Your company is offering you a plum promotion, your dream job. Trouble is, the position requires lots of travel, by air, and you're deathly afraid of flying. So far you've avoided air travel by taking trains and cars and keeping vacations close to home. Now, in order to advance your career, you've got to confront your fear.

Facing your fear directly is the crucial step, regardless of the type of treatment you seek. Other steps might include examining where your fear comes from, practicing some coping mechanisms, and maybe even taking an anti-anxiety drug. Eventually, however, you'll have to step onto an airplane.

That can be a tricky proposition, especially if it involves taking a plane trip with your therapist. You won't be able to squeeze that into a regular 50-minute session. Then there's the cost of the airfare. And, as if you haven't got enough to worry about, you'll grapple with a nagging apprehension that the two of you will run into someone you know. There might be a better way.

A growing number of therapists are making use of virtual reality simulation to help people deal with their anxiety. For people with a fear of flying, the system is proving to be the next best thing to being on an airplane, and it's all done within the therapist's office.

Virtually Better, Inc. makes an airplane simulation, along with several other scenarios designed to help people work through their phobias. The company also customizes scenarios.

"One of the benefits of the virtual environment is the patient becomes the office," says Ken Graap, M.Ed., president and chief executive officer of the company, based in Decatur, Ga.

Instead of a therapist accompanying a patient to an airport, for instance, the airport comes to the office. Instead of a therapist finding a skyscraper with an elevator, the elevator comes to the office. This gives the therapist control over the virtual environment. He or she doesn't have to hope the elevator doesn't stop, or wonder whether traffic will be light (for patients with a fear of driving.)

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