On Fear Of Falling

[fadeaccompli]

I'm relatively new to climbing--about three months now--and mostly climb at the gym, and I'm running into some interesting psychological blocks in my bouldering lately. If I've fallen off a route before--especially if it happened unexpectedly, and high up--I find it a hell of a lot harder to get back on that same route again later, despite not having picked up any real injuries or even pain in the process. (Hurrah for padded gym floors, plus crash pads.)

So...is there any particularly good way to work past this block? It keeps coming up especially on routes that go fairly high, or that are really tricky to climb back down from. It's not bothering me at all when I'm on a rope; after a few rounds of that, I knew I wasn't going to fall very far, so I can cheerfully plummet off the wall again and again. But in bouldering, sometimes it's enough to make me not try a route at all, because I've done a solid thud from the top hold before.

Suggestions? Anecdotes? I'm just hoping there's a better answer than "wait for it to go away."

Comments

[fadeaccompli]

Hm. I actually find I'm comfortable dropping from different heights on different walls. The more secure I feel on a wall already, the more secure I feel about dropping, too. Which means that the walls with the steeper overhang and slippier holds are the ones which I also feel the least secure about dropping from. (Possibly because I'm more likely to have done so accidentally already?) I mean, I know that it's no more dangerous, but the back of my head doesn't quite agree.

That said, jumping practice does seem like a good plan.

[rydra_wong]

Which means that the walls with the steeper overhang and slippier holds are the ones which I also feel the least secure about dropping from.

It might (or might not) help to know that, counter-intuitively, the overhangs are actually considered safer to fall off, because you fall cleanly to the mats without any danger of bumping into holds on the way down.

Similarly, I've heard that route-setters like to put big moves at the top of a problem because it's safer to fall from there than it is from the middle -- you're more likely to be able to right yourself and land properly. Sprains and so forth often occur with very short falls and uneven landings.

ETA: Yes, I totally get the thing about having different fear levels with different walls. There's one wall with a vertical wave-shaped curve that always freaks me out more than any of the others, possibly because it tends to force really awkward positions.

[fadeaccompli]

Yeah, intellectually I know it's actually safer to fall from those overhang ones... Which is no doubt why they put the longer climbs on them, with higher finishes, and so forth. But my guts don't agree quite yet. Still, practicing controlled falls on the walls that always freak me out may help me get past that. Yesterday I fell off almost the top of the wall I find scariest, and missed the mat, and it still didn't cause any pain. Just a lot of terror.