Heights: fear of falling or urge to leap
Here’s an interesting exploration of that queasy, unsteady feeling many people get when standing close to the edge of a big drop. Some describe it as an urge to jump, but that might just represent a case of crossed and competing signals.
Our fear circuitry, which includes the amygdala and other fast-acting subconscious brain regions, may send an alarm to the prefrontal cortex for interpretation. Your conscious processing, which operates at a slower speed than the fear circuitry, recognizes the alarm signal, but may not know why it was sent.
While your conscious brain would not need to scratch too hard to figure out why your hand recoils from a hot stove, you might be confused why your body automatically pulls back from the edge of a precipice. Because the void is different. You wonder, as Hames explained it: “Why did I back away? I can’t possibly fall. There’s a railing there, so therefore—I wanted to jump.”
Consistent with this theory is the fact that those people most likely to the feel urge to leap (and who’d never considered suicide) also experience more anxiety, including worrying more about their own body reactions. These sensations can include sweating, heart palpitations, dizziness, and shaky knees, all of which are common responses to high places. How you interpret those sensations can mark the difference between triggering panic, if you think “I’m going to die,” or excitement, if you love the rush of a high. “There is a subjective dimension to all of this,” Coelho said, especially when it comes to vestibular signals. “The way you interpret the vestibular system is much more up to you” than the interpretation of sight, because it operates outside of conscious awareness. Those who are most likely to feel the urge to leap also tend to worry more about other life issues, including the fear of going crazy.
I am afraid of heights, and always have been. I’ve worked over the years to make it possible to use most stairs and balconies without undue distress — but you won’t catch me near the edge of the railing if I can avoid it. The three-story escalator at the CNN building in Atlanta, with no wall on either side of the handrail, was awful. I feel sick when I see someone else standing close to the edge and looking down, even strangers. And I have NEVER had the urge to jump.
I have been skydiving for over 40 years. I don’t make as many jumps as I use to, but I still enjoy the rush. That sense of speed as you exit the plane followed by the quiet floating once the chute is deployed, is perhaps unimaginable to those who don’t dive or are afraid of heights, but take word for it, there is nothing like it. No matter how many times you have jumped, you have a big smile on your face as your feet touch the earth. And that smile lasts all day.
However, you won’t find me feelings an urge to jump off the edge of the Grand Canyon.
What I’ve experienced is not an urge to jump at all, but an almost physical, intense sensation that some kind of hypergravity in the void is actually pulling me toward the edge, combined with a vivid imaginary flash of what going over would be like. Believe me, I have NO desire whatsoever to jump! But the combination of that sucking feeling at the edge and the mental imagery is enough to keep me off tall things altogether or at least as far as I can possibly get from any edge. It’s entirely irrational, and I know that while I’m experiencing it, but reasoning with myself on this particular subject simply doesn’t work.
It’s all about the wiring. I went Airborne–jump school only–and found it not particularly interesting. I was in good shape, out of OCS, so that wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t scary, it wasn’t even exciting.
My granddaughter, when younger, was shy about a lot of things. She’d hold back at a petting zoo, for example. But she’d scamper up any playground equipment she could find like a monkey.
But see “the imp of the perverse”.
I worked construction as a young lad (illegally)…
walking on 2×4 on edge 4 stories up.. no problem
now? it would take me acclimation time again…
sadly…
such mental tricks cause people to fall and die or be seriously injured every year…
put a 2x8x12′ across a distance a foot off the ground..
move that same item to the height of balance beams
now do it the last time between two buildings for half the distance..
the first two are usually a snap, with the first one easy as walking down a hall
[if you do not have balance issues to start with]
with all three surfaces the same, all secured, nothing else but irrelevant distance below…
our minds are not always our friends…
remember that next time you wake up in a sweat just before you hit the ground in a dream
and most of us are not in as much control as we think we are…
and many of us, if not most, would be very uncomfortable knowing this, and to what degree
when society and people lose connection to the real, delusion dominates
it starts small… you believe one size panty hose can work
then it grows into personal zeitgeists…
pretty much, your whole life becomes a collection of tiny delusions that are believed, acted upon, and guide our every day, and devil take the hind of the person who wishes to point it out – cause delusion is the new tie that binds
It is a delusion that how high up you are, changes anything
(in and of itself and within reason)
sign me active volcano caldera rim walker… 🙂
among other things.. like ex free climber (the gunks)
What I’ve experienced is not an urge to jump at all, but an almost physical, intense sensation that some kind of hypergravity in the void is actually pulling me toward the edge, combined with a vivid imaginary flash of what going over would be like.
and thus, animism has an explanation
if modern thinking wasn’t there to displace it…
Mrs Whatsit:
I think what you’ve described is much more commonly felt in that situation than any “urge to jump.”
I routinely sky dive from 15,000 feet. Things down there look tiny for the first 10 seconds of freefall. Once those things are close enough to be recognizable I pop the chute and enjoy the quiet of floating in circles. Mrs parker has never understood why I dive, but she accepts that it pleases me. If the chute doesn’t deploy impact is death. In case of failure to deploy close your eyes and think happy thoughts. If it ever happens to me I’ll think of my grandchildren.
To me fear of death is the flip side of fear of reality. I fear neither. To fear the inevitable is a fool’s errand. All born die, that is how it should be. Skydiving is very philosophical. 😉
I envy you, parker. It’s not really a fear of death that I feel. It’s a sick feeling. Possibly related is that I get sick riding in cars unless I look straight ahead. I can’t look at the scenery to one side or the other or read anything for more than a very brief time.
Not a fear of falling nor an urge to leap, but rather an anxiety that I will lose or tip the balance in favor of the void. As someone mentioned, the anxiety recedes with acclimation and a developing confidence.
Kate,
Am I correct in guessing you don’t like roller coasters. 😉
I watched a PBS special one time of workers walking and having lunch on building beams of some tall skyscraper. Empire State Building? I couldn’t finish watching it.
Worked on a powerplant precipitator assembly, crewed up with Mohawk Ironworkers placing the steel frame (only for couple of days, thanks god). Only four and five stories up. Still, those guys were amazing to me. Steel walking was not my thing, but fun as heck to watch done well.
Parker, you’ve got a reserve chute I assume.
I’ve got a friend who’s been a master jumper for a long time. He offered me a tandem jump a very long time ago, but I didn’t take the offer.
More recently he had his sister in-law visiting and she decided to tidy up the living room where his chute was sitting. Reaching for it, she saw what looked like a handle and grabbed it. Out popped the reserve chute. Turns out main chutes are super reliable, so reserves almost never get used. Therefore on the fancy rigs they are designed to be super slim and exceedingly difficult to pack. It took him two months to find a packer that could pack it.
_____
Many years ago I found myself at the cliff’s edge of upper Yosemite falls with a half hour to kill. Exploring the cliff’s edge a bit I discovered some old trail onto the face of the cliff. There was a slender ledge with an iron railing that takes you right out onto the face of the cliff, below the top cliff edge by 20 or 50 feet.
Some ways out on the ledge you can look straight down the 1,400 ft. drop. which I did. There was a tiny bit of vertigo and some rational fear. The railing was very old, and while I didn’t see any cracks in the pipe anchors, I just didn’t feel certain that the railing was 100% safe. I decided it was a bad risk/reward.
Worked on the smokestack construction crew (pouring concrete, installing the brick liner, erecting the ladders and railings, and removal of the scaffolding, etc.) at the Possum Point power plant expansion (VEPCO) in the 1970’s. It was 370 ft tall. I did not like walking the iron, especially when not tied off. But you got used to it, mostly. Taft Point at Yosemite and the other similar areas of exposure in the park are not something I enjoy. My sister in law and her husband tried to interest us in rock climbing but I had come to realize that my judgement isn’t reliable enough given the risks and consequences.
I was in the ‘Gunks at the cliffs just the other day. Fascinating stuff! I was a little surprised that I didn’t feel that cringing feeling looking down at the scree piles. I think I felt it a little, but not as much as I used to. Some of the big cracks in the plateau scared me a little more than that, in fact, because I figured I had a greater chance of falling into those, since I needed to cross a couple of them and one or two were definitely big enough to swallow me if I aimed wrongly.
The other recent time I encountered a chasm or drop-off was at the John Hancock tower. I don’t remember having a panic sensation then, because even though they have built out that balcony that’s open to the air on the observation deck, it’s screened in. I think I had a momentary thrill, but not quite the same as fear of falling.
What got me really tense the first time I experienced it, though, was the Embassy Suites there. Inside, the building is a series of square floors around a huge hollow center, and as it happened, I was staying on the top floor. That looking down from the interior balcony all the way down to the reception desk was a doozy, but I found myself fascinated by the feeling. Also, taking the elevator down all the way from there was a bit of a challenge at first, because said elevator has glass walls and one can look from it outside the building and watch the ground rushing up out there. On the first ride down, I really felt anxious; but I kept at it and by the third or fourth time, I’d gotten used to it.
I watched a PBS special one time of workers walking and having lunch on building beams of some tall skyscraper. Empire State Building? I couldn’t finish watching it.
That made me think of how a lot of movies now start with long, very high up aerial shots of a city, or someone clinging to a sheer cliff face, or something like that. And they love to include scenes with someone dangling off the edge of a building. I simply cannot watch that stuff.
I dreamed that while listening to Bartok String Quartet #4 on headphones while walking W to E on Portland’s Broadway Bridge I felt an almost irresistible urge to jump over the railing down into the Willamette River. It still troubles me to think about it.
Well, it looks like the commentariat is divided into two kinds of people…
I’m in with the vertigo & fear of accidentally falling cohort (abso-bluming-lutely have no desire to jump). I’m fine in enclosed spaces (elevators, glassed balconies, airplanes) but not anything open unless very secure (high boundary wall, etc).
I totally abhor anything providing transportation at altitude on a cable, enclosed or not.
And don’t even talk to me about ski lifts…
I remember reading about this experiment years ago, although sometime after the study was published. Very impressive discovery about infant’s depth perception, fascinating pictures, and a conclusion I could relate to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_cliff
As kids, we climbed all over the trees in our neighborhood — I could go 10 to 12 feet up one huge evergreen. No problem climbing onto roofs, even jumping off the lower ones. And loved the playground slides that they don’t let anyone build anymore, all of it with no vertigo at all.
Sometime in my early teens, while I was actually on top of Grandad’s shop roof, I distinctly remember thinking, “this is not a good idea” — carefully climbed down and never went up high again in anything.
My analysis years later is that puberty triggered a survival reflex important to the propagation of the species.
Some people choose to ignore it, or don’t feel it as strongly (waves to parker), but those people who lack that instinct often end up winning a Darwin Award.
I also have a fear of heights and never experienced an urge to jump. My experience is similar to Artfldgr’s. I also experience the same panic when one of my loved ones is near an edge.
Oddly, I have skydived, though it was back in my twenties. I did not experience the same sort of fear jumping from a plane. It was terrifying, but not in the same was. I know what parker meant about it putting a smile on his face. After my first jump, I couldn’t stop grinning. But, after my fifth jump I realized that it wasn’t as fun any longer, but still as terrifying. So, I quit. If I ever had to do it again to avoid something worse, I know that I could… and that’s enough.
parker on May 9, 2019 at 8:29 pm at 8:29 pm said:
Kate,
Am I correct in guessing you don’t like roller coasters.
Moving forward isn’t nearly as bad as standing still. Driving across a bridge makes me nervous; standing on it looking over the rail would be so much worse. As kids we didn’t understand my father’s reluctance to climb up those observation towers that used to dot Gettysburg battlefield; I have a lot more sympathy for him now.
parker: “Am I correct in guessing you don’t like roller coasters.” Got that right! I don’t like high bridges, even driving; I am feeling queasy even thinking about iron workers walking across girders up high; and when I was in Paris with the family, our girls went up the Eiffel Tower with their dad while I staying on the ground.
I think it’s neurological, and related to the inner ear, as well.
I was proud, some decades ago, to be able to ride ski lifts, although I do hang onto the center pole until ready to ski off on terra firma.
I used to do rock climbing and roof repair and all that. Then my son was born, and I was terrified that, as a toddler, he’d climb some railing and plummet into an abyss. He’s all grown up now, but I find that I am now bothered by heights on my own behalf. This sucks.
Philip, i used to live just north of Stony Point on the cliffs over the river. loved that apartment i fixed up, hated the neighbors, and the landlord didnt pay the mortgage.
but being a single lad and quite disinterested in romance and having been one of the founders of MGTOW, i used to go to the gunks… sometimes to climb, but mostly long hikes… (i can still do 20 miles with a pack easy and i am 56 this year, and my wife just turned 46 today!)
the area is great… the gunks are worth experiencing, and if you follow the color spots you can tune your hikes to the level you can handle.. im nothing special, just a guy who has always been very active and exercised moderately in living.
so i would hike in the city with the camera photojournalist / fashion photog represented by Globe, across 59th st bridge, to central park, through central park to amsterdam avenue, down the island to battery park, then up the other side back up to park, then up to 59th and back over the bridge… with 25lbs of camera stuff… (and my friends think i am lucky to be healthy and have zero clogs)..
upstate i would wander the forrests… or do nature shots… or put on old fashioned heavy boot roller skates and do 20 laps around the lake (with the ppl on blades telling me its amazing i am using something so heavy)…
as to surellin, i did roofing… siding.. was a glazier for a few years… framing… bricklaying foundations… finishing work too… but i also do jewelry, artwork, carvings, stained glass, wax work, gemstone cutting, graphic arts, product photography, applications engineering at medical job, fashion photography (etc), portraiture (neo has seen it), business creation/design, process design, chip design, product design and prototyping, driver, and a lot more..
but no one believes me…
so all that is mostly useless…
unless someone wants it, then they tend to steal it
there is a lot more wacko unusual real renaissance type stuff..
as i said.. family is famous, arts, sciences, and military..
but way on the fringe..
planning my next phase in life… 😉
I used to have those wake up when falling dreams but somehow I turned them into some sort of anti-gravity where I was flying kind of like a bird or something I don’t think I have had one of those dreams for years now, flying or falling. When it comes to heights, as long as there is a good rail I have no problem but if there is not a good rail I won’t get anywhere near an edge of a building or cliff. The last time I rode a rollercoaster was 1963 and it was not much of one and I hated the feeling and lack of control but I am totally comfortable in light aircraft, even in the old cloth covered planes and bumpy air because I understand what is going on and I have no fear of falling.
Artfldgr on May 10, 2019 at 10:38 am at 10:38 am said:
my wife just turned 46 today!)
* * *
Well, then — Happy Birthday, Mrs. Artfldgr!!
It’s a pretty common phenomenon. The French call it, “l’appel du vide” The call to plunge into the void.
I absolutely get the “urge to jump” and find it terrifying. It can be limiting in some aspects, such as going to games at stadiums and sitting in the cheap seats, etc. I did work through my fear of driving on over-passes though because I knew that I couldn’t allow this one to fester – way too life limiting. We have a massive one near our home and I would drive on a road that goes under it many times and just look at it. Then one day I decided to drive over it. I had read that you can’t be angry and anxious at the same time so (while driving by myself) I headed for the ramp while screaming curse words at the bloody thing! It worked. I can do over passes without worrying about a panic attack. After this I was able to drive over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge – I didn’t think I would ever be able to do that. However, standing on an edge (or even thinking about it) is still impossible. I’ve thought of eventually trying indoor rock climbing as a way to work on this.
L’appel du vide – The appeal of the void. Clearly known for a while. I have it. Even a precipice view on TV makes my nuts hurt. Yet, I love flying in airplanes. As long as my body is secured and there is an engine attached somewhere I have no vertigo or fear.
JenaR:
Those are certainly some creative solutions, especially the yelling on/at the bridge.
I don’t even like to watch other people standing near the edge of sheer drops. I once saw someone do a handstand at the edge of a very very long drop (I think it was at Crater Lake). I had to turn around and walk in the other direction so I didn’t have to look at them anymore.
Odd… as a skydiver, I’ve no qualms about jumping out’ve airplanes, but looking over a high cornice or a precipice induces mildly disorienting vertigo. No doubt there are profound psychgenic reasons for this discrepancy… conventional wisdom on this effect is probably not uninteresting.
About 30 yrs ago I heard an interesting theory about this phenomena from a professor at the Aviation Safety School at USC. His name was Chater Mason, and boy was he a character. He was a psychologist and hypnotist whose world-renowned expertise was interviewing aircrew, passengers and witnesses to aircraft accidents (often under hypnosis). He was to give a keynote address to the airline pilots’ union in Atlanta, and riding up the glass-walled elevator (in an atrium style lobby that went up to the roof). Many of the attendees were aircrew arriving together from flights into ATL. As he rode up, he noticed the flight attendants all had their noses pressed to the glass, oohing and aahing at the sight. The pilots all had their backs against the door, as far away from the glass as they could get. He found this curious, so he rode up and down again several times and the behavior repeated. This led him to build a survey for the pilot attendees and he used the results to form his speech. Over 90% of the professional pilots in attendance reported that they were “afraid of heights”. In his speech, Chater noted that the one psychological characteristic that stands out among pilots is their high control needs. They need to feel in control of their situation. Chater knew from aviation physiology that our sense of balance, how our ankles and feet work together (unconsciously) to keep us erect, comes mostly from eyesight… we perceive a “level” from the horizon that we can see and the body does it’s stuff. The inner ear has a smaller part (and when our sight is hindered by darkness or other things, it can mess with us) but it’s driven by our sense of the horizon. Well, on a precipice where the ground falls away, we perceive a false horizon, lower than the actual one. Our body wants to work toward that “level” so we unconsciously want to lean in towards the drop off. We know not to do it, so our mind fights that sensation… and we feel a little “out of control”. Pilots absolutely hate that feeling, and it doesn’t apply to them when they are in their pilot seats, with the stick in one hand, the throttles in the other and all the instruments in front of them… they feel completely in control then. And they need to. I’ve sense thought that the best explanation for fear of heights that I’d ever heard.
Doug Martin:
Fascinating!
Married to a commercial airline pilot. He doesn’t like heights.
I used to be ok, but since having children, I get giddy. If you have ever been to the WW2 Museum in New Orleans, there is a secondary building with old airplanes. You can take an elevator to the fourth floor. There is a sign in the elevator that warns anyone with vertigo not to exit on the fourth floor. I figured it couldn’t be that bad. It’s an actual floor with wide hallways and high rails to look down on the planes. Took me about 10 seconds to turn around and get back on the elevator. I don’t know why it was so bad, and I’d love an explanation from someone who has studied that building.
I’ve come to believe it’s the devil whispering the same temptation he presented to Christ.
If he can kill one person with such a simple nudge…