Man, I can't even go on a roller coaster. I hate heights. Don't get me wrong, I can drive over a bridge and ride an escalator so it doesn't impact my daily life at all. I can go on a plane and all that. It does bother me that I can't go on a roller coaster with my daughter, I just freeze. I also get motion sickness very easily which sucks. God created a guy that is not meant for amusement parks.
I can't stand heights as long as I don't see how high above the ground I actually am. Being on a skyscraper e.g. doesn't affect me at all but looking below from there give me the shivers. What is strange though is that I have no problems being on planes, on the contrary, I always want t seat at the window to be able to look outside...
I don't get motion sickness/seasickness at all but I have a very hard time getting to the edge of something where a fall would be fatal if other people are nearby. Ferris Wheels are a little difficult because I start thinking about the engineering and the possibility of an earthquake here in California. I think I don't trust other people to not do something stupid that would get me killed.. When I was in my twenties and doing a lot of cycling-karate-stunt falls I'd jump off things that were so high I sometimes got knocked out but it was my intuition, my choice as to what to jump off of. Once I decided to do a stunt fall I wasn't scared. I trust my judgement, but other people I don't trust....
I am fine sitting by a window on a plane or looking out a window in a sky scraper. I just cant deal with climbing on a roof,ladder, going on roller coasters or ferris wheels. Scares the hell out of me. Actually, i can climb a ladder, its coming down the ladder from a roof thats a problem, finding my footing.
I don't mind heights except in a few situations. We have a couple hundred foot waterfall here and when you are at the top on the way down there are some rocks right off the trail sticking out you can step out on and one wrong step and you plunge down all 200ft or whatever it is. I am the same as one of you said about it bothering me having other people around because what if someone slipped and bumped you or something. Now that I am a parent I am always nervous around heights when my son is with us (1.5 yo). We stayed on the 18th floor in a condo on the beach last week and my wife and I were paranoid anytime he went on the balcony. He never went out without one of us holding his hand because he likes to climb stuff, but still it is just nerve racking. When I go rock climbing I am usually good though. This winter I took a nasty fall and hurt my back really bad when bouldering. The person spotting me was talking and didn't move the pad below me. I fell and landed on my lower back on a rock. I've broken my L-5 before so my back is already in bad shape for my age. I never really fully recovered after breaking it. It always can be aggravated with the littlest stuff. Ever since then I'm not a big fan of bouldering lol.
Man, I can totally understand that. Though I don't have kids I can relate to what you are saying. When I was young my older brother always climbed trees and I was so worried that he might slip and fall. I can only imagine that as a parent it must be ten times tougher.
There used to be an observation area in a Chicago building where you could step into an enclosed glass area and look straight down. I don't consider myself afraid of heights, but that freaked me out. That was a long time ago. Not sure it's still there. I think it's a matter of degrees. BTW, possibly off subject, but when I'm in a Cessna 172 with my dad, I intuitively freak out a little when he climbs to 5 or 6 thousand feet, as opposed to 2000. But you actually have further to glide if something goes wrong when you're up that high. Anything over 100 feet, you're dead anyway. Enjoy the view.
You'd get over your fear...if you had this job - changing lights on 1000'+ towers! <iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/2A_h2AjJaMw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
In a 1942 paper, physiologist Hugh De Haven told of eight people who survived falls of 50 to 150 feet on dry land, many with only minor injuries. The common denominator: something to break the fall or soften the impact, such as loose dirt, the hood of a car, or, in one astonishing but verified case, an iron bar, metal screens, a skylight, and a metal-lath ceiling. In 1963, U.S. Marine pilot Cliff Judkins's chute didn't open after he bailed out of his crippled fighter. He fell 15,000 feet into the Pacific, suffered numerous broken bones and a collapsed lung, but lived. U.S. Army air force sergeant Alan Magee fell 20,000 feet from an exploding B-17 in 1943 and crashed through the skylight of a French train station. (A lesson emerges: Aim for the skylight.) Though his arm was shattered, he lived too. When his bomber was shot down in 1942, Soviet lieutenant I.M. Chisov fell 22,000 feet into a snowy ravine. He was badly injured but recovered. Luckiest of all was RAF flight sergeant Nicholas Alkemade, who leaped from his burning bomber in 1944 without a parachute at 18,000 feet. After a 90-second plunge, he crashed through tree branches in a pine forest and landed in 18 inches of snow. His only injuries: scratches, bruises, burns, and, in some accounts, a twisted knee.