Why are so many people scared of heights?

I'm shit scared of heights, it's a common phobia, come at me.
 
It's not a fear that you can control. I get pretty shaky and light headed when I'm high up on something. Not something like the roof of my house, but some rides that go over 50-60 feet and a few bridges that I've been on.
 
I dunno, maybe because they can fucking kill you?
 
Also, there is a theory within the psychological community, one of the few truly upside-down theories that has ever come from them that I feel holds a deeper current of truth.

The theory is that those who are most afraid of steep heights are those who most desire to jump. It isn't actually the heights that they fear. It's of their own desire to die. They don't have to confront this interior dimension of their psyche until they are physically perched a few feet from an impulsive death spiral.

I always found that insightful as I am terrified of heights (though I can manage to look off skyscrapers and climbed higher than almost all the other kids as a child) as when I am not in control, I feel absolutely nothing at all. I actually giggle or outright burst into laughter when people scream during the most acute instances of turbulence on planes. This has resulted in some really nasty glares.

I just don't get it. What does screaming do? If the plane goes down there's no changing it (albeit that usually it's just people freaking out who have never sailed stormy northern or northeastern skies). I find that funny. Why be afraid of things you cannot control? How does one go about one's day without being terrified that death with strike from any corner? After all, we always talk about how "no man knows the hour", and all that.

Yet these same people, when in control of their own bodies, staring off the side of a short wall inside a tall building, one they could easily bound over in a swan dive to their death, feel nothing. Just being next to such a height terrifies me.


So that theory, the first time I heard it, gripped me. There was an electric truth to it that explained these discrepancies that nothing else could.
 
I'm not bad on a ladder, but open air anywhere real high up I get vertigo. It's not fear so much as debilitating anxiety. I'm not afraid with falling or dying on a rational level, but somewhere in my brain is an overpowering concern that tries to shut me down.

I was on the top level catwalk at the WW2 museum in New Orleans, walking among the planes 50-60 feet up, it's a narrow walkway with glass walls, and I literally couldn't move unless I had my right hand on the handrail. I couldn't even cross over and hold on with my left. It was dumb, but if I went back I'd guarantee the same damn thing would happen.
 
Shit like this is horrifying. I don't trust anyone who isn't afraid of heights

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Son of Jamin said:
One of my worst memories regarding height is when me and my younger stepbrother sneaked out on the roof on our apartment building . It was a twelve story high building and he decided to sit on the edge of roof and just dangle his legs and feet in air. It still haunts me to this day.
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I'll never understand how people do that.
 
mb23100 said:
The guy that's scared of four foot ladders completely loses his ability to think when he has to get around heights. He got in a position where he had to climb up an 8 foot a frame ladder once and he was so flustered he climbed up the side with the supports not the side with the steps. One broke and he fell and broke his wrist
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Now this made me laugh. He got so flustered by his phobia that he didn't even look to see which part of the ladder he was climbing. Talk about your self-fulfilling prophesies.
 
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