Hampshire, en.SERU.co.id – For 17 years, Debbie Adamson refused to set foot on a plane. The 67-year-old mother of three from Southampton, Hampshire, lived with a crippling fear of flying that shaped her life, until an unlikely soundtrack helped her take to the skies once more.
Adamson’s aerophobia began with her very first flight. As a student, she boarded a plane to Budapest that she still calls “the world’s worst flight.” The landing was chaotic: the aircraft bounced, sparks flew from the wing tips, and the whole plane lurched.
“It was your horror come true,” she later told the Daily Mirror. From that moment, she was convinced every plane she boarded would crash.
She forced herself to fly for years after marrying a self-described “theme park addict,” determined not to let her fear hold the family back. But the anxiety only grew worse. On a 2006 trip to Orlando, she deliberately hid her boarding pass inside a magazine at Gatwick Airport’s WH Smith, hoping the airline would send her home. Instead, airline staff simply printed her a new boarding pass. She spent the entire three-hour flight in tears.
By 2008, she had reached her limit. “I couldn’t handle it any longer,” she said.
For the next 17 years, Adamson stayed firmly on the ground. On the rare occasions she had flown before that decision, she would alert cabin crew the moment she stepped on board, if she wasn’t already crying. Her husband regularly left flights with sore hands from how tightly she gripped him. Even the slightest turbulence sent her into panic. She never ate or drank and always left the plane feeling unwell.
Everything began to change last year. After speaking with a pilot friend and joining a Facebook support group, Adamson set herself a goal: to fly to Santorini, Greece, for her 40th wedding anniversary. As a test run, her family booked another trip to Orlando.
Mid-flight, Adamson put on her favorite music, a carefully curated playlist of every BTS track she loved. The K-pop group, made up of RM, Jin, SUGA, j-hope, Jimin, V and Jungkook, became her unexpected anchor.
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“I made a bulletproof playlist. Every single track I love, so that I knew I’d keep listening,” she told People.
The effect was remarkable. Even during turbulence, she “didn’t bat an eyelid.” She closed her eyes at take-off, held on tightly, and slowly began to reason with herself.
“I gave myself permission not to be frightened anymore. All the pressure was put on me by my own mind,” she explained.
Adamson is careful not to claim she is cured. “I’d never say I’m cured, but I have that self-awareness to think, ‘I’m going to give myself permission to not be frightened,’” she said.
Looking back, she insists the fear was never something to be ashamed of.
“I couldn’t help it. But what I hadn’t done was allow my mind the freedom to find out about this and be a bit more logical about it,” she added.
Now, with new confidence, she is already planning more trips. Her story, first reported by Kennedy News & Media and later featured by People and the Daily Mirror, has resonated with many people living with aerophobia, as well as BTS fans inspired by the unexpected role the group’s music played in helping her overcome years of fear.
