Simulator Anxiety - Is it just me?

You usually know the month of your sim check. The nerves set in for me about three months before. Just a sort of gnawing awareness of the passing of time and the growing proximity of another check. Then the roster comes out and the date is set. Is it sociable hours or 3.30 am? It shouldn't make a difference say ops, you fly at all hours. Yeah! Right. Then ops calls you and says, we are bringing your slot forward to accommodate an operational issue. You were already wound up, now things seem out of control and hurtling away from you.

You find yourself being aware of all the things you had promised to learn by rote from the manual but failed to do since the last sim check. And the day arrives. Often in a strange country, at an anti social time of day, with either a stranger as your oppo, or maybe not. Game faces firmly fixed in place. Don't show fear, concern or weakness. That's not cool. You chat the small talk of anxiety. People you know, flights you have made, people you've met. But you're only half listening. Half of your mind is wondering what if? what if? what if? So many permutations of challenges and tests of competence, and also character.

Examiner arrives. God is in the house. Often a real people person but occasionally aloof and distant. The group adjourn to the briefing room. But he is your judge, jury and potentially your executioner. And there is a crucial word ... JUDGEMENT. I will happily admit to you that I have a fear of being judged. It comes from a whole host of experiences in life that led to me having certain feelings beliefs and attitudes about life that simply don't serve me. I share this with many of my fellow flyers but often they are not aware of it. They just know that their heart is racing, the palms are sweaty and the focus is hugely narrowed. The examiner is talking but only a portion of your mind hears what he says. Its fight or flight.

The first hour or so now completed in the briefing room, you adjourn to prepare for the "box". Some rigmarole of who carries the flight docs and charts usually ensues. Do you offer, is that too keen? Is not offering a black mark? Some examiners immediately latch on to a certain student. Friends in common, aircraft types flown, similar ages, geography etc. If you haven't got that connection, you feel left out. On the outside. On the backfoot even before you have entered the "box". These feelings, beliefs and sensations may or may not be justified but whatever they are, they are real.

So now you stand outside waiting for the "drawbridge" to come down. "Blah blah, safety ropes, blah blah in event of emergency, make your way to the exit ...".

"Oh hell lets just get this over with".

There was the old chestnut of who goes first. You decided to go first just to not show the others that you are anxious. Isn't it even more fun when the local aviation authority are present as well to check the checker and so god too is anxious. As you try to settle down your focus narrows, things get weird as time dilates or contracts and you are either super fast or super slow in your set ups. "What was that thing I was determined not to do this time. Dammit I cant remember".

Are you ready for your clearance? Err yes sure. Heck I cant find that departure in the Jeps or Aerads. Will I sound like a muppet if I confess I cant find it? "Can I remove the GPU?". Hell the APU isn't running. "Err no standby."

Then the longest and most precise briefing ever ... except you missed stuff. Then examiner puts on a fake voice as cabin crew and asks why we are so late in departure (examiner is telling me to pull the finger out). I've got to test the other pilot too you know and the box is only hired for .... hours.

And so it continues. Emergency after emergency. Failure after failure. Uncertainty leads to delays in making decisions that are overthought and fretted over. More time taken. The stress and anxiety, fight or flight narrows the focus, reduces the hearing capacity "what, did you really tell me to descend Fl 250? Really?" Fuel decisions, diversion, weather. Some good decisions, some howlers. How the hell did that stuff just come out of MY mouth? A stress sandwich with a double dose of anxiety topping.

And in the midst of this there are mental flashes of imagined tellings off by the examiner even before the real telling off. Each action has a mental tendril that follows its own course. Every event has a whole series of attached and often irrelevant and false downstream mental implications, lies you tell yourself, but in a rush of emotion these must be kept under control, but how?

It is my experience ( and also for some others) that it is on occasions, easier to deal with a real emergency rather than to prepare for and deal with a simulated emergency under exam conditions. The whole premise of the sim is to put you in a stressful situation that will get you used to stress, to rehearse an event, but I don't believe that pre sim stress and the self guessing that you do in the sim check is factored into the overall stress package. In my case, and might I suggest in the case of some others, we enter the sim check process with our stress cup almost full even before we start. As we stress even further during the exam our cup overflows, we pass over the performance hump and we start going into negative performance. Screw ups to you and me.

These are MY memories and experiences but I do know that I am not unique in these feelings and experiences. With the benefit of hindsight and psychological training I have come to see that there are many reasons that I suffered and struggled. Reasons that often have nothing at all to do with flying but more often to do with formative events in our lives and the way that we see ourselves and our place in this world. Exam/Simulator/Check anxiety is real. This is my story but my guess is that you too may on occasions feel empty and unprepared. Vulnerable.

In matters of the mind we are often dealing with an alien world. Terra Incognita. Aviation has spent a lot of time and effort researching the effects on the body and the mind of human interactions and technical interactions in the context of a flight. Yet somehow, something so crucial as exam anxiety and its effects on both our performance in work, and in our relationships outside of work are scarcely even mentioned. Toughen up. Pilots are stoical fearless heroes or something along those lines. Yeah, thats right. You're paid to do this stuff. Just get on with it. Of only...

In my own self analysis of my anxiety, I came to realise that I held all manner of views, attitudes and self beliefs that were firstly deeply buried and secondly not based on anything other than emotional stories I had told myself from early in my life. How about:

• If I screw up my job is on the line
• My life is flying and I am defined by being a pilot and nothing else will do. Anything else is failure.
• If I get a bad mark it will get around the crew room and others will think badly of me. Other pilots will judge me and hate to fly with me.
• If others think badly of me that will stall my career and create friction in the flight deck. Distrust and distaste.
• If I am seen as weak I wont be part of the team. Ill be exiled, isolated, ignored and maybe ridiculed.
• Because flying defines me, if I screw up it is like defiling myself. I was given a chance and I blew it. Self loathing.
• If I am a "bad pilot" and flying defines me, then by default I must be a bad person.
• If I am a bad person then my family and my friends will despise me.

Can you see how these things can grow arms and legs unless they are interrupted?

This sort of stuff is generally seen as taboo to pilots because of the perception of the oversight by company and also aviation authority. The more we discuss these things however the better we become at working with these issues.

So now I say, we must keep our standards high by putting the stiff upper lip that we pilots employ, in its rightful place. On our game face when we do our jobs, but when we are tired, upset, vulnerable and sometimes a bit lost, the stiff upper lip can be replaced with a tear, a friendly pat on the shoulder or a chat with a friend or therapist. This is not woke BS. This is called being human and I encourage you to share your concerns with people who will help you to deal with your fear and anxiety. Feel safe talking to health professionals because your imagined implications bear no relationship to reality. I speak as one who knows only too well the effects of the not so sweet little lies that we tell ourselves.

Hypnotherapy is a tool that safely and securely opens pandoras box (your subconscious) to see what stories lie deeply embedded within, that no longer serve us. We then intervene, reframe and excite the imagination to the possibilities of a new way of being. This is science at work and we are the scientists of the air. Its time to use all the tools available to us just like CRM says.

All power to you my friends.