I recently had an issue dealing with my intense fear of falling down stairs. Even though I have been going up and down those same stairs every week for over a year, I suddenly realized just how high up I was on those stairs, and I felt myself teetering on the edge up there. There was no hand rail on the stairs to make sure I kept my balance. I panicked. I froze (literally unable to make myself move even though my brain knew I needed to move), and then once I could move, I just sat down right on the stairs. I eventually made it down the stairs, but by the time I got to the bottom, my hands were shaking more than they ever shook from an exposure exercise.
Once I got to the bottom, and I was safely on the ground, I tried to put on a brave face. I tried to laugh off my "silly" fear of falling down the stairs. I was actually mortified. Instead of feeling like I might cry out of fear, I felt like I could cry from embarrassment. I HATED that I had let my fear get the best of me, especially a fear of something like falling down a flight of stairs. To me, that fear made me feel like a little kid instead of a 26-year-old adult. What adult is so terrified of falling down a perfectly sound staircase that they can't do anything but sit down? I hadn't heard of any. My incident with the stairs felt shameful, like such a wrong thing for me to have trouble with. Also, because my therapist was there to witness the shameful event, I felt super awkward in front of her right after. I wanted to run away and hide.
Before I even made it to the lobby of my therapist's office, I was already beating myself up for the incident on the stairs. My therapist stopped me at the door, and she asked if I was okay. I told her how embarrassed I felt and how I thought the fear of falling down stairs was a stupid thing to be afraid of. She just told me that everybody has some odd fear, and that's just one of the things that we have that makes us all human.
I told her I didn't like it. She told me that I shouldn't beat myself up about having a fear of falling down the stairs or the incident that I had on the stairs leading to her office. She went on to tell me that beating myself up and making myself feel bad about it was only going to make the feeling stick around longer. She said I didn't have to like that detail about myself, but that accepting that I have this odd fear because I'm only human would be the best way to work through it.
This stairs incident wasn't the first time I've beat myself up over something that I can't help. I used to do it with my anxiety, especially the anxiety that hits me in crowded places. I wouldn't like it, and I would think it was the wrong thing to feel at the time. Then I would beat myself up, and the embarrassment would hang around for the entire social encounter. My therapist told me then to not beat myself up and to accept that anxiety happens, just like my weird fear happens, because I'm human.
I still have a bit of trouble coming down the stairs in her office sometimes, but I haven't panicked and been unable to move anymore. I just try not to feel embarrassed or bad about myself when the fear strikes because I don't want those negative feelings to settle in. Some people are afraid of dogs. Some people are afraid of spiders. Some people are afraid of small spaces. I'm afraid of falling down stairs and suffering fatal injuries. I'm sure it's not the strangest thing I could be afraid of, really.
I'll end with this: Everybody has something about themselves that they don't like. We're all human. Everybody probably has an embarrassing fear of something. That's okay. It's NOT okay to beat yourself up about the thing that you don't like. You can accept that something exists or that something happened without liking the thing. The more you beat yourself up about something, the longer it'll hang around and make you unhappy.
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