care pilot and the guy I’d want up front of my airline seat. The secret, though, is keeping it under reasonable control. Exercise, in particular, seems to help. There are, of course, activities you might engage in that relieve he anxiety in the short run but are ruinous in the long term. Get a little councilling.

(And get rid of that instructor as soon as you can.). No
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“Get a little counseling “
I’d caution against that.
Suck it up and get flying by yourself.
 
I remember lots of times when the weather was marginal, and I would have a knot in my stomach on the drive to the airport. But I would tell myself that I have been trained for this, that I know what to do, and that I have done this before. And once I got in the seat in the airplane and fastened the seat belt, I discovered the anxious feeling melted away.

Fly as much as you can, and tell yourself that YOU KNOW what to do.
 
I’ve got 1500 hours over almost 50 years of flying except for a 8 year layoff. To this day, if I am going cross country, I have a bit of anxiousness in the days leading up. Mostly due to weather watching. I don’t think it is unusual to have a bit of anxiety leading up to a day of a flight. As someone said, channel it and use it to help you prepare better for the flight.
 
I think you need to fly more before you can decide if commercial aviation is for you.
200 hours is not much, congratulations on the instrument and commercial ratings.
If you can rent a plane once a week and go fly it by yourself. It might motivate you.
 
Most of the commercial aviation guys I know LOVE to fly. It is their passion. When they aren't flying heavy metal, they are screwing around in a Pitts or a Cub. Anything to get the dopamine hit. And when they aren't flying, they dream of it.

If you don't really enjoy flying, I think you need to have a hard look at your goals. You have proved you CAN do it. But do you WANT to do it for the rest of your working life? Only you can answer that. Don't let yourself get stuck on a path you don't enjoy just because it has always been your "dream".

As for fear, some of that is not flying frequently enough. In addition, I suggest you go get about 5 hours of aerobatic training. That might build your confidence in your ability to handle whatever comes your way.
 
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Okay, so you'll need to start by watching every episode of Star Trek TNG and DS9 that has Klingons in it. Immerse yourself in that mindset. Following your preflights but right before you get into the plane, you need to pound your chest and yell "Today is a good day to die!". Bonus points if you can lock eyes with your instructor when you do this.

If you're not a Trek fan, you can channel Frank Herbert's "Dune" by repeating "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain." Most effective if whispered while rocking in the cockpit seat.

Both of these methods are guaranteed to fully focus your CFIs on what they need to do for a safe and effective flight. Subscribe to my newsletter for more training tips.

More seriously, agree with the above posts that some anxiety prior to flight is adaptive and can be channeled to make you detail-oriented and safe. I'd rather fly with the guy who checks twice than doesn't bother to check at all. Just remember that nervousness while flying isn't capital-A "Anxiety", so don't get yourself a diagnosis of that inadvertently. Also second the recommendations for lots more exposure and potentially some aerobatic (or at least spin) training.

Hopefully you decide that flying is for you. If you decide otherwise, that's fine too. Don't put yourself in a situation in which you hate and fear your daily work.
 
Flying is a lot of little steps, like a lot of things. Just do one at a time and tell yourself you can walk away anytime if you want to. Drive to the airport. Feel ok? Preflight the airplane. Feel ok? Get in. Get situated. Feel ok? Start engine. Etc.
 
Is it nervousness about the expectations of someone, or a fear of bad things happening?

One will go away, the other may not.

How do you feel after the flight?

I agree with Ed, go get some aero, a tailwheel, seaplane… something just for the fun of it, that does increase your skill set. If that ain’t fun… well… maybe some other aspect of aviation?

If you proceed, I’d seriously consider the CFI. NOTHING builds confidence more than instructing. Maybe ground instruct first?
 
I've been a practicing engineer for 41 years. The best engineers I've known design from a mindset of barely controlled paranoia, constantly thinking about what could go wrong with their designs and how to prevent it.

I think a similar mindset is appropriate for a pilot. This type of thinking will inherently cause nervousness. The nervousness such a pilot experiences is an indicator of his concerns about what might go wrong on the flight. It shows he's thinking about the right things. Feeling nervous? Good! A blase' attitude will get you killed.

Now if the worries and nerves cause paralysis, or hyper focusing on a single item to the exclusion of other potential problems, then that's an issue that needs to be addressed. But a case of pre-flight jitters? I think that's a good sign.
 
@Half Fast has it right. I was taught that if I left the ground without a small sense of trepidation that I probably shouldn't leave the ground. Confidence grows with experience but it's good to always have the little voice that tells you to pay attention and do all that you can to stay safe.
 
Half Fast said:
Now if the worries and nerves cause paralysis, or hyper focusing on a single item to the exclusion of other potential problems, then that's an issue that needs to be addressed. But a case of pre-flight jitters? I think that's a good sign.
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In addition to the possibility of paralysis, in some people there may be the chance of a thought debilitating panic attack. In a life-threatening emergency, I believe you either are prone to panic, or not. If the OP has experienced it, they should already know it.

An example of a debilitating type of panic I've witnessed a few times over the course of many years occurs with my wife when someone (like one of the kids) gets injured and bleeds. Not a little cut, and not an artery, but blood coming from an ugly wound which involves medical attention and stitches.

She holds her head with both hands, becomes very animated, and repeats "oh my God, oh my God". I respond (paraphrasing) "honey, get a grip, calm down, and get a towel, you're scaring the kids".

Sure would hate to have this type of response to an emergency occur with someone licensed to fly. Some of the accident reports with voice and/or ATC transcripts indicate panic, i.e. please help me, I'm upside down.
 
Ed Haywood said:
Most of the commercial aviation guys I know LOVE to fly. It is their passion. When they aren't flying heavy metal, they are screwing around in a Pitts or a Cub. Anything to get the dopamine hit. And when they aren't flying, they dream of it.
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You bring up excellent points that in the opinion and experience of a current 59 year old major airline pilot (and CFI) friend of mine, are now outdated.

My friend was hired a few years ago by a major airline after his former long term corporate flight department shut down. Like many of us, he lives and breathes aviation. He owns an immaculate Stinson, has competed in acrobatics, and is totally immersed in anything aviation.

He says most of the latest crop of new hires could care less about aviation. They couldn't tell you the difference between a C-150 and a Baron, and don't want to waste any time learning about the differences. It makes for some interesting conversations during ATC traffic callouts (and general in-cockpit conversations). Some of them, upon learning he owns the Stinson, ask "what for, you fly for a living, why waste your time and money flying around in a little plane?"

Says with today's generation, it's all about the money. What draws them into aviation is it's a high-paying job, better than flipping burgers in McDonalds.
 
Take the time to plan every detail of your flight ahead of time (or at least as much as you can anticipate). Mentally walk thru each step from opening the hangar doors to closing the doors. At each phase, think about what you can do wrong and what can go wrong, and make a plan for each issue. If necessary, write this whole thing down.

I have been flying for 30 years and still get nervous before every flight. But when I do what I have explained, the anxiety lessens a lot. It's the unknown, the fear of doing something wrong, and the fear of something going wrong that is likely causing your anxiety. Having a complete understanding of today's flight and your replanned response to any issues can reduce your anxiety.
 
Another data point, I was probably 250-300 hours total before my base level anxiety decreased.

Perhaps it helps owning and knowing my plane.
 
At your next break go fly outside the P141 environment for fun. As has been said, get some aerobatics, a seaplane, a glider, heck, - go skydive!

Part 141 has benefits but one of them is not fun usually. Maybe your nervousness is due to not wanting to perform badly in "class". But if you can't have fun in a seaplane, you probably don't want to spend the rest of your life flying. It may just be the Part 141 grind, which is real for some.
 
Just noticed this is a rather old thread, and @Sudodo hasn't been back since that one lone post. I'm guessing all the great POA advice didn't help and he quit, but who knows?
 
Rcmutz said:
I’ve got 1500 hours over almost 50 years of flying except for a 8 year layoff. To this day, if I am going cross country, I have a bit of anxiousness in the days leading up. Mostly due to weather watching. I don’t think it is unusual to have a bit of anxiety leading up to a day of a flight. As someone said, channel it and use it to help you prepare better for the flight.
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Similar, I have 1000 hours. If I have concerns about weather on a cross country, I am also a bit anxious days prior and often it's hard to sleep the night before. You've already passed several check rides so you can be confident in your skills and training. I suggest giving it a bit more time, take some fun flights rather than solely training and career-focused flights, and hopefully you can channel that nervous energy productively.
 
Half Fast said:
Just noticed this is a rather old thread, and @Sudodo hasn't been back since that one lone post. I'm guessing all the great POA advice didn't help and he quit, but who knows?
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Agreed, but this topic may resonate with others.

I fly aerobatics almost daily right now. I always feel a twinge of apprehension when prepping and climbing. It goes away with the first pull.

Weirdly, I feel more nervous for the first 30 minutes of an XC trip.

Butterflies are normal, but I believe a love of flying is necessary for a career. The twinge isn't going away, but the love overpowers it.
 
Rick A said:
Says with today's generation, it's all about the money. What draws them into aviation is it's a high-paying job, better than flipping burgers in McDonalds.
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Respectfully disagree. it's not a "danged kids these days!" issue. My pro peers are Gen X and Y. I'm Y, technically Xennial, so in a perfect position to speak about peers who are as old as 60 today, and to also have direct subordinates who are ATP qualified as Gen Z. My pre-teen child is Gen Alpha, so I'm aware of the cultural differences across 4 generations.

Most don't want to touch nor own an airplane on the "weekends" (well, for some of them the weekends is Tuesday, so there's that too). They're very put off by the cost/rewards ratio of private lawnmower ownership. Most of them are turbine/air conditioner snob-adjacent who find very little draw to smaller/more $-attainable (but less social by boating standards) flying. Most if not all of them outearn me at this point in our careers, at least the 121ers past their probationary period/1st year pay do. Which is to say they could afford it if flying was that central to their occupational motivation in the first place.


Jest aside, stop smearing young people. They're the future whether we like it or not, and I'd give everything to have my 25 year old body back and do it all over again, even without the benefit of username checks.
 
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Heightened awareness is healthy. Anxiety that affects your decision making or physical well being is dysfunctional. The latter is definitely not good in an airplane. If you are missing the former, you are drifting into complacency, which is as deadly and anxiety-based paralysis.

With more flying experience and understanding of what you are doing, you want to channel your heightened feelings into enhanced awareness and control, not anxiety/irrational fear and resignation.
 
I think you will do better ouside of the part 141 environment. Mil aviation provides you their own tools but they also are not provided by you: as in, "There is only the NAVY way". That's what "PAVE" is all about, but reciting it doesn't really help you. You have to develop it.

You will eventually develop your own checklist of items (can be literally a phyiscal list but mine pre - the preflight is mental) and if they are all GREEN you will go with just background concern.

For example (27 Aug 2025) left 7:45 AM from home drone, made it to Central Wa. state, same day.
5 days later- to San Carlos.

Next day back to 1C5. That flight was WORK - had to go to FL 230 but everything (personal, machine etc) was green. Got home @ 10:00PM.

You will too. Some develop this set of tools, while they are teaching in 172s.....And if your lists aren't completely all in the green you'll learn simply to not fly that day. Get out of the 141 environment and let youself develop your own tools!

B
 
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On the flip side don't allow yourself to become completely devoid of nervousness. Statistically I believe the most dangerous point in a new pilot's journey is somewhere in the 250-500 hour mark where you may have become complacent, over confident and have not yet experienced the first time that something really scares the crap out of you.
 
Hey all, I didn't expect this forum to revive, so I didn't bother to check in, but I very much appreciate all the advice. I would like to respond to some things I have read here with my viewpoint, as well as give an update for future pilots (who, in part, I was looking to give feedback to by posting in the first place). This will be a long one, so strap in.

Starting off with where I'm at, after posting, the pace of flying got worse, and after a pretty arduous 6 months of multi-training, I took and failed my first and to date only checkride on the approach. Quick aside to future pilots, I was pretty depressed from that, but pick yourself up and keep going. It gets better, I PROMISE. I ended up retesting and getting my Multi. Then I did my CFI Part 61 with a buddy of mine at some little untowered airport, and I consider it some of the most fun flying I've ever done. It was still definitly training focused, so I did get some stress, but most of the time I was significantly less anxious and overall just enjoyed it much more. I am now a practicing CFI teaching Part 61 at an untowered field, and while I can't say everything's perfect, I am in a much better place and enjoy what I do! I'm gonna split this up into a couple of sections to cover everything I want to, so feel free to read the ones you want.


On Part 141:
Part 141 really is excellet and I think I am a very capable pilot and well-rounded pilot for the amount of training I have done. However... I really am of the opinion now that the reason 141 is 4 years long is that if it were 5 years everyone would drop. Every flight I went on in 141 was just continuous critique. While this is really good for getting consistent improvement, but it would result in me coming away from every flight feeling like I just wasn't getting it, or I needed to work harder. Even if there were only a couple of errors or lapses, I would really drill myself for them. It was a rare day that I got to go on a flight where I would allow myself to relax a bit, fly the plane, and enjoy it. Going over to part 61 and, more importantly, instructing with no standards for myself beyond student success/safety has really made a lot of that anxiety I would get before flight go away. I haven't had the chance to rent or fly by myself much, but I feel relatively confident that I would really enjoy just flying to get a hamburger or doing elementary aerobatics with an instructor. Ironically enough, I seriously enjoyed the spin training I had to do for my CFI and would do that any time.


On the ****ty instructor (This one is pretty much just a rant):
I didn't allude to it at the time, but this instructor took me from being nervous about my anxiety to full-blown debating whether to drop out of college altogether and flip burgers. He wasn't a flight instructor per se; he was actually a 121 regional captain who was teaching the university's 737 sim class. He was doing so because his medical was temporarily suspended after trying to fly under the influence. This man is still the worst to ever do it in my opinion. The whole incident that started this post was my midterm, where he sat behind us, berating my sim partner and I as we were trying to fly. Saying things like "You guys should never have even gotten privates," "Are you really gonna make me fail you two," and my personal favorite "If you fail this midterm I can't let you pass the class, which means you won't be able to graduate on time". All this while we were flying an ILS and then the missed into DCA. If you'd assume we must be inverted and crashing the plane to get talk like this, we didn't. In hindsight, the flight went fairly well, considering we only had about 8h in a jet cockpit at the time... we ended up with a B on the midterm flight. The rest of the year of his class was more of the same, he did this to everyone pretty consistently. The final straw for me was when he was flying a 121 flight with an FO alium, he started ****-talking students by name, saying that they would never make it etc. The alium ended up telling some students, and long story short, he was fired at the end of the year!


On Counseling and Mental Health:
This is a really touchy subject in aviation, and I sorta understand why, but I will give my experience. After making a call to AOPA and doing some reaserch I ended up going to a Counselor/Therapist and paying in cash. I figured that I was at a point where if my anxiety didn't improve, I would stop flying, and if it did, I would be a safer pilot for it. When I started, I was very clear that I was extremely cautious about getting counseling. I also made a clear rule that if he thought I was unfit to fly in any capacity and at any point, I would ground myself, permanently if he thought it was justified. Well, after a couple of sessions, we pretty much settled that the vast majority of it was what is called 'meta anxiety.' Though it took some time to take effect, just talk therapy proved to be helpful enough to reduce components of my pre-flight anxiety by about 80%. Overall, I think I have a MUCH healthier relationship with stress. I still feel it, and I think it helps to have that little voice in your ear when it comes to making safety decisions, but it no longer saps the joy out of fun flights, nor does it make me dread upcoming ones. I still see the councler but it's mostly preventive maintenance, and we mostly work on personal life and stressors outside aviation. Overall, I think starting counseling was one of the best decisions I've made. I've looked through lots of documentation, and while I still will be having professionals look over everything, I'm not too nervous about my next medical.


On anxiety and 'shutting down' in flight:
This really was a big concern of mine. Not necessarily because I had evidence to back up the fear, but because it would be such a big deal if it happened even once. This is a large part of why I started counseling in the first place. Fast forward, and I have essentially zero concern about this. I have now been in a couple emergencys and a couple more high-stakes/high-stress positions in the aircraft, and have had absolutely no issues. A student shut down an engine on me at 600 ft agl after a simulated engine failure and it didn't start back up till about 250ft agl, and I was totally fine beyond a change of pants afterwards. So I feel reasonably confident that I can handle what comes my way.


Why I ended up coming back to this post:
I recently did my first BFR, and I thought the situation reminded me of my own if it had gone a little differently. A Part 141 student who decided to stop flying after finishing their multi because they just couldn't enjoy it anymore. They hadn't flown in 5 years, completely changed careers, but they decided to get up in the air and give it another shot. They really enjoyed it and seemed to be pretty bumed that they stopped in the first place. To my knowledge, they are now looking to pivot back into aviation and are starting the journey to finishing their CFI and doing something in aviation, even if it isn't flying. After I gave the endorsement, I thought back to everything I had gone through in the last year and a half. I felt really glad with myself that I didn't stop, I decided to work hard at it and finish everything through. For any pilots who may be in a similar position in the future, I hope everything I've said here can give you some guidance. I feel pretty confident that by pushing forward and by getting a little bit of help, I have ended up in a place I'm much happier with. I think that if I had decided to quit back then, I would have been disappointed about it much the same way that student was.

Overall, I just wanted to give everyone here a heartfelt thank you. Seeing other people talk about their own experiences really was the little push I needed to stop being paralyzed and move forward with it. I'll keep an eye out for responses and if anyone has questions ask away, but I hope I'll see you all in the air.
Sudo
 
Hey, so sorry to hear about that fear that's happening before each flight. This is something I help a lot of pilots with. Just know you're not alone! :)
 
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