Ever since I started climbing, I never had a fear of falling. I have no fear of heights. I have no problem climbing 4 or 5 stories and then dangling there. You are totally safe, harnessed, tied to the end of a rope. You aren't going anywhere, even if you do fall. You only fall as far as the rope stretches plus the slack in the rope. I like my belayer to keep the rope tight so that when I do fall, I don't fall very far, if at all. Some people like more slack in the rope so they can move around more. Well. I really like the instructor who works at the climbing wall on Tuesday nights and that is why I am always trying to sneak out of work early. He works 4:30 to 6:30 so I have to go on the early side. After observing my climbing on Tuesday, his advice was that I need to push myself harder and fall off the wall. Well, so much for not being afraid to fall. All of a sudden, I had a fear of falling which totally caught me off guard. I usually come down off the wall at the point where I just know I can't go any farther because my arms are tired so I don't try. His advice for improving my climbing is to take the risk and fall. Climb until you literally fall off the wall. Well, he doesn't keep the rope very tight so falling kind of means falling.
Tuesday, there I was dangling off the wall, unable to hold on for much longer, begging for him to lower me down, and he basically refused to. Not basically, he flat out refused to. Now I don't know if that should make me mad or what. I haven't decided. He refused to pull the rope tight and let me down. He basically made me fall first. I had no choice because the only way off the wall was to let go and letting go meant falling because the rope wasn't tight.
Now I don't know if this cured my sudden fear of falling, or made it worse. We'll see on Tuesday.
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