What is Acrophobia about?
For most people, acrophobes are people who are very afraid as soon as they stand on high places.
Before the topic today, let's first look at a group of pictures:
Image source: pic.rmb.bdstatic
Image source: hotviewb
Adventure enthusiasts rest in high-altitude hammocks at ease. Image source: news.66wz
Do you feel dizzy and shivering when seeing these pictures, and even can't help complaining that you suffer from the attack of acrophobia again?
Today, let's talk about acrophobia.
Is Fear of Standing on High Places Acrophobia?
For most people, acrophobes are people who are very afraid as soon as they stand on high places. But as a matter of fact, fear of heights is a reaction that can happen to everyone, although some are severe, and others are mild. What's more, this fear may happen when we are very young.
Eleanor J. Gibson and Richard D. Walk, the U.S. Psychologists, once did a “visual cliff experiment” on babies. In this experiment, they create an illusion of “visual cliff” by using different patterns, then covered it with glass and let the babies climb over from one side of the fake cliff.
A mother is encouraging her baby to climb the “visual cliff”, but the baby is reluctant to move on. Image source: Wikipedia
In this experiment, the baby's mother called the baby on the other side of cliff, and even allured it with attractive toys, but the baby was unwilling to climb over the “cliff”. Some babies beat the glass and knew that it was not empty underfoot (wasn’t that like a glass skywalk?), but they still refused to move on. Apparently, they had begun to fear heights.
In reality, not just little Homo sapiens are afraid of heights, other animals are also not much better. Researchers have used mice, chickens, cats, pigs, dogs, sheep, monkeys and other animals to do similar “visual cliff” experiments, and most animals avoided the “cliff”.
From this perspective, fear of heights is more like a survival mechanism that is conducive to individuals, which can help us (and other animals) avoid risks.
Now that fear of heights is normal and can even good for survival, why does acrophobia exist? This is because the fear of heights is not equal to acrophobia.
Fear of heights is more about being alert to danger and believing that heights are not safe enough (e.g., on the verge of a cliff). If people can be sure that they are safe, they will generally feel less afraid. Acrophobia, on the other hand, is a specific phobia and a type of anxiety disorder. Acrophobes may experience a strong sense of anxiety at high places. Even if they know that they are in safe environments, they feel panic involuntarily and lose confidence in their sense of balance. They are eager to lower their center of gravity (squat down or even go prone) to seek safety. What's more, they may also experience physiological reactions, such as trembling, sweating and palpitation, and even the inability to think normally in severe cases.
How to Judge Whether You Have Acrophobia or not
Now that fear of heights is different from acrophobia, how can we tell whether it is normal for us to be afraid of heights?
In addition to the aforesaid symptoms, such as dizziness and panic at high places, above all, acrophobes can experience anxiety because of fear of heights acrophobia, and worry about normal life situations that might put them at high places. For example, if a friend lives on the top floor, acrophobes will try to avoid going to his house to play, and if there is a mountain climbing in the company's group activities, acrophobes will try not to join in.
In addition, such kind of fear and anxiety of acrophobes is often ill-matched with the potential danger imposed by actual situation. That is to say, if a person is in a truly dangerous situation (e.g., to climb a barren mountain without roads), such kind of panic cannot be regarded as acrophobia.
Furthermore, acrophobes' fear of heights is persistent, and generally clinically not significant until it lasts for at least six months. In other words, if you're suddenly afraid of standing on the verge of a cliff because you watched Zhang Dongsheng pushing his parents-in-law down a hill in The Bad Kids, that's probably not acrophobia. After all, you may forget what has happened on TV in a few days and stops being afraid.
In fact, genuine acrophobia is not common, and it is more for safety reasons. If you have trouble judging whether you are afraid of heights, there is an easy way out: to think about whether your acrophobia has affected your normal life. If not, don't worry. Even if you are afraid of heights, that is within normal limits. If so, whether it is acrophobia or fear of heights induced by other reasons, you should consider seeking help from professional doctors.
I'm Afraid of Heights. Is There any Cure?
What should you do if you know you have acrophobia?
Perhaps someone will say acrophobes can just refrain from going to high places and there is no need for treatment. In the short term, this is indeed a solution, but acrophobia will also restrict patients' life and range of motion and lead to anxiety, which can't simply be solved by staying away from heights. Moreover, once acrophobes are at high places (sometimes inevitable), they are likely to make some unsafe moves out of panic, which imposes real danger to themselves. So instead of avoiding heights passively, acrophobes should seek active treatment. After all, acrophobia is a kind of anxiety disorder and a disease to be treated professionally. It is not because you are not bold or brave enough and there's no need to feel ashamed.
How to treat acrophobia? Available treatment methods at present include cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy and pharmacotherapy, etc. Among them, cognitive behavioral therapy can be used to treat almost all specific phobias. The basic principle is to let patients learn and grasp skills to regain control of emotions and stopp panic after being exposed to a dreadful environment (e.g., a high place), and then gradually get rid of fear of specific things. Exposure therapy, as the name suggests, is to let acrophobes constantly challenge and adapt to heights. Of course, this process is progressive. For pharmacotherapy, sedatives or some receptor blockers are used to relieve the fear and anxiety of patients in a short time under certain circumstances, and are mostly used as a short-term adjuvant therapy. As to specific treatment methods, doctors need to decide according to individual conditions of patients.
Now, judging from your own situation, are you acrophobe or simply afraid of heights?
