Facing My Fear of Heights
I’m scared of heights.
Or at least, I think that’s what I should call it. I use the term fear of heights loosely because it doesn’t quite capture the specifics of what I feel. It’s not a universal fear—I’m fine climbing a ladder or standing on a high balcony. Maybe it’s more of a “fear of falling,” one that mainly manifests when I’m out hiking. But even that doesn’t fully explain it. It’s not just the thought of falling—it’s the exposure, the loss of control, the very acute awareness of my own mortality. Whatever the right label is, it’s there, and it’s powerful enough to make me freeze in situations I once handled without a second thought. But for ease, let’s call it a fear of heights.
I didn’t always have this fear. I’ve never been one to stand on the edge of a cliff just for the thrill of it, but for most of my life, I had a normal relationship with heights—cautious but not anxious.
I can’t put my finger on when that started to change, but there was a marked shift during our second year in Switzerland. That summer, while Raunaq and I were on a hike, I found myself completely rattled in the middle of crossing a particularly narrow pass. It was the first time I remember experiencing what would become an all-too familiar sensation: physically tensing up, fighting the urge to cry, and just feeling overwhelmed with the fact that I was absolutely, certainly, definitely going to fall and die.
Even though I was able to pull myself together and finish that hike, the damage was done. What had once been a vague, quiet anxiety crystallized into a full-fledged fear. And just like that, a piece of my hiking identity shifted. I was scared of heights.
This may be surprising to some readers. How can someone who hikes as much as I do be scared of something so fundamental to the experience? And truly, it was just as baffling to me. I felt like a living paradox: with every passing season, I grew physically stronger - my legs more powerful, my stamina better than ever - but mentally, I was somehow getting weaker. I would find myself unraveling more and more quickly, getting panicky even in relatively harmless situations.
Slowly, my world of possibilities in the mountains began to shrink. I started avoiding ridge hikes I deemed too exposed, stopped attempting more challenging alpine trails, even found myself triggered at the mere mention of the word cliff. I very quickly learned the term schwindelfrei (which literally translates to “free from giddiness,” but means having a “head for heights”), and any trail that required schwindelfreiheit was met with an immediate nope. And while all this was happening, I was also internally reassuring myself that this was temporary. “It’s OK.” I’d think. “This is just a phase. One day, this won’t bother me anymore.”
I told myself I was simply accepting the situation, but in truth, I was reinforcing the limits my fear had created. Worse, this anxiety began creeping into other parts of my life, shaping how I approached challenges overall. To put it bluntly: it sucked.
I knew it was finally time to do something about it. What I did isn’t revolutionary, but I’ve always found value in learning from others’ experiences. Here’s what worked for me.
Stop Letting It Fester
I realized that if I ever wanted to move past this fear, I had to make the conscious decision to confront it. It sounds simple, almost too simple, but in practice, it was a profound and powerful act. For years, I had convinced myself that I was “working on” my fear, but in reality, all I was doing was acknowledging its existence and waiting for it to disappear on its own. It never did. Instead, I was just letting it sit there, festering, like wound left untreated. Recognizing that the fear wasn’t going to be magically cured—and accepting that I would need to actively and intentionally work through it—marked a pivotal turning point.
If I could give anyone struggling with a similar fear one piece of advice, it would be this: make the decision to stop letting it fester. Do it today. Say it out loud. I literally looked at myself in the mirror one day and said “I’m done being afraid.” Confronting your fear doesn’t mean it will disappear overnight, but making the choice to face it is the first, and most crucial, step. This single decision shifted my perspective and set the wheels of change in motion. Pretty powerful stuff.
Do It Scared (Exposure Therapy)
I decided that my new motto was: “If you can’t fight the fear - do it scared.” Essentially, exposure therapy: a classic strategy of tackling fears by breaking the cycle of avoidance through repeated exposure. When people say they are working through their fear of something, it is usually through this method. It’s an inescapable part of the process (insert scared monkey emoji here).
For me, this basically meant I had to start saying yes to all those “scary” trails I’d been avoiding for the past two years. Fun.
I started small. My fear wasn’t completely crippling, so I began by doing things I knew hadn’t scared me in the past: walking across long suspension bridges that stretched high above gorges (and eventually forcing myself to stop in the middle and look down - ugh), repeating ridge hikes I knew weren’t overly treacherous, and the like. Bit by bit, I moved my way up to more challenging hikes. With all of them, I tried to deliberately pause and acknowledge the uneasy feelings that arose, and then move forward anyway. None of these activities made the fear vanish. I was still scared—sometimes very scared. But something small and significant began to happen: teeny-tiny seeds of courage were planted, shifting from the definitive “I won’t” and “I can’t” to “I did.” And sometimes, even, “I did, I didn’t die, and it was actually kinda fun.” It’s a rewiring of the brain.
Let me be clear: this process is deeply, deeply uncomfortable. But courage, friends, isn’t the absence of fear; it’s the decision to move forward in spite of it. And each time I couldn’t fight the fear but still did it scared, I was reclaiming a little bit of my confidence. One step, one bridge, one cliffside at a time.
Try Rock Climbing
This is a fairly specific form of exposure therapy, but one I am convinced is very effective.
I’ll admit, I had a bit of a head start here. Before moving to Switzerland, I had a background in rock climbing—I bouldered and top-roped fairly regularly. But when I moved here, I stopped climbing altogether, and in hindsight, I wonder if that gap contributed to my growing fear. By stepping away from the practice, I inadvertently lost a key tool that had helped me build confidence and manage my relationship with heights.
About a year and a half ago, I decided to revisit climbing and joined a local gym. I started with bouldering, easing back into the motions and regaining some familiarity with the sport. Before long, I transitioned to top-rope climbing, and eventually, I challenged myself with a lead climbing course. Each step pushed me a little further outside my comfort zone, but it also helped me rebuild the trust I had lost.
And that’s where I believe the true power of rock climbing lies: in the cultivation of trust. It help me rebuild confidence in myself—trusting that I tied in correctly, that I had the skills to climb, and that I could stay calm under pressure. I’ve always seen climbing as a practice in mindfulness, because in order to be focused on the task at hand (i.e. getting up the wall), you can’t let yourself be distracted by anything else. But it’s also a practice in trusting yourself. Without realizing it, I was shifting my relationship with heights to a sense of capability, and after a while, enjoyment.
I genuinely believe that indoor rock climbing is one of the best ways to expose yourself to heights in a safe and controlled environment. Top-rope climbing, in particular, is incredibly secure and is really helpful at “desensitizing” your mind to being off the ground. Give it a try. If you live in Zürich, I’ll take you!
Figure Out Your Coping Mechanisms
(For when you start freaking out, which you inevitably will at some point).
Personally, I have two: deep breathing and singing.
First, breathing. Again, nothing revolutionary here, but focused breathing really works when I need to calm myself down. Four deep breathes in, four deep breathes out, repeat. It’s especially helpful when I feel panic creeping in but still need to stay focused to navigate a situation safely.
Singing, well, this is my own fun trick. Sometimes when I’m nervous, I’ll sing or hum a song to myself. Just whatever happens to be stuck in my head at the moment. Normally, it’s just a few bars that I’ll repeat over and over - I find the repetitiveness helps, too. I don’t know why this works, but it does. Maybe because it’s not too distracting, but just distracting enough? When I told a friend that I did this, he told me that in the brain, the chemical that produces anxiety is the same chemical that produces excitement. Singing can help shift the body’s perception—turning that anxious energy into a sense of excitement instead. I’m not sure if that is true or not, but it feels true, and that’s good enough for me.
Rational vs. Irrational
This, for me, is one of the most important concepts: differentiating a rational fear from an irrational one. But it’s easier said than done. In the mountains, there are definitely situations where fear is a healthy and necessary response—where conditions are genuinely dangerous, and turning back is the smartest choice. In these moments, listening to fear is not only justified, but essential for safety. This, in itself, is an incredibly important outdoor skill.
However, the reality is that most of the time, my fear isn’t rooted in actual danger. Instead, it’s a reaction to a challenging situation—one I have the strength and skills to navigate, even if it feels overwhelming in the moment. The problem is that the physical sensations to fear, both real and imagined, can feel the same - and it’s tough to distinguish between the two. How do you tell if you’re turning back because it’s truly dangerous, or just because you’re afraid?
Figuring this out is deeply personal. It requires a strong sense of self-awareness—you need to intimately understand your fears, your abilities, and your limits. At the same time, it demands a willingness to pause in the moment and assess the situation objectively. I rationalize with myself, asking questions like: Am I reacting to an immediate, tangible danger, or am I just feeing overwhelmed? Is this situation really unsafe, or is my mind exaggerating the challenge in front of me? Realistically, even if I slip, am I really going to fall off the edge, or would it take a cartoonishly clumsy trip for that to happen? This thought process doesn’t always go smoothly. Sometimes my “rational” evaluation is more along the lines of: “OK, worst-case scenario—do I die, or just end up breaking a few bones?” But over time, I’ve gotten better at recognizing when my fear is protecting me versus when it’s just holding me back.
Be Proud of Yourself
It’s almost impossible to convey to someone without this fear just how difficult it is to get over. You brain is sounding off every alarm bell, screaming at you: “You are unsafe! Something bad is going to happen! You are going to DIE.” When I say something like “just do it scared,” trust that I’m not saying it flippantly: I know how terrifying it can be.
So celebrate the victories, big and small. You are doing a really hard thing, and some days will be harder than others. Progress is never linear—there will always be setbacks and moments of doubt—but every step forward, no matter how tiny, is making a difference. At the risk of sounding insanely cheesy, there will come a moment when you’ll look back and truly see how far you’ve come. And you’ll feel really, really proud of yourself.
As for me, I had lots of tiny victories this year, but also two big notable breakthroughs. The first was completing my first T4 alpine trail, a type of trail that I had previously been too nervous to try. This one was even more exposed than I anticipated. But I felt strong and confident, and yes, a little scared, but I didn’t let it rattle me and most importantly, I didn’t let it stop me. I even, dare I say, had fun with it. At the top, I felt like a freaking superhero, with an endorphin high that literally lasted for days.
The second was in September. Raunaq and I were on a section of a trail that was a very narrow traverse along the mountainside, with a steep drop to one side. I remember waiting for the fear to hit - and then, realizing that it wouldn’t. I wasn’t afraid. Raunaq even commented how surprised he was, that he was even a little nervous himself. “You’re back to your old self,” he said.
I may not be entirely back to my old self yet, but I’ve reclaimed a sense of freedom I hadn’t felt in a long time. It’s as if a whole world has opened up, and honestly, I kind of feel like I can do anything. Confronting this specific fear reminded me that I’m capable of tackling all kinds of challenges that once felt insurmountable. Just as my fear of heights once seeped into other parts of my life, this newfound confidence has started to inspire me to take bold steps in other areas, too. It was the catalyst I needed.
And this—this is really why I hike. For moments like this. For the chance to push myself, to grow, and to experience the profound sense of accomplishment that comes with confronting my limits. It’s not just about the stunning views or the physical exercise, though those are certainly part of it. It’s about the emotional victories, the mental breakthroughs, and the reminder of what I’m capable of when I don’t let fear hold me back. Turns out, it’s quite a lot.
