For a lot of time in my life I have had a significant fear of heights…. I have though about it for a long time and I have reached some conclusions about it that culminate in a specific numbers of actions that I am going to do today:

I thing that my fear of heights is hightly irrational… I say ‘hightly irrational’ because I don’t thing it is a baseless fear after all, there is a small, tiny, but yet significant part that we could label as rational about this fear: it is a fact, if you fall from a considerable height you will most problably suffer some consequences, and those bad consequences are going to be mostly proportional to the height that you fell of.

So it is somewhat rational, to have some, at least attention demanding, feeling when it comes to being in the presence of height; that feeling must correspond to the danger truly perceived from the external factors that theathen us and our true human capacity to deal with them.

The problem is of course that I feel this intense fear even in moments where there isn’t any danger: for instance, while in a swimming pool jump board. It just doesn’t make any sense! In this scenario this fear is complete irrational! I know it, I have managed to throw my self into the water from many considerable height, even as far as 12 or 15 meters of height (as good as my eyed mesured)

But if I have managed to do this jumps, why haven’t I surpassed it already? why does it keeps bugging me? Well, I have a theory, and I feel very confident to assert it:

I seems that I am a afraid that at those heights I would make a mistake, a missplace of one foot for example, and for that reason I will fall… Is true, of course, that if I make a mistake on this circunstances I will probably f*** my self, for example if I do something reckless while jumping I may raise the problabilities of injuring myself this way. But why even when I play it REALLY safe, just walking a straight line on the swimming pool jump board and letting my self fall at the very edge in no crazy position whatsoever, I still have this intense fear?

There is a HUGE problem with this nonsense… This is my conclusion: Well, it is actually the fear itself about falling that makes me tremble and feel insecure at the time of aproaching the edge, so: it is the fear itself that makes it insecure! What is this nonsense? My fear has grow into more fear and it doesn’t do anything to protect me, because in this case at least there is no real danger apart from my own feelins of fear.

I can walk perfectly, with cero problem in a straight line in the floor if I decide it and I can receive the impact of water after faling on it; then doing just that, walking a straight line and just letting my self fall to the water at the edge of the jump board shoudn’t provoque any fear at all… If being rational, I shoudn’t feel any less confident in doing this on the jumping board that doing it on the floor. I have the capacities, it is the fear it self, my insecurity that cause me troubles.

The problem is a personal insecurity issue. I can’t see any other explanation: deep within myself I feel insecure of my performance in certain aspects of my life. That’s why I feel so anxious all the time, but it is the fear it self that has conditioned me to fail in most of these moment. If I where more relaxed and rational I wouldn’t have made it barely, I would have made it like a boss.

I know this, but that doesn’t seems to change it, when I approach the jumping board I would feel the same fear, so: it is a subconscious mind insecurity. I have lived many experiences in which I have failed badly, I lived in my childhood a moment where I felt I could have died at faling from some place and for that reason I have the fear; but those moments are not this one. If I can manage to do this on a floor, I should be OK doing it on a jumping board, then what can I do?

So I have concluded, it is a fear that only can go throught experiencing it in the right way, by the same concepts of exposure that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy approves. I so I will expose my self! I will prove my self, to my subconscious mind/self that I am a capable man! That I can fail to do certain things, but for Christ sake, jumping from a f****** swimming jump board!?!? Man, sure I can do that!

I have taken steps to break free from this fear or insecurity and I have planned to do this for a long time and today is the day: Today I will throw my self of the swimming jump board 100 times if I have to, until I feel I have finally get a grap of this fear (if the pool is in service today, when I arrive to the sport club, of course).

I will arrive in a couple of minutes the the swiming pool, and I will use that jump board until the pool is closed if necesary, and keep with it tomorrow again if it’s not enought for today, and the next day, and the next day, etc. Until I have made it. I know because of experice in my life with other fears that I will at some poing finally see it gone for good, or make it so insignificat it’s not longer an issue in any way whatsoever. So I will see this gone for good at some moment too!

I understand my self for having had this fear all my life, this irrational fear, I don’t condemn me for having it, as a human being I am an imperfect being formed with limitations and reactions that may hinder my behavior caused by scars of deep emotions in the experiences of life, but that notwithstanding doesn’t mean that I can’t do things to improve, we all certainly can! There is a lot of potential in all of us and I have no reason to think that this madness will keep with me for ever, I don’t have to pressupose that, in fact if I do I make that reality true. So I will play my odds which by now I’m pretty sure are in my complete favor.

I have just now, at the time of writing this confession, walked in a straight line in the foor just to make a point to my subconscious mind/self: “This is all you(we?) have to do at the pool. Walk in a straight line, if you can do this right now, you can do this on the jump board… There is no reason for being insecure about yourself, it is your very own insecurity that binds you this fictional danger. You can do it, it’s just a straight line.”

I will do this, I depart to the swimming pool right now. I commit my self to comment here what I accomplish. I commit to my self this now.

Until the next post,