Anyone has fear of heights, staircases and refective floors?

[Brettsteve1]

I'm 28 years old and ever since I was a boy I had this fear of heights and staircases that lead up to buildings which have floors 2 and above, coming to the floor fear, when I'm on the 2nd floor or a floor level higher than that, if there are inverted reflections on floors and ceilings, I panic badly.

[specialmom]

I'm sorry you have this situation.  Have you ever talked to a therapist about it?  Phobias and such can sometimes be helped through exposure therapy. https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/exposure-therapy  It helps break the patterns of avoidance and fear through slow exposure to the fear.  I think it can be a little hard to think about that BUT a well trained psychologist in this type of therapy would know how to guide you and help you. Might be worth considering especially if it is causing panic attacks.  

[Paxiled]

Just to help folks who are considering therapy for anxiety, exposure therapy is the same as the more familiar CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy.  Although every therapist is a school unto themselves as they generally work unsupervised in any way and therefore can make up their own program, there's no standardization, for anyone who has a phobia about doing something all forms of therapy will eventually lead to exposure therapy except chat therapists, who sit and talk to you to try to figure things out but don't engage in any more concrete steps.  So basically, the way it works is, first you learn some stuff about how you're thinking and why they think you are thinking that way, learn some relaxation techniques and other ways to temper the stress and fear, but ultimately you are told to go out and do the things you're afraid of doing either with supervision or by yourself now that you have the tools.  They used to call this flooding when the therapist went out with you until you got better at it.  So don't get bogged down in the terminology, it changes over time as graduate students write theses and therapists write books.  Instead, focus on the process and if it doesn't work with one therapist, find another until you find one you click with.  Peace, all.

[Paxiled]

Fear of heights in all its forms is, I believe, the 2d most common phobia (the first is fear of speaking in public, officially, but I'm guessing more people confront heights than the need to speak in public so I'm guessing heights might be the most common fear).  I have this phobia, but didn't have it until I got a full-blown anxiety disorder.  If this is your only phobia, good; if you have several and are anxious about a lot of things, harder.  One way to fix just one phobia is to force yourself to keep doing it over and over until the phobia goes away.  This is harder if you have a lot of anxiety and a lot of phobias.  If you just can't do that, then a good psychologist who specializes in the treatment of phobias should be able to help you out.  Don't fret, pretty much everyone has at least one phobia.  The only question is how much it interferes with your life, and since yours is one you will have a hard time avoiding in your life, therapy would probably be a good idea for you.  But no, you're not alone on this, it's very common.