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Comment by krisoft | Hacker News Reader

> It's the feeling of being in constant high alert the whole way through the airport.

This is something you can change though by changing your mindset and outlook. Airports are what they are, they are highly predictable and unlikely to change drastically. On the other hand you can recognise when you are begining to feel on alert, acknowledge it and let go of the feeling. Let it wash over you like a wave.

You are presumably not a terrorist, nor a criminal. The worst thing which can happen is that there is some misunderstanding and you are delayed a bit. And even that is very unlikely. If you make peace with that maybe that will help with the feeling?

Not saying that you can go full meditating zen monk with “this one little weird trick”, but if you can make the experience more pleasant for yourself by just a little bit maybe that is worth the try?

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Humans are notoriously suggestible by nature. If we are told to look for something, we are likely to convince ourselves that we have found it. Airport staff are actively looking for terrorists and criminals in a way that few other professionals do.

This means that even as a passenger with a completely clean record, every action you take is viewed through the lens of being potentially suspicious. The worst case scenario is not being delayed - it's being falsely accused.

Less importantly but hugely more likely is that you travel is disrupted. Your bags are misplaced or stolen. You can't take your water bottle so now you have to buy another for 10x the price. Your passport was accidentally torn so you now have to explain that to a skeptical border police officer. You don't speak the foreign language well enough to explain yourself. Your flight is cancelled and you must now rush to the only hotel to book a room before they sell out - or risk waiting in order to convince the airline to book it for you.

I don't disagree with you that some relaxation can go a long way to making such an experience more pleasant, but it's still true that there's more to go wrong in one international journey than in a whole month of most people's day-to-day lives.

> The worst case scenario is not being delayed - it's being falsely accused.

Being falsely accused is just one form of being delayed. The kind where it takes longer to clear it up.

> Your bags are misplaced or stolen.

Does worrying help with this? Does it make it less likely for it to happen?

> You can't take your water bottle so now you have to buy another for 10x the price.

Yes. That is how it is. Does worrying help with this?

> Your passport was accidentally torn so you now have to explain that to a skeptical border police officer.

Border guards see torn passports all the time.

> our flight is cancelled and you must now rush to the only hotel to book a room before they sell out

I don't know where you are flying where there is only one hotel. Is this a real worry or are we just catastrophising here?

You sound like you've never had an issue, and hey, congrats, but let's not pretend that there aren't plenty of horror stories and legitimate reasons to worry. And suppressing legitimate worry is a bad habit, particularly for folks who don't have white, male, and several other "default" identity markers in their profile.

> You sound like you've never had an issue

I got plenty. My luggage got lost more than I can count. Missed connecting flights due to delays. Had a flight take of with four hour of delay to then ingest a bird in the engine on climbout so we had to land back imediately with a smoke filled cabin. Got selected for extra screening plenty of times, had been asked to go to the security office to answer extra questions about my luggage. Had my share of flight cancelations too. The most serious issue was perhaps when I got waylaid for a few weeks because an airline didn’t like the stamps on my imigration paperwork. According to my imigration lawyer the airline was in the wrong and misunderstanding the law, but what can you do? We got it sorted with the embassy as soon as we could and I was on my way.

Thing is that worrying would not have helped with any of these. Simply not the right answer.

>You can't take your water bottle so now you have to buy another for 10x the price.

AFAIK (because I do regularly) you can take a water bottle, you just have to fill it inside security which doesn't seem a great hardship.

In flight from Dubai to JFK, I had two 500ml used empty plastic bottles (not reusable, just basic transparent). Security made me throw 1, saying one 1 empty bottle allowed.

As stated elsewhere in thread, almost anything arbitrary can happen at security in pretty much any country in the world.

They have changed drastically in our lifetimes because of 9/11. You used to be able to simply go to whatever gate you want and then show your ticket and get on the airplane. This is all still evidenced by the design of airports such as charles de gaul or the one in berlin that just closed which both have annoying security addons that disrupt the design and flow of the original architecture. All of this security theater has simply added to the cost of running an airport. I doubt it makes any of us safer.

For me, that sense of being on high alert is less to do with airport security and more to do with feeling that nearly everyone and everything you interact with is some sort of low level scam. Overpriced food and drink, duty free, poor value upsells, the sea of manipulative advertising, plain old pickpockets, someone trying to sell you tickets for a chance to win a car, someone approaching you in a queue to do a “survey”…

It’s like browsing a Fandom site but in real life.

Which airports are these? Honest question. I've been flying frequently for 20+ years but the only complaint I can relate to is "overpriced food and drink". Definitely never had anyone sell me tickets or approach me to do a survey. So I'd really like to know which airports are these where these things are common?

My experience with Brussels Airport (Zaventem) checks all those boxes.

I’m always wondering why there are American Express people in gardmoen in Oslo. Like where in Europe can you spend Amex I guess someplace but definitely not Oslo. My Amex was mostly useless there which is why I eventually got rid of it when I lived there.

> The worst thing which can happen is that there is some misunderstanding and you are delayed a bit

Even so, the little things alone can ruin the experience, before adding the big ones.

Maybe it's a busy day at the airport and you're stuck in a surprise 2h security screening or passport check queue. Maybe you're pulled over for a routine check, or 2, or 3. Maybe you have 1kg over weight for your hand luggage and they expect you to check it in for extra cost while others are allowed with oversize luggage. Maybe they keep changing the gate 2-3 times and you have to constantly be alert and ready to move around the airport. Maybe your flight is late 1h or 7h. Maybe you have to sit in a crowd with dozens or hundreds or people in the (off)boarding area. And so on. There are just so many more ways to be irritated by air travel.

And that's just before you are on the plane. Seat comfort-wise air travel is probably the worst option. I'm above well above average height so I have to pay extra for a decent (not great) experience, or be ready to do the check-in the first moment it's available, or if there are no sits with extra leg room I'll suffer for hours, or be hit over the knees with the different carts by every inattentive flight attendant if I try to spread towards the aisle, or sit behind someone who reclines their seat the whole way.

There's only so much will you can have to have all these things slide. It's like saying that whenever you get punched in the face you can lean into it to make the experience better. It will still very much suck, just marginally less. And I flew hundreds of times, I tried all the tricks. For average travelers there's a ceiling for their air travel experience and it's in the "hopefully tolerable" range. And I tolerate it because I have no choice but it's objectively a bad experience almost without exception.

Clearly you are not a visible minority subject to random and unjust harassment. The TSA and most airport security measures are ineffective job programs that do little to help improve security and waste taxpayer dollars. Sources: [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2017/11/09/tsa... [2] https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-19-374

Mindfulness and CBT sorts of things have always seemed like saying, "but have you tried just not having anxiety?"

I don't get it. Address the feeling, let it wash over you. It won't wash over. It sticks and causes the chemicals in my body to fuck me up completely. I can already tell you that I'm anxious.

While you may be aware that you're anxious, part of the point of things like mindfulness is that not everyone is aware of what their autonomic nervous system is doing to them, because it functions largely unconsciously. So it's helpful for many people in some circumstances to notice what their body is doing, and then pick up practices that engage the parasypathetic nervous system and calm down a fight or flight response in cases where it is silly and unhelpful--say when one is in a airport, rather than confronting a large carnivore in nature.

And, perhaps, you can appreciate that the sooner one notices what is happening subconsciously, the easier it might be for some people to "put out the fire" of their autonomic response. Even if getting good at this might take practice.

Maybe this awareness and these tools are not things of interest or value to you, but they don't seem to be things that are that are that hard to understand abstractly, even if you don't practice them.

> "but have you tried just not having anxiety?"

Probably this is _the_ solution for many? GP seems to talk from experience with this, or similar situations.

Probably it could work for you too, if you haven't tried it yet. (Also, if you haven't tried it enough times. One experiment/measurement is not enough.)

This feeling of letting it "wash over you" is a verbal construction that is very helpful and apt for some, but others may describe it's different. Some people may start to think of it as "experiencing these feelings with more remove" or something. It's something that takes practice often done with guidance from a therapist or psychologist.

For many (this is not universally true), what is experienced as "anxiety" is like a preset program or routine that auto-executes across cognitive, behavioral, and emotional channels. CBT isn't a cure, but helps you interrupt the program during its cycle or before it starts by inserting new and different programs that don't auto-run without effort. As you sense your anxiety spiking ("awareness training" may be needed to get this early insight), you engage in behaviors or techniques to prevent the normal cycle of anxiety spiraling and calm the nervous system.

It is effective, but it is not a magic trick and takes practice.

There are visualization techniques that help with the washing over, but there's also the advice, which CBT therapists do give but randos on the internet always forget, that sometimes you're having anxiety (or another "negative emotion") for a reason, and it's a bad idea to ignore it in those cases.

If you want to get better at the "washing over" thing, maybe try visualizations like: - As you breathe, imagine you're pulling over to the side of the road and watching your anxious thoughts drive past. - As you breathe, imagine taking each anxious thought and placing it on a leaf on a stream and watching it float away

But in general, security theatre is kind of a legit reason to feel anxious - these folks have real power over you and can screw up your life - so it's ok to just feel it in those situations.

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