Logically I realize that being off the ground isn't intrinsically dangerous. Climbing a 6 foot ladder won't kill me. I realize that rock climbing isn't dangerous - especially indoors with a harness and an instructor. Try telling that to my primative brain, though. Whenever I'm faced with heights - an escalator, a glass elevator, the balcony in a highrise - my logical brain stops working. All of my thoughts are taken over by raw panic: my heart rate skyrockets, I start to pant, and I freeze.
There have been times where I've actually needed help getting down, like a cat getting stuck in a tree I'd freeze in terror. One time when I was a kid my family visited a lighthouse. It had one of those awful cast iron circular staircases spiraling up through the hollow interior. I hate those things. I'd like to find whomever invented them and kick them in the shin. I hate seeing all around me, and can despise the fact that I can literally FEEL the air and space; no nice safe earth anywhere to be found. Vertigo ensues, and I feel like I'm going to fall, but I'm not even sure what direction I'll be falling. For all I know I could fall up. Illogical, I know... but try telling that to my panic-ridden primitive brain. Forget "fight or flight," I'm pretty sure there's a third option: freeze. Like the rabbit who sees a hawk and freezes, all my muscles lock up.
Long story short, I ended up freezing about three quarters of the way up the lighthouse. While my family was up top, taking pictures and admiring the view I stood on the stairs, unable to move either up or down, with a vise-grip on the handrail. My dad ended up having to pry my fingers off and guide me down those evil stairs. From then on, heights went from being an uncomfortable experience to something to be avoided at all costs. It wasn't just being afraid of the heights, or freezing in a high place again, I was now afraid of being afraid.
Back to rock climbing. In order to do this, I had to know what I was going to do when the fear came, to keep my brain from short-circuting and getting stuck saying, "I'm high I'm high I'm high I'm high I'm high..." I came up with a script of what I was going to say to myself, a literal script that I would tell myself.
"This is just a physiological response to being off the ground. It is chemicals being released by my brain in a learned response to being off the ground. It is synapses firing, adrenaline being released. It isn't real. It is just fear. I am not in danger. I won't get hurt."I practiced this script, and then I went to my lesson, husband in tow. I looked up at the 40 foot rock wall and felt the fear wash over me, and I hadn't even started. Just looking up made me dizzy. And that made me mad. How could a rational, intelligent person be defeated by just looking at a wall? It was stupid, and I despise stupidity. At that moment I despised my fear, and decided that not only was I going to climb that evil wall, I was going to defeat it. Originally I had a goal of just going a few feet up. No more. I am going to make it to the top before this self-experiment is over. Hopefully without needing a new pair of pants.
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