Anyone Afraid of heights ?

Anyone Afraid of heights ?
No more than normal.
Fancy doing this as a job ?:sneaky:
NO!! That ain't even close to normal.

When I was about 20 I discovered my mother was afraid of heights. I tried to teach her to snow ski, when we went on the chair lift she was terrified. At first I thought she was afraid of what we would encounter at the top, a normal thing for first time skiers. She finally admitted to me that she really was afraid of heights, and had managed to hide it for a long time. Never went on another ski lift ride with her.
 
No more than normal.

NO!! That ain't even close to normal.

When I was about 20 I discovered my mother was afraid of heights. I tried to teach her to snow ski, when we went on the chair lift she was terrified. At first I thought she was afraid of what we would encounter at the top, a normal thing for first time skiers. She finally admitted to me that she really was afraid of heights, and had managed to hide it for a long time. Never went on another ski lift ride with her.
I'm scared of heights myself, but I can control it in some situations.

Once upon a time I was too terrified to climb the stairs to get on the plane..., but I've come quite a way from that now, and I can para-glide and walk up the plane stairs easily , but I still can't stand out on a balcony more than 3 floors high without being scared to death I'm going to fall.... ..and as I watched this video my legs were literally turning to water... it's just insane... , I couldn't even watch to the end...
 

In high school a group of us went to the Metropolitan Opera House in NYC. The seats were stacked at such a steep angle that it took all the joy out of the performance. It felt as if you leaned forward you would crash onto the stage, Some sports venues are the same. No thank you.

I would get that same feeling in the upper levels of some NFL football stadiums around the country .... afraid to lean forward during the games ... always a feeling of any movement in those sky-high seats might bring me to my demise.
 
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Not too much as an adult. Once as a child I was climbing up a slide in a playground to slide down and froze when I got to the top. All the kids behind me were so angry. My dad had to climb up and help me down. It was really embarrassing. :oops: Eventually I mastered the slide. 😊
 
Not really, some situations i experience mild anxiety, a low railing or something that seems unstable, getting back onto a ladder from a roof--once feet secure on ladder it passes. But from childhood i was a confronter of fears. Claustrophobia was more problematic for me for many decades. Being in crowds of people in large cities created the same anxiety that being in a small enclosed space did. Yet when i lived in large metro areas i rode subways and elevators as an act of sheer will that i would not let the 'fear', anxiety put limits on my activities.

When i was 6 or 7 my older sisters' high school friends were climbing a huge (maybe 40-50 ft) tree on vacant land next to ours and jumping or diving into the river which was deeper on our side even at low tide. Me i was a real 'me, too' kid--had to try whatever my older sisters were doing. So i climbed up there. about 4 or 5 teens had gotten up there and then become somewhat frozen by fear---couldn't jump and couldn't bring selves to attempt the climb back down.

i can barely remember what the branch being used as a springboard looked like my focus was on the water and launching myself into the deepest part which i was very familiar with as this was next to where we swung out over the water on a trapeze attached to an Oak tree on our land. But i do remember hearing a lot of voices from the tree after i surfaced and was swimming away. One by one the ones who'd been frozen launched themselves into the water---pride wouldn't let them be shown up by a little kid.
 
I'm scared of heights myself, but I can control it in some situations.

Once upon a time I was too terrified to climb the stairs to get on the plane..., but I've come quite a way from that now, and I can para-glide and walk up the plane stairs easily , but I still can't stand out on a balcony more than 3 floors high without being scared to death I'm going to fall.... ..and as I watched this video my legs were literally turning to water... it's just insane... , I couldn't even watch to the end...
It doesn't surprise me that you exercise some control over it. With the para-gliding---i would think the 'rush' of doing it counters the fear--with the anxiety being in fact part of the rush--because you're conquering it.
 
I always feel like someone in my mind is telling me to jump, and I honestly , truly have to fight the demons to prevent myself from jumping, so I prefer to stay well away from the edge of the balcony if I'm up high...
This reminded me of a short poem i read decades ago in a collection that was labeled 'suicide notes', can't recall author--no-one well known and only ever read this one piece of theirs:
"I never meant to jump
just wanted to feel the bricks
of the neighboring building".

Also made me think of the woman who caused the Empire State Building and most other tall ones to install better measures to prevent jumpers, by launching herself off the then tallest in the city building.
 
I'm fine as long as there is a barrier that's at least a little above waist high, be it glass or chain link fence or something solid. I can walk on one of those glass catwalks without any problems. But let it be a low barrier and I don't even like 5 five foot drop.

The Spousal Equivalent used to be able to climb up the tall radio masts on his Navy ships with no hesitation, but later in life developed a paralyzing fear of heights.
 
Terrified of heights. I nearly wrote of this in Chic’s thread about what we’re afraid of. I don‘t even like to think about the examples I might have put down.
 
I used to enjoy "heights" in my younger years....the Eifel Tower, views from tall buildings in NYC/Chicago, etc. But, as I grow older, I've lost that fascination, and now, I don't even like to get more than a few feet up on a ladder.
 
In some situations I'm terrified, in others I'm fine.

Climbing old Adirondack fire towers was always an exercise in managing my fear but I did it. It was always tougher going down than it was going up.

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I do much better when I'm left alone and no one is telling me to be careful, Duh! :rolleyes:
 
I fell out of a tree when I was about 9 and broke both my feet...missed all our street sports and school sports...in a wheel chair and hyperactive. Yikes. I do think it is instinctual but mine has been tweaked.

What about this fearless young woman?


Emily Harrington is the first woman to free-climb the Golden Gate route up El Capitan, a 3,000-foot-high monolith in Yosemite National Park, in under 24 hours.


09xp-el-capitan1-videoSixteenByNineJumbo1600.jpg
 

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