Category: psychology

A Mean Case of the Giggles

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“Laughter is the best medicine,” is something we say when everyone starts taking things far too seriously. Laughter can cure what ails us, but what happens when there is medicine or cure for laughter? 

“Stop it!” we say when we see someone yawn an infectious yawn. “Stop it!” we say when we hear someone laugh an infectious laugh. What is an infectious laugh? Is it about quantity or quality? We know it when we hear it.  “I love your laugh,” we say when we hear it. A genuine, full-on belly laugh cannot be faked, and when we hear someone who appears to be having one hell of a good time, we want in. 

If we’re the ones who have come down with a case of the giggles, our friends might laugh with us in the beginning, without knowing why. If we keep going, they start giving us looks. “Okay, it wasn’t that funny,” is something they might say to punctuate their confusion. That’s often our cue to stop, but we can’t, and we don’t know why. We can’t even remember why we started laughing in the first place. That’s a mean case of the giggles. 

A mean case of the giggles starts when someone says or does something relatively funny, and relative is the key word, because some funnies aren’t as funny to anyone else but us. “That’s not hysterical?” we ask our other friends. “All right, well I guess you had to be there.” Those funnies have a time-and-place situational element to them.  

“Yeah, be careful with those giggles,” a researcher in Psychiatry and Behavioral Science might caution us. “It is possible, if you don’t get control of yourself, that you could start a Mass Psychogenic Illness (an MPI), or a Mass Sociogenic Illness (MSI).” That warning alone could be so confusing that it might be an excellent cure for a case of the giggles, because what does that mean?

What causes the giggles? I’m not talking about a laugh, because we all have a laugh occasionally, but we can usually source it. A mean case of the giggles is usually irrational, and it often contains a time and place element to it. If it’s deemed inappropriate for us to laugh—let’s say in church, at a funeral, or a wedding—a mean case of the giggles can creep up in us. “Yeah, be careful with that too,” that researcher in Psychiatry and Behavioral Science cautions. “A mean case of the giggles can lead to involuntary complete bladder emptying, called giggle incontinence, or in some extreme cases gelastic seizures that medical researchers link to a benign brain tumor near the hypothalamus that is called a Hypothalamic hamartoma. They can also be caused by lesions in the frontal or parietal lobes, so if you start laughing so uncontrollably that it concerns you, you might want to consider getting yourself checked out by a neurologist.”

Those warnings could be so serious that they could kill our laughter, or they could be so confusing that they ignite it. 

Point-blank, a mean case of the giggles makes no sense, but that’s what makes it funny. Most giggles start out that way—funny, or relatively funny—but very few of us have heard or witnessed something so funny that our authority figures aren’t able to stop us with a stern glare, or a few choice words sent our way.

I’ve been in that situation. “Okay, that’s enough,” my dad said, and it was, but I couldn’t stop. We’ve all been there, but we haven’t had such an uncontrollable case of the giggles that our immediate authority figures had to call the local authorities in. We’ve never had such a mean case of the giggle that those local authority figures decided that our case of the giggles was so infectious and contagious that they should probably close our school, and the surrounding schools, to implement a desperate measure to keep our uncontrollable giggles from spreading any further.

No one knows what triggered it, but on January 30, 1962, three girls from the village of Kashasha on the western coast of Lake Victoria in Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania), near the border with Uganda, began laughing at something, and they couldn’t stop. We don’t know if the pupils in that class knew what the girls were laughing at and joined in, or if they simply caught the infectious case of the giggles that eventually led to an outbreak of mass hysteria that we now call The Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962.

That laughter began spreading to other schools in neighboring villages, notably Nshamba, and other schools after Kashasha closed its doors, roughly three months later, on March 18, 1962. Those schools sent their pupils home too. A second wave of the giggles hit when Kashasha reopened in May, forcing another closure. In total, the whole outbreak affected around 1,000 people (mostly young people, especially girls and young women), and it ended up closing fourteen schools. The school officials and other local leaders eventually managed to isolate it and keep it confined to an area of about 100 miles of the town of Bukoba.

The desperate school and local officials called Doctors A.M. Rankin, P. J. Philip, and others in to investigate. They were able to rule out infections of any sort, toxins, or neurological disease. They interviewed and worked with several victims and found that the symptoms included uncontrollable laughing and crying, restlessness, pain, fainting, and sometimes rashes or breathing difficulty. Some of the victims stated that their mean case of the giggles lasted a few hours, but other more extreme cases involved sufferers being unable to stop laughing for up to sixteen days. By the time they were done interviewing the sufferers, the medical researchers found that the average time for sufferers, in general, was about a week, often characterized by recurrences. The medical community on scene were also surprised to discover that the teaching staff of the schools were generally unaffected.

Historical researchers were also fascinated by this case of mass hysteria and/or mass sociogenic illness. After ruling several factors out, they focused on the time and place, situational element. These girls were pupils in a very strict mission school that focused on providing their students with the best climate for success. This is the goal of just about every school, of course, but the citizens of Tanganyika were experiencing freedom for the first time, as they just gained independence from Britain. Freedom is a great thing, of course, but it can also be a little scary in the beginning for those who have never known it.

“You will now have opportunities we never did,” is probably something the girls of Kashasha heard so often from their parents and the other adults in their sphere of influence that they grew tired of hearing it. They were twelve- to eighteen-year-olds, and they probably felt a lot of pressure to take advantage of the freedoms the previous generation secured for them. Being that young, they probably couldn’t completely grasp the particulars of the change, but their parents could. Their parents and the adults in the community around them informed them that if they studied and succeeded in school, they could be anything they wanted to be. They were probably told that they could provide for the family, save communities, and the country if they learned how to succeed. That could be viewed as a beautiful thing, but it could also be a little overwhelming too.

What happened after one of these girls received a 100% on a very difficult, advanced math test? She studied her tail off for that test, and she just earned the best possible grade she could get. Is that a cause for celebration? Of course it is, and she enjoyed that moment for what it meant, in the moment. We could characterize this an annoying human trait, but the next question we ask someone who accomplishes celebratory achievements is, “Can you do it again?” “Who cares for now?” we want to ask. “Let’s celebrate this for another day.” It doesn’t happen. In the moments after our celebratory achievement, we feel the pressure build, and we can guess that these three girls felt more pressure than we’ve ever known. They probably thought they even though they weren’t capable of doing this long-term. They were thirteen- to eighteen-year-old girls. They were insecure about their ability to succeed beyond her parents’ wildest dreams. Those notions can be beautiful and scary at the same time. The pressure probably built with each new test, until they needed to hit a release valve of some sort.

Again, no one knows what incident triggered their giggles. Seeing how the various officials involved interviewed all of the subjects, they probably focused in on one girl, the girl who started it all. And she didn’t know how or why her mean case of the giggles started either. She probably felt so much pressure that anything could’ve started it. She probably reached a point where she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry due to the pressure she felt. When she and her two friends started giggling, their immediate authority figures probably let it go for a while, until the girls wouldn’t stop. “Ok, that’s enough!” they probably said. At this point, the girls wanted to stop, but they couldn’t. The situation escalated, and their confusing inability to stop followed suit. We’ve all been there to a much lesser level, but when we cannot stop, it’s not always about rebellion. Were the newly independent girls expressing a level of previously unknown freedom by rebelling against their authority figures by laughing harder? We don’t know, but my guess is that “laugh or cry” confusion intensified with the intense calls for them to stop. This relationship between the teachers and the administration’s frustration, in the early stages, probably only made this matter worse. We cannot blame the teachers and the administration, because who witnesses such a thing and thinks, “This could break out into a mass psychogenic illness, mass hysteria, or mass sociogenic illness?”

The Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962 lasted for eighteen months, but it eventually died out by mid-to-late 1963, and everyone recovered with no lasting physical or neurological effects. The historical record suggests that school closures temporarily interrupted local clusters, but it inadvertently helped the laughter spread by dispersing the affected students. There was no single “end date” or official all-clear—just a quiet subsidence as the social conditions that sustained the contagion eased.

There were no physical or neurological effects, but what about the long-term psychological effects? Imagine being one of the three girls at the center of it all. She started an epidemic that affected 95 of her classmates. She was probably afraid to even start laughing years, and maybe for the rest of her life, based on what happened during her young, formative years.

We’ve all heard someone with infectious laughter say, “You don’t even want to get me started.” Yet when we say infectious or contagious laughter, we’re usually talking about affecting a round bar table of four. These girls set off an outbreak that caused 95 of their school’s pupils to laugh so hard that at least one individual couldn’t stop for sixteen days. Then it spread to other schools in neighboring villages and a 1,000 young girls in total, until it formed a mass psychogenic illness that we still don’t totally understand. (To this day, we have not identified a single biological cause. Scientists generally consider it more of a psychological illness.)

This had to be so confusing and scary to these girls that the next time a family member or friend starts in on a joke, they said, “Stop, don’t, I don’t want to hear it.” It had to be so confusing and scary that they avoided watching situational comedies for the rest of their lives. When they decided to date, “finding someone funny” wasn’t in the top 100 bullet point characteristics they sought in a prospective mate. When they had a selection of books before them, they probably chose sad, tragic dramas, adventure books, and anything and everything but comedies, because they didn’t want to get started.

Laughter is so irrational that it’s often inexplicable. We again go to the “I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry” reaction we have to many otherwise confusing situations. If laughter is our go-to, imagine if we had a mean case of the giggles that lasted sixteen days. We might never want to laugh again, and it might be something we fear so much that we spend the rest of our lives trying to avoid hearing or seeing anything and everything that could be funny.

Laughter is the medicine we all need, is something we say when everyone starts taking things too seriously. It can cure what ails us, but what happens when there is no medicine, and no cure, for our laughter?

Teenage Rebellion: Stage I

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“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Soren Kierkegaard 

I thought my teenage rebellion was so intense that it might give me some insight into the subject. I might not be not an expert on much, but I could probably give seminars on teenage rebellion. Now that teenage rebellion has done an about face, and it’s in my face, I’ve realized tis’ better to give than receive, and as with just about everything involving the complex human mind, teenage rebellion is so situational that we can only learn from it going forward. 

The circumstances that defined my teen years are so different than my rebellious teenager’s that I cannot use my model to understand his better. I was an angry young man, due to situations beyond anyone’s control. Those circumstances deprived me of a normal maturation process, and I was righteously indignant about it. Give me something to be righteously indignant about, back then, and I righteously indignanted it. It made me angry, and I didn’t care what it was. My son is not near as angry, because he does not have as much to be as angry about, so his rebellion isn’t as intense, but he does need to define himself, and I am his opposing force.  

“I actually worry about boys who don’t rebel,” I used to say to fathers who complained about their rebellious sons. “Rebellion is a boy’s way to develop his own distinct and individual personality, and they do so in direct contrast to their dad’s. Most men, I know now, who didn’t rebel against their dads when they were teenagers turned out to be relatively uninteresting adults.” I still think that observation holds, but my theoretical arguments recently met reality with my own kid. I realized that it doesn’t matter how we look at it, teen rebellion always hurts a little. I’m learning that I’m no longer his idol, his reason for being, or his joy in life. I knew this was coming, we all do, as some form of rebellion is almost an inevitability. Yet, it still hurts a little to learn that we’re now playing the bad guy in their production, and one of their goals in life is to find a way to destroy our Death Star. 

Rebellious Stages 

“I hate you!” they say, to kick off the first stage of their rebellion. I’ve heard other parents who were genuinely damaged by this coming-of-age comment, because their kid said it with such a mean face, like they actually meant it. “They’re sending a flare up to see how you react to it. I’m not saying they don’t mean it. They mean it, like we meant it, but they’re dumb kids, like we were. We didn’t know what we were talking about back then, and they’re as dumb and immature as we were.” 

In their ever-maturing mind that isn’t mature yet, they’ve discovered that we aren’t the greatest thing since sliced bread. “You’re dumb!” he says with and without using those words. It’s part of the process.

If we die before they hit their teen years, they’ll have our legacy preserved in amber, and they will spend their whole lives trying to live up to whatever idealized image they dreamed up about us. If we’re lucky enough to survive long enough to see them mature to their teen years, we’ll learn how many faults we have. They view their existence as that of a prisoner in a jail cell whose only mission in life is to escape. They’ll examine our fortress for the smallest chink, and they’ll use it once they find it. If we’re lucky enough to survive into their thirties and forties, we might eventually see them circle back to the idea that we’re not as dumb as they thought we were. If these progressions aren’t universal truths, they are close.  

“I have free will” he told me at the store to kick off the next stage of his rebellion. He said this after I questioned the item that he wanted me to purchase for him. I suggested he purchase another item, and he stubbornly refused. He considered this ‘free will’ line, a line he learned while studying The Constitution in class, the perfect comeback. I could see it on his face. 

“You do have free will,” I said, “but the force of your free will will be offset by another force, a fiduciary one that will arrive when we enter the checkout aisle. When fiduciary requirements limit your free will, that constraint will be met by a different and opposing force, mine.” 

His definition of rebellion has changed, progressed, and evolved, and my responses to it require an equal measure of progression. He, like most boys his age, is a robot. He doesn’t view the world emotionally. He doesn’t care if his statements hurt my feelings, as far as he’s concerned I’m as automated as he is, and it doesn’t do either of us any good if we become animated about it. His brain hasn’t matured enough to embrace empathy or sympathy yet. He requires logic, rational thinking, and a psychologically sound rationale from me. In these moments, he doesn’t like me, but he doesn’t dislike me as much as I disliked my father. Even if his revelations on the limitations of my intelligence and my horrible characteristics progress, I know I can’t let my desire to get him to like me get in the way of doing what I think is best for him.  

It’s all about the small stuff at this point, I don’t like the shirt he’s wearing, I don’t like his hairdo, and I don’t like the way he overreacts to silly, stupid things, but we’re just entering the first act of our production. He’s starting to make his own conscientious choices, and in that tiny arena, I know nothing, but I’ve heard genuine non-sarcastic admissions to his friends that they should go to me for answers, “Because he always seems to know things.”  

My dad was a serious man, introverted unless he was drinking, religious on Sundays, and a narcissist. I tried, in every way I could think up, to be the exact opposite of all that. He wanted me to get good grades, because he didn’t want to get in trouble with the in-laws. I like to think I’m more concerned with his well-being, his happiness, and his ultimate successes in life. I celebrate his momentary successes, and I criticize him for his failings, but I’m not so old, or so far removed from the situations he faces, to know how hard it is to succeed academically and athletically. I tell him that I can advise him and steer him in the right direction, but at some point, he’s going to be on the field or behind a desk by himself. One of the biggest differences between my dad and me is that I’m in the stands, literally and figuratively, cheering him on. I tell him this when he rebels. I tell him that we’re on the same team, but it doesn’t make a dent, literally or figuratively.  

My advice to anyone experiencing such a dilemma is that if your son is between the ages of thirteen and twenty-six, he is not fully formed yet. As painful as their rebellion can be, at times, they’re trying to discover their individuality, and that definition will be formed at our expense. No matter how unlikable, unreliable I am as an intellectual, or how inconsistent I can be, by his definition, I will continue to try to be a strong, consistent beacon in the darkness for him when matters become too complicated and chaotic for him. I also know that as we travel down this road together, I should probably grab onto something for stability, as this is only stage one.

Those of us who have never been the Death Star before wonder if they’ll ever appreciate what we’re doing for them? I know I didn’t appreciate what my dad did for me for a long, LONG time. As I raise my son, I reflect on one of the mistakes/lessons my dad taught me. My dad made the mistake of expecting praise, appreciation, and/or personal rewards for everything he did for me. It’s human nature to expect that, right? As my dad learned the hard way, they might arrive, but we’ll have to eat right, exercise regularly, and be one of the lucky ones who lives long enough to hear it.  

Fear of Heights: It’s Partly Biology 

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You could say I’m terrified of heights, but they’re just the delivery system. What I really fear is the rapid, involuntary reunion with the ground. 

I’ve tried multiple variations of that unfunny joke through the years, because I want something to say when the questions, the teasing, and the antagonism starts. The best thing to say in these moments is something, because I’ve tried saying nothing, and it doesn’t work. I also need answers to the internal dilemma I experience when I encounter those who fear just about everything but heights. What’s different about me? If I had an actual phobia, an acrophobia, I wouldn’t be able to climb ladders, go on roller coasters, or zipline through a forest. I found an answer that states that I’m not in the five to ten percent of those who suffer from some form of acrophobia, but I fit within a broader, non-phobic category of twenty-eight percent who suffer from something called a visual height intolerance (VHI). This isn’t the answer I was searching for, but it is an answer.  

Even with that answer, those of us who suffer from VHI don’t understand why we have an irrational, emotional reaction to heights that frail, little old ladies and young teenagers don’t. It makes no sense to us that we struggle to stand atop a twenty-foot ladder and jump into a thirty-foot void tied to a zipline, and other people don’t. 

As our group of eleven made our way through the various ziplines, we got to know one another in superficial ways, and we learned that some of us are doofuses, but even our doofus demographic weren’t as scared as I was. They were having fun. I wanted to believe they were too dumb to know how much danger they were in, but when the people who were more intelligent than me screamed with glee on their turn, the only answer left for me was that I was a fraidycat.  

If you’re an awful, offensive person, you probably attract offensively awful people as friends, and if you don’t have answers for them, they’ll hit you with every mean-spirited, funny joke they know. I also have nice friends, but their sad, sympathetic looks hit deeper than my friends’ jokes, and I tell unfunny jokes to keep those looks off me. No matter which side of the fence they’re on, I suspect that most people enjoy tasting another’s vulnerability so much that they can’t hide their sympathetic, concerned smiles. I know this because that’s how I react to their vulnerabilities.  

“You didn’t like the zipline? Because I thought it was fun!” they say. It’s humbling, embarrassing, and frustrating to be this scared of something that people who make no sense enjoy. We can drop our “C’mons!” on them, but after we algorithm their answers, we find that they genuinely enjoy ziplining. I realize I have no answers for that, other than I’m just scared. I’m scared of something that frail, little old women and teenagers aren’t. The idea that the zipline experience didn’t rattle the teenagers, in particular, really got to me, because I was the one who helped them get over their irrational fears. “Monsters don’t exist,” “Most bugs aren’t as big as your fingernail,” and “You can take control of your nightmares in a way that will prevent them from being as scary.” I taught them that if they are able to rationalize the irrational, they might not fear it as much. I helped them conquer their worst fears in life, and they’re the ones now giving me sympathetic, concerned smiles. 

But I Did It!

One of the answers I have for why I fear ziplining so much is that the plot of most of the nightmares I’ve had since I was a little kid involved being high up on something, looking down, then falling off (or stepping off) a platform into nothingness. We now call this ziplining.   

I did it though! Before we continue, I want it noted that I managed to separate myself from what researchers call a clinical case of acrophobia to one who suffers from what they call a visual height intolerance (VHI). Those with a clinical case, the roughly five to ten percent, would’ve never been able to step off that platform into nothingness secured to nothing more than a line with three reinforced nylon ropes. I did it. I braved my worst fears, and I tweaked those (to me, crippling) fears by ziplining through a forest. I jumped off five different ledges and zoomed 30 feet above the ground from tree to tree. It was one of the greatest accomplishments of my life, and that’s not hyperbole for me. I know that’s sad, but it’s sad but true.

Now, how many of my most beloved and loyal members of my friends and family do you think joined me in the celebration of my accomplishment of conquering what I considered the most terrifying experiences of my life? If you guessed zero, you are correct. I didn’t really need anyone to congratulate me, because when I finally touched ground, I experienced what Irvine Welsh wrote about in his 1993 novel Trainspotting “doing heroine [is] like having 10,000 orgasms at once”, except I would replace “doing heroine” with ziplining. I didn’t need anyone to intensify my reaction to completing the course, in other words, but when they asked me: “Are you going to do it again?” my disgust broke out: 

“Who gives a crap! Right now?” I said. “We’re not even a minute away from me conquering my greatest fear in life, and you’re asking me if I’m going to do it again? Why don’t we take a minute to celebrate what I just did.”  

I enjoy being human don’t get me wrong, and I’m not going to switch species based on one petty grievance, but why do we insist on asking someone if they have the skill, temerity, and resolve to accomplish something great, momentous, and unprecedented again? Why do we insist on doing it right after they did it? They don’t let us savor our accomplishment for one minute. When we graduate high school, which was an incredibly arduous accomplishment for me, the first question was, “So, where are you going to college?” When we receive a promotion, they ask, “Is this a stepping stone, or are you going to fly higher?” Who gives a crap about that now, right now? Right now, I think you should say, “‘Holy Larry!’ You did it!” The key to my frustration, if you haven’t guessed is the “right now” portion of this ubiquitous exercise, the present tense, as in just minutes away from our grand accomplishment. We can get around to all the other stuff when we get around to it, but for now, help me celebrate this accomplishment.   

In the history of Super Bowls, there have been a little over 3,000 NFL players who have reached the pinnacle of winning a ring. As evidenced by the idiotic and obnoxious sideline reporters, we don’t want to let those elite athletes celebrate their enormous accomplishment for five minutes, as these reporters ask the star of the game, immediately after the game, ‘Do you think you can do it again next year?’ The player responds, “I’m just going to celebrate this one for a while.” Rather than focus on the incredible athletic achievement these fifty-three players, coaches, and the team’s hierarchy just accomplished, we want to know if they think they’re going to be able to win it all again next year. I want one of these players to look at these reporters with disgust and say, “Do you want to know what it took from us to get to this point? Do you have any idea what it takes to win what might be the most difficult and prestigious trophies in our country? Do you want to know anything about the sacrifices the fifty-three players on our roster made to make this happen?” I want this NFL player to add, “All those hours you spent watching Netflix, going to parties, and sitting around watching sunsets, I was in the weight room, in dark film rooms, and in grueling two-a-days, and doing it over and over again all year, and that’s not even accounting for everything we did in past years to get to this point. We haven’t had a drop of alcohol or smoked anything all year. I haven’t had a slice of cheese in three years. And we did it all for this moment, so could you, maybe, just give me a moment to celebrate what it took me and only about 3,000 other men to accomplish in life?” 

I understand that some anonymous boob ziplining 30 feet off the ground doesn’t even come close to winning a Super Bowl, but conquering my crippling fear felt just as momentous in the moment. When I reached the final platform, and it was over, truly over, I felt an adrenaline rush that informed me that I could do anything I wanted to in life. When that adrenaline washed out of my system, I softened my stance a little, because I realized that my friends and family couldn’t understand how huge that moment was for me, but I added that it would’ve been nice if they asked me to try to explain it to them before asking me if I was brave enough to do it again.    

I’ll admit that I likely won’t do what was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life ever again (insert your small smile of schadenfreude and sympathy here), but why does that matter? Correction, maybe it should matter at some point in the future, let’s say the one or two years from now when we talk about ziplining again. For now though, right now, let’s just let me celebrate my crowning achievement for a moment. Let’s just take a second and realize how hard this was for me, and let’s celebrate the fact that I did it all with a dry throat and quivering legs.  

When they ask, “Are you going to do it again?” they usually follow our ‘no!’ with, “Really? Because I didn’t think it was that big of a big deal. It was 30 feet off the ground. That’s considered a minor to low-medium elevation zipline experience.”  

Our ziplining experience was probably equivalent to a kiddie slope in skiing, and all people and companies that offer ziplining experiences know to go over the top with safety measures to make sure their customer base feels secure. This involves being secured in at three different points and various other procedures the employees require their customers to go through. Our lives were never on the line, in other words, but that’s all rational and reasonable. Those who suffer visual height intolerance (VHI) and a clinical case of acrophobia know that a fear of heights is irrational, unreasonable, emotional, and now we know that it’s partly psychological too.  

Partly

If you missed the key word of that last sentence, go back and reread it and focus on the third to last word of that last sentence partly, for therein lies an answer.  

The research states that the majority of my fear of heights is mental/ psychological, but there are physical elements involved too. That’s right, I found an answer to why some frail, little old ladies who fear things that go bump in the night, and teenagers who still have some remnants of fear of the boogieman haunting their dreams don’t experience crippling fear on a zipline’s platform, and I do. If you’re an acrophobic or one who suffers from VHI, and you don’t have an answer, you might not consider this a quality answer, but I’m okay with that, because like fear in general, the quality of answers are relative to the person.  

Research has concluded that some brains are just different. That’s not a mind-blowing revelation, I know, but it opens up the idea that some brains, be they in the little old lady or teen demographic, adjust well to heights. Others don’t, and the fear that others experience might feel psychological, but its roots are partly physical too — and those roots vary from person to person. At certain heights, an individual’s balance system, their proprioception, or equilibrium, becomes less stable.  

The sensory‑motor system (vision, vestibular organs, proprioception) of the acrophobic and VHI sufferer generates stronger instability signals at heights. The brain’s balance system—its ability to sense its position, movement, and force without relying on visual input, enabling balance coordination, and precise motor control—becomes less stable at varying heights. Some brains interpret that instability as danger; others don’t. It all depends on which side of that divide you fall. When visual cues are far away, those with a condition can’t use them to stabilize posture, so sway increases. Some people’s brains treat that sway as a threat, triggering fear. Others feel the same physical shift but don’t interpret it as danger. Put simply, some brains handle visual–vestibular mismatches smoothly; others become unstable and anxious. If the acrophobic and VHI person experienced frightening experiences, or they dreamt them up, they may have incidentally linked instability with danger. Others don’t make the same associations. The individual who doesn’t fear heights isn’t braver or made of a stronger constitution, their body just doesn’t send “danger” signals at heights, and their brain won’t amplify those signals.

We do it to ourselves, in other words. Some of us may have experienced real life incidents that forever shaped our reaction to heights, but most of us train our overly creative brain to react to heights in such a manner. If we have always imagined the worst, and/or experienced decades of nightmares where heights played a main character, our trained brain will not handle vestibular mismatches smoothly, and our body won’t stabilize posture very well when visual cues are so far away. As I wrote, sufferers might not consider that answer an epiphany, and it might not prevent the pack of wolves, we call friends, from whipping out their measuring sticks to prove superiority, but it is an answer.  

It’s also an adequate answer to the question, “If you received such an adrenaline rush from tweaking your fear, why wouldn’t you want to do it again?” Adrenaline rushes are short term fixes. They’re not the answer, as we will be just as afraid next time as we were this time, because the portion of our brain that regulates proprioception, or equilibrium, when we’re high up is still going to be a little off.  

My final word to those who suffer from these varying levels of fear when they’re high up is, there is something wrong with you, but it’s not what you think. You’re not a coward, a fraidycat, or a wimp. Your brain is just a little tiny bit off, and in the grand list of physical, psychological, and mental disorders this might be the one everyone would pick if they were forced to pick one at birth.

So, the next time someone calls you chicken, a wuss, or a fraidycat, you can now say, “Well, it’s partly that, but it also has something to do with my overly active sensory-motor system cranking out premium-grade instability signals the moment I achieve altitude. My brain simply refuses to handle visual-vestibular mismatches with any dignity whatsoever.

“And yes, it’s mildly embarrassing, as I’ve never actually plummeted from anything noteworthy. After mining the scientific research put into the study of me and my 22-28% brethren, the best answer I found is that I did this to myself. My overly creative brain has changed me into a certified neural drama queen who instantly routes even ‘minor sway’ into the ‘instability equals instant doom’ shortcut anytime I achieve at least twenty feet of altitude.

“You, on the other hand, haven’t trained your brain to broadcast or amplify overly theatrical danger signals. Congratulations, you calm biological member of the majority, but you’re not necessarily braver or composed of a stronger constitution, your hardware just isn’t quite as hysterically talented as mine.”

I’m not afraid of spiders, snakes, enclosed spaces, injections, germs, thunder and lightning, dogs, flying, or flying dogs, but I do have one highly irrational and emotional fear related to my visual‑vestibular conflict. When I started my research, I wanted to find that we have some gene variant or some sort of genetic clue involving the inner ear that helps us regulate balance. I wanted to be able to say that my condition was directly related to genetics, so I could blame someone or something else. The best answer I found is that modern scientific research finds that my system is likely over‑responsive to height‑related visual‑vestibular mismatch — something that can be influenced by genetics, but also by experience, conditioning, and neural wiring. I wanted something I could drop on my family members and obnoxious friends, but there’s no conclusive, proven casual links. I wanted to find satisfying clarity, but every study kept coming back to the idea that an overwhelming majority of my problem is all my fault, and the same level of creativity I use to write on this site is the culprit fueling my greatest fear. It’s an answer, but it’s not a very satisfying one.