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Research Methodology:

What are similarities between people experiencing a fear of heights?

This is to look at how symptoms are universal and this fear isn’t something unheard of. That this fear is something that is shared by others that have nothing to do with each other and that this fear can come out of nowhere.

How do people get a fear of heights?

This wasn't something I thought about before this project but started to wonder if everyone was born with it or not.

Why do people fear heights?

That this question can come from trauma or that they have always had the fear it does come from somewhere.

The methodology that I will be using for this digital narrative will be using my unique perspective as someone who has suffered from acrophobia and still suffers from a fear of heights. I will be looking for stories with similar instances of people with acrophobia and overcoming the fear through internet searches and journal articles. I will be using the Indigenous Research Methods of strategies of inquiry to stay authentic and credible while accurately portraying the relationship between peoples and ideas (PG.101). Knowing that a single research method might not be enough to cover this fear I will be using different research material to come to a conclusion to my research questions.

Most of the sources found have either been through the college libraries database or stories found online. The scholarly journal articles are about the fear of height or acrophobia which is a more severe version of a fear of heights. I wanted to show that this fear comes up more often than you would think and that these articles found are from regular people. The scholarly journals go more into how the fear is established and its symptoms while the online articles are personal stories with their experiences with acrophobia.

I will then rhetorically analyze the works while focusing on the main points of the data collected. I will analyze the connections between acrophobia and those who experience the same thing in similar situations.

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I have always assumed that everyone has an irrational fear of something because I have always had a fear of heights since I was a kid and as long as I can remember. I remember pulling my dad’s hair to let me off of his shoulders. I have vertigo when cleaning the gutters of our house. I went to a lineman college and got past my irrational fear of heights to graduate, but the thought of confronting my fear every day left me hopeless. I first felt proud to show off my accomplishments and skills but when the reality of having to be at various heights all day every day made my anxiety skyrocket. I eventually had to decide to change career paths towards what I am doing now.

I never really intentionally went out of my way to overcome my fear but just assumed it went away after being able to go on roller coasters. When I got to the lineman college and started to climb my anxiety and fears started to grow and become worse that it made it almost impossible to focus. I knew that my family paid a lot of money to get me there and so I promised myself that I would do it. While each week we were going even higher and learning more at a rapid pace. I remember stressing that I would have to do this for the rest of my life and face my fears that I just rediscovered.

From what I understand of an irrational fear is it is something that doesn’t make sense. I physically can overcome my fear but that doesn’t mean that I still don’t feel it. For heights I am technically certified to climb up to 90 feet, I was trained to climb with just boots and belt. There was safety equipment but even so on the first day there someone lost their front teeth in an accident showing that the occupation was very serious. I felt an expectation to graduate and do well at the lineman college but the struggle with my fear was something that was becoming an everyday thing where I dreaded going to the school. This was an issue because about twenty one percent of people who have Visual Height Intolerance have some sort of major depression disorder (Kapfhammer).

I don’t regret going to the school because I learned new things about myself and how to overcome my irrational fears. That some people are able to do it for fun or don’t have the same fears as me is something I have always thought was difficult to understand, especially those who get a thrill from great heights and have the right kinds of Postural control which controls balance (Boffino). Some fears actually make sense to be afraid of and others not so much but what makes it irrational is it is uncontrollable. That the feeling of fear is unintentional and accidental.

This fear isn’t something unexplainable with there being even recent research into alleviating the symptom for those people that have it worse than I do. There is research that has found that this phobia can be caused by trauma or someone can be born with it, that it is usually people with space and motion discomfort or SMD (Coelho). While I still struggle with this fear there are others out there who haven't overcome these fears to be able to climb ladders. That others share the same fear as me does make me feel better that it isn’t something absurd but is something that still haunts me to this day. That this fear is always at the back of my mind when going up stairs or using an elevator.

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The Day I Decided to Stop Being Afraid of Heights by Eve Holland

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The Day I Decided to Stop Being Afraid of Heights by Eve Holland

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This story is about a woman with the fear of heights going climbing in the mountains at great heights. She was the slow one in the group and was the least trained but with the help of two friends was able to find little moments of fun in the terrifying experience. This new experience left something in the woman and she kept coming back to that experience of overcoming her fears. This shows while not everyone can overcome their fears it isn’t impossible even when you didn’t realize it was as bad as it is.

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Getting High: Surmounting 30 Years Of Acrophobia by Rebecca Coffey

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Getting High: Surmounting 30 Years Of Acrophobia by Rebecca Coffey

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This story covers someone with an even greater fear of heights than I have. They have acrophobia and it affects them in their daily lives. This eventually led to them making the decision to want to overcome this phobia and to climb the top of a building in New York. They had a harness but the sheer drop made their knees shake and the climb difficult. They were able to overcome this step and at that point nothing compared to this height. That she had a guide who can do this backwards made it easier and they were able to talk their way through the climb.

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A psychotherapist who lived with acrophobia for years explains how she overcame her fear of heights by Rebecca Strong.

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A psychotherapist who lived with acrophobia for years explains how she overcame her fear of heights by Rebecca Strong.

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We learn that this came as a surprise for Tara Eastcott when she found out she had acrophobia during a hot air balloon ride. After this even the acrophobia really affected her everyday life. She learned techniques to deal with the anxiety and learned that exposure is the best way to get over heights. She learned to go to just below what made her uncomfortable and kept moving higher. This took years of dedication but she was able to actually climb mountains to get past this phobia. She had to keep pushing herself through these uncomfortable moments to build her tolerance to the anxiety that her phobia brought.

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Acrophobia or the fear of heights is a phobia that can be tied to other anxiety disorders. This is such a common phobia it affects about one in twenty adults and those symptoms show up even when there isn’t any real danger to the person. The way that anyone can be born with it or develop later in life through trauma and how the symptoms are sometimes debilitating makes acrophobia seem worse than it actually is. There are ways to get around acrophobia and treatment is exposure to heights and overcoming those fears.

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The significance of this story is to show that these feelings of fear are real and not something to be ashamed of. That even if the experience felt bad in the moment, we can pick out highlights of happy moments that we had fun. That the experience wasn’t all bad. I wanted to use this story to show that the fear of heights isn’t something intentional and more often than not ruins the fun in a situation. It has been found out that the fear preceding the vertigo is worse and that is the part that people hate the most (Schäffler) This story plays a role in the community to show that the fear can be overcome and that the experience during these events aren’t full of bad times and stress.

This story is similar to the other stories because it has to do with heights but the locations are different. This was more of a hill/mountain compared to sheer drops or extreme heights; it has even been found that people who develop visual height intolerance develop it in the later half of their life (Schäffler). This story isn’t very unique in the way the fear is expressed because it is something that everyone with the fear feels. The way the author feels guilty for ruining the climb or how after all of this was over the embarrassment to show this behavior to anyone. It is all very relatable and something seen in the other stories but not in the same way.

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Acrophobia or the fear of heights is very common but stories about overcoming that phobia are harder to come by. This shows the dedication and willpower needed to overcome this challenge and is not something that is insurmountable. Acrophobia is something that many people share with varying degrees of severity and everyday people struggle with the fear all the time. The symptoms that they are experiencing are something that everyone else with the fear shares and is a fairly common fear/phobia so the odds of finding someone with it isn’t small. Most of the time those who struggle with it just tough it out and find other ways to manage and get around their fears but there are those that go out of their ways to confront their fears or just stumble upon them.

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This is a more detailed story of someone going out of their way to overcome their fear instead of just stumbling upon it. Rebecca and I have similar fears with bleachers and ladders but the way she overcame her fear of heights was something I thought I got over sharing symptoms of visual height intolerance (Schäffler). This story in particular shows that a trained individual can really make a difference in these situations especially because they know how to help those with acrophobia. The care that is shown to Rebecca and how she is feeling is something that not everyone is willing to share or put in the effort. That the similarities to the other stories are there because it is about heights and overcoming it with outside help. The difference is that in this story it wasn’t with friends but a professional even if research has shown that older people have balance problems and should develop a fear of heights due to falling (Kapfhammer).

The nuances in this story show that safety was a big factor at this height and that this particular individual knew some techniques to help relieve anxiety and those failed. That to some people height isn’t a fear at all and that they are willing to hang off the side of the building. But those willing with an open mind and willing to overcome fear can get to see sights that most others don’t get to.

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This piece in particular shows that there isn’t a clear instant that someone should be afraid of heights, but when it happens to turn into acrophobia it is much more difficult to get rid of. We also learn that there are methods to overcome this fear that aren’t climbing extreme heights. This story helps identify some of the symptoms that people can experience when going through acrophobia and even shows people through experience that people are willing to help them get past this fear. This story is similar to the second story where it has someone who is purposefully going out of their way to overcome their own fear. This also shares a connection with the first story in how they out in nature in a potentially dangerous situation.

It has been found that at least twenty eight percent of people who have acrophobia or visual height intolerance inherit it from their families (Kapfhammer). But this isn’t something that has to stay debilitating and can be treated in many different ways. Newer technology might even make treatments even easier than they currently are at now. This story shows that this haunting doesn’t have to be forever if it becomes too much.