It's ok to be afraid

My climbing this season was crippled by fear. No matter what I did, it just kept growing from week to week. By the end I didn't even want to go out any more. I was secretly relieved whenever it rained.

There's obviously fear of injury and fear of not being able to control your own trajectory. But I trust my partner to catch me softly, and I trust my own judgement of risk and my reactions on impact. The most dangerous part of my climbing day is probably the drive to the crag.

Fear of falling itself is deeply hard-wired, even absent the risk of injury. Knowing intellectually that a given fall is safe doesn't override that instinct. But years of deliberate exposure therapy does weaken it substantially. Practicing falls in isolation doesn't bother me.

There's also fear of failure, which I certainly don't have mastered. As much as I tell myself that sending or falling doesn't impact my worth as a human being, I still have an unhealthy amount of ego tied up in these arbitrary grades. But while fear of failure might make me get nervous and blow a good attempt, it's never made me not want to climb at all.

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