Acrophobia, the fear of heights is an abnormally persistent fear of high places. Abnormal because in most cases, while everyone else would feel safe looking down a skyscraper from the inside, a person with acrophobia would already be perhaps shaking while barely taking a peep even though risks of falling off are almost impossible from that angle. I have a friend who’s over 6 feet and yet he is acrophobic, so now I wonder how he’s not scared of looking down with his own massive height lol.
Height phobia to some extent is a good and somewhat normal and protective type of phobia because a lot of us have some tendency of acrophobia and in most cases, it prevents us from doing stupid things like throwing a backflip off the 5th floor of a building without proper safety measures.
However, cases where height phobia becomes a really disturbing feeling makes it beyond just normal thus making one avoid many things relating to elevated surfaces and some of which include avoiding tall companies to work in, the common house maintenance practices like fixing a light bulbs or climbing tall staircases or even simply relaxing on the rooftop enjoying the evening view.
One man’s poison is another man’s meat they say, while many suffer the phobia of falling, others are performing dangerous stunts and flints whilst climbing or atop seriously tall buildings and structures. A good example is Mustang.
Symptoms of The Fear Of Heights
These symptoms are triggered when a situation associated with high places is involved. The more popular symptoms of the fear of falling phobia include:
- grasping for air
- sweating
- shaking
- dizziness
- shock
- blurred vision
Mild cases of the fear of heights are often just associated with fear of falling off the building and blurred or shaky vision when looking down the building.
It should however be noted that for average people not suffering from this phobia, it is still advisable not to look down a tall building for a lot of reasons too.
All the above symptoms of this phobia are caused generally by the person’s fear of falling and getting hurt, breaking a leg, a spine or worse, dying!
Causes of Acrophobia
The causes of the fear of falling like many other phobias are largely debated.
Studies show that this phobia may be hereditary, which means one might be having the fear of high places because a family member is having to too, perhaps the parents or grandparents or even further downwards, other suggestions are that it might arise from past experience of psychological trauma associated with heights which have been proven to be true for so many other types of phobia too.
The causes of are generally agreed to be triggered by different causes from person to person. Perhaps the person has fallen from a tall structure in the past or has witnessed it firsthand, it could even be because they have been watching and or hearing too many stories of people falling and dying or sustaining injuries or thereabouts.
Another acceptable cause of this phobia is that it might be a survival instinct. Being a type of phobia belonging to a category of specific phobias called space and motion discomfort, many mammals show similar repulsive behaviors when brought to higher grounds – an attribute similar to cats’ rejection to moving near water bodies like lakes and streams.
This is one of the most acceptable causes of the fear of falling along with the psychological trauma, causing a scar in the mind.
How to Overcome Acrophobia
Treatments for the fear of falling are luckily available and very easy to follow too, so getting rid of acrophobia is not as difficult as the phobia may pose to be on its own, there are professionals online that can help overcome the fear of heights gradually with consistency and tests.
A similar way is the common Cognitive-behavioural therapy which is, without doubt, one of the best-suggested options anyone can give but if you feel you’re not up for such, you might as well overcome this fear at your own pace.
I created an article earlier on how to overcome the fear of heights and other phobias by yourself, click HERE to view it.
So, good luck fighting your fear of heights!
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