Objective Reality Question

Factual Questions
1

I was watching a TV show that included some shots from the roof of a castle in Germany. While I don’t have a true phobia of high places, they do make me feel uncomfortable. When I look out of an airplane window I feel fine, but if I look over the edge of tall building I start to feel unsteady and back away immediately.

My question is this. I understand willful suspension of disbelief, but this wasn’t a movie I had been watching for 2 hours. In fact I was hardly paying any attention to the show, but once I glanced over and saw the part showing the view from the top of the building to the ground I started to feel very uncomfortable, as if I was on the roof. I told myself that it was just a TV show, and that I wasn’t in any real danger of falling, but that didn’t matter.

Why couldn’t I convince myself of the reality of the situation and ignore the fact that what I was seeing wasn’t real?

2

I believe there’s something to the psychology of noticeable parallax in “the wrong direction” (i.e. downwards).

When you’re in a plane, surrounded by a cabin and not undergoing any acceleration, there’s nothing but your logic to remind you that you’re actually moving at 600 mph, seven miles above the earth. Looking out the window, you may see a canopy of clouds or the diminished earth below, but there’s nothing grounding that distance between you. No leading lines of parallax that you might get looking off the ledge of a skyscraper, or the shift in parallax of vision between your feet on the ledge and the cars in the street below. At that height, in a plane, you’re just far too high up to notice any parallax.

Even though, rationally and logically, you know you’re not there physically when you see such a thing on television or at the movies, the illusion is still persistent and effective at some lower level of the brain, and can still induce vertigo.

3

I am a private pilot, but one day was driving a truck down near the Mississippi River and looked up and I was at a cliff looking down 40 ft to the river and panicked. I almost didn’t get the brake down in time.

4

I’ve experienced the same thing as the OP. Aircraft, no problem. Edge of a bridge, um no. If I’m roped in, that’s cool. No problem with repelling.

My wife is a bit the opposite. Airliners are no fun for her (she doesn’t panic or anything, we fly a few times a year). Hanging her toes off a fall to certain death, no problem.

Seems to be a control issue for both of us. Just a bit different.

5

Fear of falling may actually be fear of jumping, i.e. fear of possession by an imp of the perverse. To experience fear on an airplane you need to sit next to the emergency door handle and imagine yourself lunging to open it. (Never mind that the door cannot be opened in flight. Supposedly.)

My fear is so great I sometimes still made a fool of myself in middle age.

My whole family of orientation was afraid of heights; I think I was the worst. I don’t know why we visited Capilano Suspension Bridge in Vancouver one summer long ago but of course none of us walked on it. Except my young brother who didn’t yet know he was afraid of heights. He froze, petrified, half-way across. I did retrieve him. (That vacation ended very badly, but for other reasons.)

6

There’s a part of your brain devoting to identifying shadows in images, correcting the colours seen in the image in or near the shadow, and interpreting shadow shapes as animals or enemy. Thus the shadow optical illusions… this colour is the same as that ? no its just that your brain has picked up a shadow and made corrections… You have little conscious control over it.

There’s a part of your brain devoting to identifying cliff edges and making you feel nervous and telling you to act cautiously when near them. You have little conscious control over it.

None of this means that the autonomous part is better at determing Objective Reality … it did so based on the subjective… The image on the tv is of course only subjectively a cliff near you…

7

I used to think I had acrophobia, fear of heights. But, like the OP, I’m fine in an airplane. A little less fine in a helicopter or ski lift or ferris wheel. On the other hand, I get a little light-headed standing on something to change a ceiling light bulb. I have to brace myself on the ceiling with the other hand. So this has nothing to do with heights, but actually vertigo. Not at all the same thing. And if I’m near the edge of a tall building, I’m fine looking down, but looking up gets my head spinning around. I was at the top of the Empire State Building, and also the Eiffel Tower, and was trying to look up to get a photo of the transmission hardware at the very top. I could only do it if my back was firmly planted against something solid. So it’s not heights, but vertigo.

8

Hey, I’ve had this feeling - when snorkelling. Starting in shallow waters and then getting out to the edge of the reef where it falls away into a dark ocean abyss. Hubby had to hold my hand as I approached with some trepidation. But it’s not like you can fall, you’re snorkelling and floating. My brain knew that! But the sensation was just like being on the edge of a three story drop, I swear.

9

Much more of our neurology is hard-wired and subconscious than people generally assume. Certainly fear of falling is likely a very “low-level” and “primitive” instinct (in the sense that it probably was evolved many millions of years ago and changed little since).

When you’re standing over a precipice, it’s not (just) the realization that if you were to fall, you’d be horribly injured or die. It’s the hard-wired circuit that says <this visual stimuli> maps to <panic>. Hence why you can be scared by an amusement park ride, even though the drive to the amusement park probably had greater risk of injury.

Consciously, it doesn’t make sense being scared of something you see on TV. But similarly it doesn’t make sense that some people feel nervous seeing a harmless house spider. But you don’t get to choose such impulses.

10

Right, Mijin.

Falling scares the hell out of me, so I like to do it for the fun of it. I confess I didn’t quite realize how scared it made me until my brother showed me a picture of me jumping off a say 12’ rock into a river. It looked like The Scream.

I remember trying to jump at Natural Arch Park in Australia. I don’t know how far it was, I’d guess 30 feet but I’m sure it was probably closer to half that, but it was the farthest I’d ever jumped. I had the damnedest time convincing my body to comply with my intention to step off the cliff and drop. My body simply refused to go out over that spot where there wasn’t any land to walk on. I had to sorta trick my body by keeping one foot on and knees together and sort of shuffling off (I be that looked silly).

The second time I jumped, I decided I’d try to pull my arms down by my side as I fell rather than allowing them to reach for the sky as I fell. I discovered that I was literally scared stiff: I couldn’t move as every muscle in my body was firing full force. On the third jump I was prepared for that and managed to pull my arms down, but they went slowly and it took all my willpower to make it happen. On the fourth jump I somehow managed to get water up my nose and hurt my ears, so that was the end of that!

I subsequently learned that to help override the instinct … as they say in all those movies … DON’T LOOK DOWN. Doh! Looking at the point opposite (i.e., the horizon) makes it a lot easier! Silly me not to think of that myself.

My wife is a strong swimmer but won’t swim in anything but a pool. Even clear sandy Lake Huron water on a calm day, if she starts to wade out into the water, primal fear sets in. She knows it’s completely irrational.

Irrational fears aren’t imaginary. I’ve learned that it’s not just silly but downright rude (and ignorant) to belittle someone’s irrational fear. It’s just not controlled by volition.

That said, you can have fun with it, if you have the right attitude! Cheap thrills!

The physically most fearful moment of my life was sitting in the front row of the Cedar Point Millennium Force roller coaster as it accelerated up and over the precipice, on the first run of the day. I had to go to my safe place for a moment. I’m happy to say I didn’t need a change of clothing. I applauded myself that when we did it again at the end of the day, I was able to hold my hands over my head … though I wasn’t in the front seat, which made that a lot easier.

Oh wait, no. The scariest was a bus ride up to whitewater rafting. The little bus had a very short wheelbase so it could navigate the sharp turns on the winding trail up to the put-in. Silly me, I’d sat in the far back outside corner. When it went round those curves, I was hanging out over space. I had to keep reminding myself that they did this all the time and rarely killed anyone. The whitewater rafting was fun, too.

11

I experience this when I open Google Earth and pick some place to go to. I have to look away when the picture zoooooooms into whatever location I’m headed to.

12

As others have said, the fear of falling is built in.

I recall an article (Scientific American? Psychology Today?) that described putting various subjects on a glass floor; half the area was checker-board pattern underneath the glass, the other half of the area, there was a drop of about 6 feet and then a floor, all the same black-and-white checkerboard pattern so it was obvious the visible floor fell away, but the glass floor was solid and extended level. they observed what different subjects did. Even crawling babies, like most animals, decided not to venture onto the glass transparent floor. Their feeling told them the floor was solid, but their vision said it was not. Fear of falling is very deeply hard-wired.

The IMAX people did some studies many years ago to develop IMAX. What they said was that beyond about 20 feet, binocular vision in humans is irrelevant; we tell real real from movie real (or in Phantom of the Paradise “I know real real from drug real”) by the quality of the image. By using a negative several times larger, and getting a picture much sharper, that fills much of the subject’s vision, the eyes fool the brain into thinking the picture is real. Sitting close to a Hi-def TV might have the same effect. You can even have the eyes fool the brain into imagining motion where there is none.

(When they were planning to show an early Imax movie to Queen Elizabeth II many years ago, they first showed it to Indira Ghandi on her state visit. She vomited during the Roller Coaster scene, so they deleted that from the Queen’s viewing. )

Yeah, I have no problem with sitting in a plane (have pilot license) and can even dance on a glass floor in the Sears Tower or CN Tower. However, leaning over a rail high up can be a little freaky, and my comfort level on a ladder depends on how sturdy the position is; this indicates there’s a certain amount of frontal lobe processing involved too. I am very concerned going up a 17-foot extension ladder, but I can climb several stories if it is a metal ladder embedded in the brick. I can lean against what I see to be a solid railing, but will not want to put my toes over the open edge of a tall building.

13

I don’t fear falling, I fear landing on a hard surface.

14

Thanks everyone. It sounds like the fear of falling is hardwired and there is really no way to override it.

I assume that people who clean windows on skyscrapers or who work on bridges or tall buildings somehow suppress their natural fear over many months/years of working at those heights.

It still freaks me out when I get that weird pit in my stomach even though I know I am watching my flat screen TV.