How I Conquered my Fear of Heights

Email To a Friend 02 July 2009 As far back as I could remember I have been extremely fearful of heights. I have vivid memories of my parents having to frost my bedroom windows because the minute I looked out of them, I would start crying and shaking hysterically while running in a corner and crouching into a ball. As I got older, my problem only got worse. Anytime my parents would drive over bridges and overpasses, I would have the same reaction. I couldn’t take steep steps, get on ladders, ride escalators or fly. There was a trick my father taught me at around seven. He told me to sing my favourite song, or recite the alphabet backwards while closing my eyes anytime that I had to be exposed to heights.

That trick got me all the way through secondary school. I even tried new techniques like spelling my name backwards, reciting catholic prayers, quoting dialogue from my favourite movie, or practicing my foreign languages anytime I anticipated visualising a height difference. I got teased a lot in school and become the butt of jokes anytime a group of people witness my antics in an elevator, near a balcony or even a flight of steps. Until recently, I would always have nightmares of me standing on a ledge or being at the top of the London Eye or the Statue of Liberty in America.

In these nightmares, the wind would blow me right off the edge. Despite my fears, I have been able to maintain a job and a flat independently. Having an earnest desire to travel and see members of my extended family in Australia and the U.S. motivated me to look into proven therapies for dismissing my fears as opposed to suppressing them. After speaking with my employers’ personnel, I received a referral to a board certified psychologist specialising in Acrophobia.

After initially filling out some questionnaires, the practitioner helped me to identify the root causes of my drama. Over the next four sessions, we worked on identifying the foundations of my fear and how to harmonise the mind and body dynamic in order to significantly change my responses to the way I feel as opposed to just reacting to false stimuli. This experience was profound and I began to feel differently in every way. All has been well since and I can’t wait to start travelling by plane.

John Sutton, Salford.

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