Flight Anxiety

Hello All
Just thought I'd compare notes with any other relatively new Phantom users out there.
I've had my Advanced for about a month now and have had absolutely no problems with it whatsoever. The only time things got a little sticky was when I foolishly took off after a compass error had appeared to have cleared itself up, then it happened again mid flight so I had to fly it back manually with no gps etc. Anyway, that was more down to the location and my own stupidity and hasn't happened again.
The trouble is, I'm starting to develop tangible anxiety before each flight. Rather than my confidence increasing, I'm finding I'm getting more and more cautious with each flight, to the point where I'm almost too worried about what might happen to my precious bird to enjoy the flight.
I love this forum and check it every day, but I'm starting to realise that this may well be the main reason for the nerves. The nature of any product related forum is that it is bound to be full of posters looking for advice on problems/faults etc which is how it should be, but when your flinging a grands worth of hardware into the sky it does tend to bring on the onset of crash /fault anxiety/paranoia.

Any tips on how I might conquer my nerves (apart from stop reading the forum, obviously!) ?

There's a psychological concept for what you are going through and it has to do with the availability bias... because you are reading on here all the things that can go wrong... and you had a sticky situation yourself - you are over indexing the chances that something will go wrong with your bird. It's essentially the same thing that happens with airline crashes - because people see it on the news... they get more nervous about flying.

The thing you have to remember about this forum (as well as the airline crash example) is that there are millions of successful flights happening for every one tragic event you read about. None of us come on here and say "had a totally routine flight today... just wanted to let you know!" And, of course, we're glad that doesn't happen - or the board would be flooded with the mundane.

The therapy for this condition is exposure therapy. And many here have already suggested what this is, though not in those exact words. The way you get over your anxiety is to fly to your comfort zone and then slowly push it a little each (or every other) time. The more you fly, the less anxious you will get... your continued exposure to the anxiety ridden activity will slowly dull it.

In any case... I have had the same issue... and I find that the more I fly... the less I feel the anxiety. Of course if I crash... I'll feel it all over again... but it's part of the hobby.

Good luck :)
 
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