Facing your fears
A love of the mountains is not always a straightforward affair, and a fear of heights can turn a magical experience into a hellish mangle of trepidation and panic. But there is an answer, and it’s a brain game that everyone can learn from.
Trail takes four readers on a revolutionary journey
“THE PRINCIPAL THEORY BEHIND THE MULTI-APPROACH PROGRAMME IS THAT THERE ARE TWO DISTINCT PARTS OF THE BRAIN”
Crib Goch. It’s all your fault. There I was, quite happily avoiding you. I’d decided pointy, exposed Snowdonian edges falling away into yawning nothingness were things I didn’t need in my life. But you had other ideas. Calling me. Mocking me. It wasn’t fair.
The twisting in my stomach, the sleepless, anxiety-filled nights, the tense, jerky movement across the rock and the lightheaded wooziness brought on by my fear of heights was becoming a problem. It was kinda embarrassing. What sort of mountain magazine staffer is scared of heights?
There had been a Jenga tower effect, with each negative experience chipping away at my resolve and leaving my confidence on exposed parts of the mountain in a wibbly-wobbly state. I finally toppled on Sharp Edge. It was my second crossing. The first had seen me in a naive state of enthusiasm before the fear had started to creep in. This time I had my dog Max with me and... my parents! In hindsight, perhaps the fact my dad had a fear of heights and had never done anything quite like this should have led us towards an easier route that day.
I don’t really remember anything about the route until the point of the ‘bad step’. There was a group of around six in front of us, slipping and sliding about in road running trainers. As we caught up with them one of the girls was crying hysterically. She was stuck and couldn’t make the move across that notorious exposed step across on the ridge.
As we waited, Dad had time to look around, and down, and things started to spiral out of control. Panic started to spread. My head started to spin. “What on earth do you think you’re doing bringing your dog [I think he really meant ‘dad’] up here?” I was thinking the same thing. He was angry and scared. I looked at my mum, and she was beginning to look worried too.
I just wanted to get off the ridge. Failing that I wanted to lie down as close to solid ground as possible and cry. It was a terrible feeling.
Eventually the other party turned back and went down. I’d lost all confidence in my hand- and footholds, and the steep drops were making every move seem death-defying. Somehow we reached the easier scrambling off the ridge, and at the top of Blencathra found huge relief, which by the evening had turned into some weird kind of triumphant wave of endorphins in which all was forgiven.
During the years after that experience, I had felt myself slip back into a safe comfort zone of mountain trips that avoided any stomach-flipping exposure. But, if I was honest, there had been something missing. The excitement, the buzz and that amazing feeling of being utterly unstoppable at the end of an epic experience.
When I joined Trail, I couldn’t ignore my problem any more. It seemed that no matter how much I tried to avoid it, Crib Goch wanted me to climb it. Then, Will4Adventure’s Fear of Heights course found its way into my web browser. The course for outdoor folk has been running for 12 years now, so Will and his team know a thing or two about this sort of stuff. What was more, I certainly wasn’t alone in my dilemma of whether to tackle or avoid the problem.
The psychology of why we seek out risk-taking pursuits is complex, but ultimately doing things that scare us a little produces a big ol’ dopamine hit: a natural high that gives us that amazing, even addictive, feeling. So those adrenaline-inducing moments are all part of the fun, and good for our mental wellbeing – we just have to learn how to keep our fears from spiralling out of control. Sounds simple.
So with a decision to face my fears made, and a distant hope to one day climb Crib Goch, I set off to the gritstone edges of the Peak District to meet Will and his team. I wasn’t alone: four Trail readers, Jinny, Danny, Julie and Mair – all of them limited in different ways from full enjoyment of the mountains by a fear of heights – won places on the course with me.
The brain hijack
The aim of the course was to free us from our irrational fear of heights. Phase one was ‘Operation Amygdala’, which began with some brain study. The principal theory behind the multi-approach programme is that there are two distinct parts of the brain. The amygdala (an acorn-sized area in the temple) controls your ‘fight or flight’ response. The frontal lobes control your rational thought processes. In lots of people the amygdala is a bit too keen to take over – and it dumps you into panic mode even when you are actually perfectly safe. So keeping your frontal lobes engaged for decision-making is key – and doing little exercises, like trying to recall your phone number backwards, can help with this. But what if your fear was sparked from an incident that’s left you mentally scarred? What if many experiences after that have compounded your fear, leaving you powerless to control that little acorn in your brain?
That’s where ‘neuro-linguistic programming’ (NLP) and ‘emotional freedom techniques’ (EFT) come in. Sat in Bamford Institute classroom, the five of us individually recalled and shared our most traumatic event at height. NLP involves the highly successful process of reliving the experience by replaying it as a ‘film’ in your head. The technique is often used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it has the effect of allowing the brain to process the thoughts, feelings and emotions that have become ‘stuck’, putting them in their rightful place.
EFT is slightly less easy to understand, as it involves repeating affirmations aloud while tapping pressure points on your head and body. It was a slightly strange experience for me, but one that has proved helpful for many.
Mantra for life
As we pulled on climbing harnesses and helmets ready to put our learning to the test in real-life situations outdoors, Will said to us: “Don’t let anticipation ruin your day.” Six simple words. Something clicked for me. I had struggled to explain my fears up until that moment. I realised it wasn’t so much the height I had become scared of – I was usually able to tackle what was in front of me – but the real killer was the anticipation. Through negative thinking and the anticipation of all the awful things that I might face (all of which were much worse than the real thing), I had somehow let the self-doubting and worrying me dictate. It was time to take control. My new mantra for mountains, and for life, was “Don’t let anticipation ruin your day.”
Through a series of progressive challenges involving the safety of an abseil rope at first, we built our confidence. Each person went through their own journey, and found and pushed new boundaries. There were tears, white knuckles, trembling and even nervous singing! But there was also relief, joy and progress. By the end of the first day every one of us had dangled over a 25-metre vertical quarry edge and done things we never thought we would be able to do.
Victorious, we reflected on Will’s advice over a drink at the Scotsman’s Pack Inn in Hathersage, where it emerged there was a second part to controlling anticipation. “See it for what it is. Then make a decision,” Will said. Maybe the first stage is just turning up at the start of the day. At each stage Will had urged us to think: consequences and probability. What are the consequences of a slip, for example? They could be high – a broken bone perhaps? But the probability of a slip when you’re fully concentrating on what’s happening could be low. Then, based on these logical assessments you make a decision about whether you feel confident to go on.
True grit
Waking up on the morning of day two I’d expected to feel nervous, but with my new mantra I found myself genuinely excited. It felt great. The famous gritstone climbing escarpment of Stanage Edge was our destination. Conditions were perfect for recreating a realistic typical mountain experience: grey, misty and damp.
Will announced that today we’d be ditching the safety blanket of ropes for a while. We were mountain walkers, not climbers, after all. Hmmm. I detected a waver in my resolve. Don’t – let – anticipation – ruin – my – day!
Donning climbing shoes for extra grip in the wet conditions, we practised ‘smearing’ techniques where we used just the friction of the soles of our shoes to move up the incredibly sticky gritstone. We learnt to trust our feet and balance our weight to move smoothly and
confidently on the rock before we headed onto our first scramble of the day.
Having upped our game on day one on the end of a rope, even without protection, the easier terrain of the scramble felt fun… and not in the least bit scary! I searched my stomach for that familiar twisting and uncertainty, but it just wasn’t there. One by one we scampered up and tottered down. We forgot we were on a fear of heights course: everyone was loving it!
Clearly we were all in need of a bigger challenge. Will led us to the top of the crag. The weather was still damp, but the mist was starting to break, and views out into the beautiful Peak District from our vantage point were revealing themselves. Our attention was soon brought back to the rock, though, when we arrived at our next challenge.
The rock-hop
Will had been getting us to leap along the path from rock to rock, and now it became painfully clear exactly why.
“It’s no wider than what you just jumped,” Will said. We all backed suspiciously away from the chasm between two huge rounded gritstone rocks that we’d just arrived at. The drop was getting on for 10 metres.
“You don’t have to do it,” Will said. “This is the one part of the course where I can’t guarantee your safety.”
I looked. Consequences?
Let’s just say a fall would not be good. Probability?
It was wide enough. A metre or just over. But I knew I could easily jump
that far. I’d just done it. The sides were slightly sloped into the void, but I trusted my feet on the grippy stone. I could do it…
…I did it! Then I did it again for a better photo. Twice was maybe enough though. All but one of us did it, too. With each challenge a new confidence was building for the next time we were faced with a ‘situation’ in the hills.
Appearances can be deceptive
We headed further north along Stanage Edge to higher, steeper parts of the cliff in order to tackle some steep descents similar to what we might find on a rough, high mountain. From a distance Will’s route down looked to be an impossible proposition. Lesson 1: always have a closer look. And indeed, as we got closer and down into the first part of the descent, the route to the bottom revealed itself. Step by step we negotiated a way down, reminded by Will – Lesson 2 – that it’s unwise to down- (or up-) climb into a position we were not able to reverse if necessary.
The descent took us to our grand finale – a graded rock-climb. Although we were on a rope again, the final test would be to cement the control of our minds and our movements when there was a 20-metre drop and nothing but air between our legs.
The five of us – me, Jinny, Danny, Julie and Mair – cruised our way up. It really was a revelation. We had started the course worried, frightened, full of self-doubt. We finished after just two days feeling like we could take on the world… and maybe even Crib Goch! It was an amazing feeling that I’m saving up and bottling to call upon for the future. This is the new me: the me that is not
scared of heights.