# I can't look up to the open sky without getting dizzy. Is there a name for this phenomenon? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 22, 2023, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544 "2023-11-22T18:08:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544/21 "2023-11-22T21:39:03Z")
From your link: > [@](#): > > ### What are the symptoms of vestibular neuritis? > > Typically, people with vestibular neuritis go through an acute phase and a chronic phase. In most cases, this means sudden, severe symptoms for about one week, followed by milder symptoms that last anywhere from a few weeks to several months. It’s rare, but some people develop long-term vestibular neuritis symptoms which last for years. Nah, this isn’t the case at all, I never had acute symptoms and medical problems with my inner ears in general. It’s just a quirk I’ve had since childhood, and it isn’t severe and doesn’t affect my life in any meaningful way (I just avoid to look straight up into the sky for more than a few seconds. Problem solved). Sure, it would’ve sucked if I had wanted to become a pilot, but I buried that dream already at age 11 when I got my first pair of glasses for short-sightedness. ---
**Author:** ![icantdraw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3ec8ea/32.png) [@icantdraw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/icantdraw)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2023, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544/22 "2023-11-22T23:39:56Z")
I think he was coming home from Yorkton. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2023, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544/23 "2023-11-23T02:33:32Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > Nothing. I stay orientated and balanced, no concerns. Outdoors, it’s like the vast sky overwhelms me. Thank you. That suggests to non-expert me a psychological cause, not phsyical. I grew up on the coast in California. Foothills and 2-3000m mountains and oceans and deserts. As a kid and teen I traveled to many foreign countries, but not to the middle USA. Post-college I drove across the extremely flat terrain of west Texas. Which, like @Northern_Piper’s Saskatchewan is so flat you can’t quite imagine it until you’ve seen it. It was vaguely but viscerally alarming and disorienting for the whole 12-ish hours I was awake and there. Still bothers me a bit to think about it now ~45 years later. I didn’t experience disturbance of balance, but I was disturbed by the experience. In short: I feel (something akin to) your pain. I can’t explain it, but I get where you’re coming from. ---
**Author:** ![eschrodinger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschrodinger/32/122_2.png) [@eschrodinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschrodinger)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2023, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544/24 "2023-11-23T02:55:32Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > I thought about vertigo, but I thought that was only the fear of heights. Surprised no one has commented on this. Vertigo is not fear of heights. Sometimes people who have a fear of heights might experience vertigo, but it is not limited to that at all. Vertigo is a symptom; it’s a sensation that you are spinning or the room is spinning. Depending on the severity, it can be essentially feeling dizzy, or it can feel like everything around you is moving, and you’re falling, and you literally have to hang onto a wall or you’ll literally fall down. So, whatever the cause of it is, I think the _sensation_ you described is vertigo. I wouldn’t be surprised if the cause was something psychological along the lines of feeling an overwhelming sense of discomfort at seeing the wide open sky. Or it could be less logical but functionally the same as that. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2023, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544/25 "2023-11-23T05:08:40Z")
Well, not so much where I live. The western end of the state is more flat like that, where more of the wheat is grown, But here in the east the ground tends to be rolling, with stubby hills. There’s a mounded hill my grandmother says is named Buffalo Mound because the rolling lines of the ridges gives the impression of the back of a bison. And there are rock features in some places that are quite remarkable. ---
**Author:** ![xtenkfarpl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c2a13f/32.png) [@xtenkfarpl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xtenkfarpl)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2023, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544/26 "2023-11-23T13:46:21Z")
> [@eschrodinger](#): > > Vertigo is a symptom; it’s a sensation that you are spinning or the room is spinning. I used to suffer from this for a while a few years ago. It was typically triggered by tilting my head to look upwards. I couldn’t do things like changing a light bulb or fixing a curtain rail, for example. Went to doctors about it but they couldn’t find any physical cause. Happily it more or less went away eventually & I hardly ever get it any more. ---
**Author:** ![EinsteinsHund](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/einsteinshund/32/8400_2.png) [@EinsteinsHund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EinsteinsHund)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2023, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544/27 "2023-11-23T13:48:20Z")
> [@eschrodinger](#): > > > [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > > > I thought about vertigo, but I thought that was only the fear of heights. > > Surprised no one has commented on this. Vertigo is not fear of heights. Sometimes people who have a fear of heights might experience vertigo, but it is not limited to that at all. Thanks for the correction. I blame Hitchcock for my misunderstanding. ---
**Author:** ![eschrodinger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschrodinger/32/122_2.png) [@eschrodinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschrodinger)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2023, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544/28 "2023-11-24T05:20:57Z")
I wondered if that was the cause, actually. I think Iay have drawn the same conclusion as a kid the first time I saw that movie. But I encountered the word enough after that to work out what it meant. ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2023, 8:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544/29 "2023-11-24T08:48:12Z")
Ok, I know what “vertigo” means, and I know what “acrophobia” means, but what is “high anxiety”? ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2023, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544/30 "2023-11-26T06:28:33Z")
It’s been mentioned a couple of times, but my first thought was agoraphobia: fear of open spaces. Probably more nuanced that that, usually utilized in books and movies and someone unable to leave their house, but there you are. ---
**Author:** ![Die\_Capacitrix](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/die_capacitrix/32/9_2.png) [@Die\_Capacitrix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Die_Capacitrix)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2023, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544/31 "2023-11-26T14:47:46Z")
> [@EinsteinsHund](#): > > As long as I can remember, I couldn’t look up into the open sky without getting dizzy and disorientated after a short while, I even sometimes loose my balance if I’m standing up. For the past few week I’ve had some hints of this, and I’ve been worried that my vertigo is coming back. I had vertigo a few years ago and I could barely walk due to the spinning sensation. I don’t want to go through that again. Since I had the vertigo I experienced a sudden asymmetric hearing loss which was investigated with a MRI. No tumor, fortunately. The random bouts of vertigo seem to be sticking with me, fortunately not as intense as some years ago. For the regard, I also grew up in a mountainous region and live in one now. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2023, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544/32 "2023-11-26T16:29:24Z")
> [@icantdraw](#): > > I think he was coming home from Yorkton. Possible, yes. 😀 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-cant-look-up-to-the-open-sky-without-getting-dizzy-is-there-a-name-for-this-phenomenon/993544.md?page=1)