Acrophobia: The Fear of Heights

One of the most common fears known to man, and one of the most consistently misnamed, is the fear of heights. Incredibly often, when fear of heights is mentioned, people will say “Ah, yes. Vertigo.”. They will be wrong to do so, because vertigo is not in fact the fear of heights. Although it is often caused by a fear of heights, vertigo is actually a physical sensation that makes someone feel as though they are spinning when they are not. The correct term for the phobia which is caused by heights is in fact Acrophobia.

It was felt for a long time that the reason for acrophobia was that sufferers associated high places with an unpleasant experience involving heights as a child, or to an incident they had heard of. Recent studies however suggest that this is not strictly true, and in actual fact that acrophobia is one of the phobias which is actually innate. We – or some of us, anyway – suffer from acrophobia because our evolution has taught us that heights have negative connotations.

In the present day, there is little or no reason why anyone who has not taken the decision to do so themselves should ever be in a position where there is a specific danger from the height they are at. Of course, height in and of itself poses no primary danger. That is to say that 1860 feet of height will not kill us, but if we fall from it, the fall is likely to – and if that doesn’t do it, then the landing is likely to finish the job. However, as cities and towns have come to be built in the most accessible places, there are few of us who cannot avoid being at such a height.

That, of course, is far from the full story. A phobia does not cease to be a problem because you remove yourself from the situation in which is might directly affect you. A phobia is an irrational fear after all. People who suffer from severe acrophobia may be affected if they hear a work colleague talk about their holiday, where they went on to the observation deck at the CN Tower and looked down. Even the thought of gargantuan (and comparatively small) heights can be problematic to someone with acrophobia. Then there is the part of a phobia which can be even more destructive – it makes us change our behavior.

Say you are fresh out of college and applying for jobs to put your newly-gained diploma to work for you. You strike out with the first couple of applications, and then you get a letter inviting you for an interview. It’s your dream job, it’s the culmination of your study, it’s on the 11th floor. Because you have become conditioned to avoiding heights, you may feel that you cannot attend the interview or take the job. This is how acrophobia and many other phobias really infringe upon a person’s life – by forcing changes in behavior which, if unchecked, can become all-encompassing. This is why exposure therapy may well be necessary to break down your phobia.

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