For the Love of Climbing: The Battle with Fear

I have heard over and over that we are born with two instinctual fears; the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. That being said, climbing is counter-intuitive. This is the story of my experience with fear and how I overcome it in order to do the sport that I love.

You aren't alone.

I remember the feeling of being nervous while leading climbing when I first began to climb. Taking a big fall was this mystical thing that people talked about and I pushed the idea of getting hurt on one of these "big whips" by telling myself that people don't really get hurt. But they do. It is a reality of the sport. As I heard more about falls from people I knew and had a scary brush with a life-threatening fall myself, I knew that I needed to find a way to continue to do my sport and live with all the consequences that are a potential. The first thing I had to do was to figure out if other climbers felt the same about falling on lead. As I asked around and did research on professional climbers, I soon found that fear is a battle that every climber must deal with in their own way. It helped me to know that others had overcome a fear that was real in my life and that I would make it to that point with practice.

No one's journey is the same - find what works for you.

More than anything, the thing that has struck me as I look back on the years is that climbing and just mountain sports for me in general have been a journey. Every climb is its own journey as you scale a landscape that has new experiences for you only to be unlocked 80 feet in the air. My own journey to lead climbing success is still in progress, but I want to share the practical things I have done in order to overcome.

1. Research. Read stories about others who are real, human climbers (not meta-humans who lead 5.13 on trad. jk. they are cool too). Something that has helped many climbers is the book Rock Warriors Way. I literally read the section on falling and fear in climbing on my way to the crag once. It helped. My main takeaway was remembering that your rope is a tool and it is ok to use it and fall on it. It is there so that you can take risks and it will catch you every time.

2. Take physical steps to change your mind about your fear. This includes spending many hours on a rope, fall drills, and not letting yourself give up. This is the part where you have to put the time in. You have to go to the gym or the crag. You have to lead routes and learn to trust the system. You have to take practice falls.

3. Learn to use fear and control your mind. This sounds impossible, I know. Fear is always known as something that takes over your mind. Something I have started doing while on climbs is enjoying the feeling of being hyper-aware. Fear makes your senses go crazy and I have found that I can choose to listen to the fear telling me about all of the things that could go wrong or I could appreciate how my body in so in-tune with what I am doing. Sometimes I even tell myself while I am climbing that it is amazing that my mind can focus and be so sensitive on climbs and that helps turn alarms of fear into appreciation for the climb and what my body can do. I have come to enjoy that heightened sense of awareness and I even look forward to being that in-tune with the world around me.