Acrophobia

photo by shaari

Acrophobia is the extreme fear of height often confused with vertigo. While vertigo is a balance disorder that is often related to ear; acrophobia is more of a psychological thing that belongs to specific group of phobias related to space and motion discomfort. The sufferer is in danger as it might lead to panic attacks.

For different people the tolerance levels differ. For some the standing or climbing a building that of a certain height might trigger the attacks while for others at a mere height of climbing a chair might trigger it. This is a serious kind of phobia that can cause lots of obstacles in performing everyday activities. There have been extreme cases when a person who suffers from acrophobia may refuse to leave home (becoming agoraphobic) since they might have to face activities that involves working at heights.

All of us feel a mild discomfort at a certain height, and its not only limited to humans - animals exhibit this phobia too. While some believe that this is an inborn trait, the most likable cause and according to etiological studies is that it becomes uncontrollable usually after a traumatic incident that might have been caused in early childhood since experiments using visual cliffs had shown that we all are born with a certain degree of cautiousness at different heights to ensure that we do not fall which makes us agree on the traumatic incident theory.

An explanation I got for what causes this fear of height before after searching the internet (asking know it all aka Google) is that at certain height the person somewhat doesn’t rely on the natural sense of balance and instead rely on what we see while at that height. This usually can lead to vertigo and vomiting. At heights each of our movement requires more than that of the normal visual processing hence it becomes overloaded leading to confusion hence panic attacks.

While exposure treatment is one of those that may help an acrophobic it is sometimes stupid to advise upon it hence the fear might have been caused by a balance disorder. In exposure therapy the person is subjected to different height using a virtual reality system. However there are also cases in which mild cases can be treated with psychiatric medications like anti depressants. But honestly these may do more harm than good. till a more suitable treatment that is effective is found I will stick to the close you eyes and relax technique which works for MOST OF US SOMETIMES and but the best is to avoid heights.

"Yeah I suffer from acrophobia, the picture on the top of the post it self scares me enough to not look at it too long "