You can try working up from floor level: find an easy problem with huge holds, go up a few feet, jump off, go up a little higher, jump off, etc. etc.. Just gently pushing the edges of your comfort zone, getting more experience with how falls feel and building more confidence in your ability to land a jump/fall safely on the mats.
For fear of specific falls -- e.g. if you've already come off a problem and had a big/scary fall -- I have some tips.
Stuff that works for me:
*Treating the psychological element as part of climbing, and part of specific problems. So, working with fear is part of the climbing experience, not something you have to get out of the way before you get on with the climbing. And when a bouldering problem is scary, that's part of the problem. I've noticed that some route-setters are excellent at setting problems which are physically not difficult to do, but scary as fuck because they have a big move right at the top of the wall, or force you into a position which feels precarious or awkward. That's part of the problem, just as having tricky technique-y moves or horrible slopers is.
*Absolute permission to back off. Sometimes I'm in the right mindset to push myself into things that feel scary (I was yesterday, and had a terrifying but awesome time), and sometimes I'm not. Sometimes it feels right to get back on a problem immediately after a scary fall (on the "get back on the horse" basis); sometimes it feels better to go do something else. Sometimes I can do something scary for a while, but then get shaky and drained and need to go climb something less psychological. It helps to give myself permission to play it by ear. Ultimately, if I'm not enjoying it (at least on some masochistic level), there's no point. And the less pressure I feel, the braver I'm likely to be.
*Going up and experimenting. Sometimes it helps to climb up to the tricky point and just feel how it is to be at that height, before downclimbing, or experiment with deliberately jumping from there in a controlled way, with no expectation that you're necessarily going to try the scary move. It's okay to get up there and decide that you're really not up for it today. Maybe another day will be different.
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You can try working up from floor level: find an easy problem with huge holds, go up a few feet, jump off, go up a little higher, jump off, etc. etc.. Just gently pushing the edges of your comfort zone, getting more experience with how falls feel and building more confidence in your ability to land a jump/fall safely on the mats.
For fear of specific falls -- e.g. if you've already come off a problem and had a big/scary fall -- I have some tips.
Stuff that works for me:
*Treating the psychological element as part of climbing, and part of specific problems. So, working with fear is part of the climbing experience, not something you have to get out of the way before you get on with the climbing. And when a bouldering problem is scary, that's part of the problem. I've noticed that some route-setters are excellent at setting problems which are physically not difficult to do, but scary as fuck because they have a big move right at the top of the wall, or force you into a position which feels precarious or awkward. That's part of the problem, just as having tricky technique-y moves or horrible slopers is.
*Absolute permission to back off. Sometimes I'm in the right mindset to push myself into things that feel scary (I was yesterday, and had a terrifying but awesome time), and sometimes I'm not. Sometimes it feels right to get back on a problem immediately after a scary fall (on the "get back on the horse" basis); sometimes it feels better to go do something else. Sometimes I can do something scary for a while, but then get shaky and drained and need to go climb something less psychological. It helps to give myself permission to play it by ear. Ultimately, if I'm not enjoying it (at least on some masochistic level), there's no point. And the less pressure I feel, the braver I'm likely to be.
*Going up and experimenting. Sometimes it helps to climb up to the tricky point and just feel how it is to be at that height, before downclimbing, or experiment with deliberately jumping from there in a controlled way, with no expectation that you're necessarily going to try the scary move. It's okay to get up there and decide that you're really not up for it today. Maybe another day will be different.