Jennifer Aniston, forever the people’s princess. Seriously though, as far as A-list Hollywood goes, she’s as relatable as it gets. And now, she’s got even more real with us – particularly when it comes to her biggest fear.

According to an interview with Travel and Leisure magazine, Aniston has a severe fear of flying and has developed superstitious habits overtime when getting on planes. Despite being desperate to go anywhere with a ‘white sandy beach and clear, crystal-blue water’ (aren’t we all, Jen!), she can’t stop herself doing one superstitious ritual as she boards: tabbing the outside of the aircraft with her right palm and stepping onto the plane with her right foot.

Habits like these aren’t unusual when it comes to phobias. More than a quarter of people in the United States consider themselves superstitious and engage in certain behaviours for good luck. Of course, superstitions can fast become signifiers of obsessive-compulsive behaviour (a mental health condition) if they begin to overwhelm a person when not performed, or if they struggle to get through basic tasks without doing them.

For Aniston, overcoming her superstitious habit when flying was of high importance, so she enlisted the help of a hypnotherapist. ‘I have an extreme fear of flying,’ Aniston told Travel and Leisure. ‘But I have been doing some hypnosis lately, and one of the requirements is to remove all of those superstitions. I have not been doing the right hand, right foot—and now it’s shockingly good!’

Hypnotherapy is becoming increasingly popular, with a global market size of more than $12billion in 2023. It involves inducing a deep state of relaxation before therapy, when your therapist will then attempt to access deeper levels of your subconscious to better understand your thoughts, behaviours and feelings, while attempting to help make positive changes around them.

Now, Aniston says she uses hypnotherapy tactics like breathwork to help fight her phobia of flying. ‘Plugging into a good meditation can get you through,’ she says, adding that she often walks and stretches on planes to help too.

Aniston has been open about her fear of flying for years now, explaining that her fear worsened after one particularly bad flight to Mexico for her 50th birthday. In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel in 2019, the actor explained that she had been travelling privately with Friends co-star Courteney Cox when her flight went sour as it was about to take off.

‘We heard an explosion, which sounded like a pothole if it was a car big enough to go over the Grand Canyon. It was so loud,’ she recalled. ‘I have a real fear of flying, obviously, but nobody else does. So, Courteney Cox, whose father is a pilot and is never afraid, says, “Should we have checked that? Is everything okay”’ They were like, No, no, it’s taxiing, it’s going smoothly. I turned to my best friend and said, ‘Would you go talk to the pilot?’ Because there’s no way this [points at panicked face] is going to go talk to the pilot”’ 

‘Then 10 minutes later she comes out and she says “‘We’ve turned around, we’re actually going back to California. They found some debris from a wheel on the runway. They think it’s from our plane”’ Aniston continued, adding that everyone on board was texting ‘their spouses and their children and I’m like, “What’s going on?”’

The plane eventually landed safely back in California, and the group took a different flight the following day. A statement released by Ontario International Airport later explained that the problem was with the planes landing gear. ‘“A Gulfstream aircraft with 10 passengers and two flight crew members on board landed without incident at Ontario International Airport (ONT) after experiencing landing gear difficulty,’ the statement read.
Of course, Aniston went on to have the birthday celebration of dreams in Cabo, accompanied by her A-list friends Cox, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Hudson, George and Amal Clooney, Reese Witherspoon, Robert Downey Jr., Ellen DeGeneres, Barbra Streisand, Keith Richards, Laura Dern, Demi Moore and Lisa Kudrow— as well her ex-husband Brad Pitt.

Now, overcoming her fear of flying is particularly important to Aniston given her line of work, but also, as she’s a big lover of travelling. ‘There’s more that exists than just this little bubble that we are in,’ she said. ‘Learning different cultures, meeting new people from all walks of life, and trying different cuisines are all very important and expands our awareness greater than what we’re confined to.’

You said it, Jen!