High Anxiety: Controlling Our Fear of Heights
July 3, 2009
What stands between us and our fear of heights is, in this case, 103 stories!
Yesterday, Chicago’s Sears Tower unveiled yet one more way to test the limits of our fears: they opened four glass to ceiling cubes that jut out from each side of the building’s 103rd floor observation deck.
On a clear day you can see out fifty miles: a benefit that the deck previously provided, but as of today you can now also look straight down 1,350 feet.
It’s the most breathtaking sight or most terrifying experience depending on your point of view.
Which begs the question: What is this thing we call acrophobia, and what do we actually know about its causes and possible cures?
The word itself derives from two Greek words, “akron,” meaning peak, or summit; and “phobos,” which simply means fear.
While often thought of as simply a quirk of human nature, acrophobia can have serious and life threatening consequences when a sufferer, for example, is so panic stricken by being in a high place that they lose the control needed to return safely to the ground.
While this is often referred to as “vertigo,” Â vertigo itself is not a fear of heights but a condition triggered by a variety of phobias that cause those experiencing a panic attack to sense a spinning sensation.
It is estimated that over 25-million Americans suffer from acrophobia and while most of us will never be asked to step out onto a glass floor suspended high above Chicago, we may want to enjoy a view from the rim of the Grand Canyon without suffering a panic attack or clean out the pine needles from the gutters around the roof of our house without suffering sweaty palms and a shortness of breath.
Once thought of as being triggered by acute reactions to a childhood trauma, perhaps being tossed in the air as an infant by a playful parent, recent studies have begun to revise that theory. Today the prevailing thought is that this fear, like other common phobias such as the fear of loud noises or being enclosed in a small space, is not an associative fear, something related to early life traumas, but something buried inside humans and many other mammals as a protective mechanism.
Glass boxes, not unlike those added to the Sears Tower, built to test this theory of acrophobia have revealed interesting results at far less dramatic heights. Cats, dogs, and a variety of other animals have shown themselves to be reluctant to step out onto a suspended glass floor even though it is as high and secure as the opaque floor adjacent to it upon which they are perfectly comfortable.
On the opening day of the 100-plus story glass cubes, which are attached by 30-pound steel beams and hold approximately 5 tons (the weight of a fully grown male elephant) many visitors placed a foot into the suspended cube and quickly pulled back. Even children who bravely stepped out and explored the corners of the cube admitted that their legs felt “wobbly” once they stepped back onto the main floor of the observation deck: proving that, even for the seemingly courageous, this is a somewhat discomforting experience.
If you suffer with acrophobia, there are steps you can take to help reduce and alleviate the control it has over you. Here are three:
1. Start by recognizing that this condition is not irreversible.
Unlike eye color or bone structure, acrophobia can change throughout our lives. But to change the grip that it has on you takes many small steps.
2, Recognize that all humans have some degree of acrophobia.
While most of us won’t happily jump up and down on a glass floor suspended 103 floors above the ground, many of us will happily climb a ladder to retrieve a child’s ball stuck up in a tree or take a job on the 15th floor of an office building. But some of us can do neither of those latter challenges and when that is the case, acrophobia is limiting your freedom of motion and choice.
3. The most important action you can take on your own to mitigate your height related anxiety is to take deliberately small steps.
In other words go four or five steps up a ladder and do that for a week, and then take another two steps after that and do that for another week. If you like hiking take on lower peaks and overtime push higher. It takes patience and deliberate thought and planning, but your acrophobia is rooted in mostly irrational fears that can be vanquished if you make the focused effort to dismantle these feelings one step at a time.
What happens to most people is that they do none of these mitigation training exercises and take on a big scary challenge all at once and come to the simple conclusion that this situation will never change and they must avoid all heights at all costs.
There’s a big difference between a glass cube suspended 1,350 feet in the air and the eighth step of a ladder. Take it all in small steps and one day, to your great surprise, you may find yourself dancing high above the streets of Chicago!
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