In reply to:
This is something I have been working on for a long time, I get really scared when climbing, or even when I know I am going to climb.
It's not just the fear of heights, but of all the little things that can happen, from falling to my death to cutting my hands in a jam.
So I thought, how can I control my fear? and i meant control, not shove away, or ignore.
I thought about how I would do it, systematically. It went like this:
The next time someone did something that would usually REALLY annoy me, I didn't let it. I didn't ignore it, or hide it, I didn't let myself get annoyed. this was hard at first, and i found myself hiding the annoy rather than eliminating it.
Then, every time this happened, I made myself happy. I didn't just small and be glad, on the inside I was truely happy.
I found this REALLY difficult. But this next part seemed impossible.
The next time I got in an argument, or someone was agressive, or anything that would make me ANGRY, I tried to controll it. But this is harder, as the hormone release in your body is immedate, making you more aggressive, more defensive. What I had to do was controll my brain, not let this happen, not let myself register these things as a queue for anger. That was hard, but I still sturggle with this: when someone is aggresive to me, I make myself see it as doing something nice, and I make myself happy.
Once I could controll these relitivly simple emotions, I started on the fear. I wasn't trying to overcome my fear, to ignore my fear, simply to eliminate it. Obviously not all of it, the fear off death is ever present, and impossible to remove (Ignoring this fear, or overcoming it is actually where one of my main enjoyments of climbing comes from). The fear I was trying to remove was the irrelivent, distracting fear, the fear of highstepping with a bomber hand jam and having you foot shooting off, hurting your wrist. Fear of breaking your fingers when locking. even the little fears like jarring your fingers missing a pocket, or the pain of foot jamming in anasazis. Thats right, this even helped me ignore pain more.
With all of these minions aside, I could do battle with the real fear; death from falling.
Needless to say, I am far more relaxed and enjoy my climbing way more now, and I climb harder than ever.
-Magnus
