![]() However, you can’t always trace your fear back to a specific traumatic event – many people with acrophobia can’t link their fear to a particular experience. The more such people avoid heights, the fewer opportunities they have to learn that heights are generally safe, and so the fear remains and intensifies. They then start to avoid all heights, believing that they might lead to a similar scary experience. ![]() This could trigger a phobia of heights because the distressing experience gets paired with heights in the person’s memories – particularly in individuals already predisposed to feeling anxious. First, a traumatic or frightening event, such as falling out of a tree or off a ladder. A problem arises only when this unease around dangerous heights starts to generalise to other, less risky situations, and begins to interfere with daily life.Īn intense fear of heights might develop for several reasons. Evolutionary accounts argue that we are all born with this fear because avoiding heights helps to keep us safe. Many animals and human infants show an innate avoidance of a sharp drop, even before they’ve had any real experience of heights. Some degree of caution is common and sensible when it comes to heights. There are also symptoms more unique to acrophobia, including vertigo and the desire to drop to the knees or clutch on to something. Individuals with acrophobia typically feel intense fear and distress around heights, and tend to avoid them as a result. These include physical symptoms such as shaking, sweating, a racing heart, difficulty breathing, nausea and a dry mouth. ![]() Many of the symptoms of acrophobia, to use the technical term, are shared with other anxiety disorders. What do you do in such a situation if you have a fear of heights? Do you miss out on that job? Do you make excuses to your kids? Do you disappoint your friends? For people with a phobia of heights – an extreme, persistent, irrational fear of being high up – these scenarios can become real problems. Or that your friends decide it would be fun to hike all the way up to a beautiful viewpoint. Or that your kids are pleading for a family trip to go high-roping. But imagine you’re invited to a job interview on the 16th floor of a city office block. Also, you won’t be fully immersed in the situation of fear while sitting on the chair and trying to push yourself into a situation where you haven’t ever been.Some people might think that the consequences of having to avoid heights are minimal. ![]() Using your imagination to visualize skyscrapers, rooftops or even canyons is a challenging task, as sometimes we can’t even visualize someone's face that we met a few days ago. There is no need to panic, you can overcome every phobia with therapy!Īs we have already discovered in the previous posts, that can be cured with mental imagery while using your imagination to visualize a real-life situation of height, also that can be trained using real-life therapy – stand on the ledge of the skyscraper and you’ll feel better in a minute! Let’s be honest, these methods have big disadvantages and do not seem like a real solution for those who believe to cope with the phobia themselves. People who experience phobia are triggered by various circumstances which can be faced in everyday life, and we must cope with the fears in the right way. According to statistics, approximately 6% of tearth's inhabitantsrth have acrophobia.
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