Meditation. If you prefer not to medicate, then you can just meditate. Meditation makes use of self hypnosis so you can calm your mind down. You can meditate on self hypnosis scripts designed to ease travel anxiety. Hypnosis scripts are available online, so you can invest in some subliminal MP3s. You can even bring it with you on your trip.
Attend a hypnosis school. You can train yourself how to do hypnosis, but the self-learning is a lot faster if you have a little background about the practice. You can take a short course in a hypnosis school. With thousands of schools in the United States, and worldwide for that matter, finding one shouldn't be trouble.
Listen/watch religiously. After your program has successful made your own subliminal CD, it won't be any effective if you don't use it frequently. You should at least schedule a audio subliminals few sessions every work.
Effective subliminal CDs affirmations work as added motivation to achieve the goal. It will encourage the mind, and once the mind is fueled by encouragement, it instructs the body what to do.
You can listen to the subliminal messages as they are recorded as mp3s or in CDs, or you can post them in familiar places such as in your bathroom or mirror.
Find out as much as you can about the language. The French language and the culture wrapped around it is historical, monumental, and very interesting. One good way of seeking more motivation for French learning is researching on France itself - the culture, the language, and the people. This can pique your curiosity and admiration for this very charming country and make you more motivated to learn the language.
Self talk. Once your hypnosis sessions are through, don't just go back straight to being your shy usual self. The subconscious is very sensitive so it can easily absorb negative feedback from outside the way it absorbs positive subliminal messages. If you want to maintain your newfound self esteem, fill your mind with powerful and empowering self talk.