Before I became a travel writer, I was petrified of flying. The anxiety-driven fear of turbulence was enough to make me sweat in my seat as I clutched the hand of my unfortunate travel companion, but then I saw something that was an absolute game-changer.

I’m not sure what sparked my fear of flying, but before every flight, be it a short-haul with family for a holiday to Spain or a solo long-haul, I would always be met with this tense, worried feeling that bubbled up the closer I got to boarding the plane. Even the in-flight entertainment couldn’t put my overthinking thoughts at bay, as I grappled with the idea that any sign of turbulence was surely the end.

Plane turbulence was the main cause of my fear, with that bumpy feeling, even the slightest movement, sending my heart racing. You might be thinking that I’ve surely had a bad experience with turbulence to cause such a fear, but I haven’t, not yet, anyway. It’s just a fear, like so many other travellers in the world, that I couldn’t quite shake.

Thankfully, I never let that distress get in the way of travelling. I just had to make sure that whoever was sitting beside me on the plane knew that there was a chance they could lose circulation in their arm – even if that meant gripping my sister’s hand across the aisle.

However, one day, while scrolling through TikTok, I came across a video that completely changed my perspective. It took less than a minute, with a single, straightforward explanation.

In a viral TikTok video, content creator Anna Paul shared her “fear of flying tip”, simply using a pot of jelly and a piece of a napkin. She explained that the tip came from a “real pilot” and that the plastic pot of jelly resembles the “air you’re flying it”.

She then revealed, “This napkin is the aeroplane, trust me.” Anna placed the screwed up ball of napkin in the jelly and said, “And that is you, flying through the sky.

“There’s pressure from the bottom, pressure from the top, from the sides. Pressure coming from everywhere.” Explaining how turbulence worked, Anna tapped on the top of the jelly to make it shake, which caused the ball of napkin to shake around in the jelly, and said, “This is what it feels like: you feel the plane shaking.”

Pointing to the napkin, she added, “But this, it’s not going to fall down. You know, it’s stuck in there because there’s pressure coming from the bottom, the sides.

“So this is what turbulence is, so you can just chill there, you’re just wriggling in jelly. It’s not going to automatically fall because it’s shaking.” Anna added that you “don’t need to be scared” and to just “imagine yourself in jelly, and know that it (the plane) can’t just fall, you’re stuck in the middle of the air.”

Ever since that video appeared in 2022, my fear of flying has completely eased, with little to no signs of terror rising inside when I board a plane today. Now, whenever there’s the slightest motion or sign of turbulence, all I have to do is imagine the plane is in jelly and voila!

The theory allows me to put my mind at ease and visualise what is happening, rather than jumping to the worst-case scenario in a state of panic. And it’s not just me who has benefited from the video, as it staggeringly racked up more than 42 million views on TikTok, with hundreds of comments.

One traveller wrote, “Ty Anna, my fear of flying is gone now.” A second added, “I think my fear of flying was just cured.”

“This genuinely has helped me SO much,” a third shared. “I just had a turbulence like 3 days ago I was like ‘I’m in a jelly im just in a jelly'”, another recalled.

“I’ve never seen a better explanation with a diagram,” one traveller shared. “This actually put me at such ease, I can’t even tell you,” one more added.

It’s also been backed by experts, as one commented: “As a student pilot, I can confirm this is so accurate and true, there is nothing to be worried about when the plane starts to shake.”