The “Height” of Perfection-ism… Is Fear

By Jessica Stillman

Perfectionism, like conditional love, destroys feelings of worth – because, if we only feel worthy when we have achieved perfection, we will only feel worthy one time in a thousand.Earl D. Wilson, The Undivided Self

When I volunteered to face my fear of heights for the #FaceYourFearsChallenge, I didn’t think very much about it. I was just thinking that we needed content to post on our website and our Facebook wall, that we would have some fun making a video, and that I had full confidence in my boss, Darrell, to help me change my outlook on my fear of heights. What did I have to lose? Besides, I’ve never been one to turn down a challenge. Many things come easily for me, which makes me feel that I should be able to accomplish anything I set my mind to doing. Facing my fear of heights seemed to come easily to me too — at first.

I started off by learning a relaxation technique, which I practiced two times a day, every day, for a couple of weeks. Then I came in for a therapy session with Darrell and did some visualization exercises. I was actually surprised in the middle of the very first session, as I was doing one of these visualization exercises and describing my anxiety level, that my anxiety seemed to disappear. At that point, I even tried to bring up those feelings of anxiety that I had always had while thinking about my experiences with heights, but I could not. I thought, wow, Darrell is even better at this job than I had imagined. He has cured me of my fear in the very first session!

The next step, after relaxation and visualization techniques, was exposure therapy. We decided to go first to the GoApe ropes course park and then to the rooftop at City Museum. I was just a little bit nervous when we got to the GoApe park, but, because the visualization exercises had gone so well, I was expecting exposure therapy to be easy too.

We had five ropes courses to go through, and each one was a little bit more challenging than the previous one. In a couple of the courses, there was an “easy” route you could take or a more difficult route to choose. I chose to take the difficult route each time, partially because Darrell wouldn’t let me take the easy way out, but partially because I knew it would bother me later if I took the easy way out. As I said before, I’ve never been one to turn down a challenge.

The ropes courses were a little bit scary at times, but I also had a lot of fun doing them. On a scale of one to ten, I don’t think my anxiety level went higher than a four or five through most of the courses. When I got to the very end of the last course, that changed. It was just a little bit higher than the previous courses and there was one last zipline to take to the bottom. I climbed up to the last platform, but as I looked down over the edge that I was about to step off of, I felt my hands begin to sweat, and that “tingling” sensation in my fingers and toes. As my anxiety level inched up to about a six out of ten, I needed an extra minute to stop, breathe, and consider that there had been many, many people on this course before me, and would be many more after me, who had not and would not fall off of it. I realized I was perfectly safe. So I took one more deep breath, counted to three, and stepped off the last platform.

For about half a second (although it seemed longer), I was falling. Then my tether went taut, and I began to glide forward down the zipline, to the end of the ropes course. I had done it! I completed the heights challenge and Darrell and my friend, Geries, congratulated me. For some reason, however, I didn’t feel triumphant, and I could not figure out why. Geries and Darrell asked me how I felt about accomplishing the ropes course and I said, ‘Well, fine, I guess.’ Both of them had puzzled looks on their faces, and I knew that was not the response they were expecting from me. I don’t think it was the response I was expecting from me, either. I just figured it was nerves from that last zipline platform, so we found a place to sit down, and together, we did some more breathing and relaxation techniques to calm them.

I don’t usually let much hold me back, so I was quickly ready to move on to the next challenge at the City Museum. If you read my last post, you remember that even though I have been to the roof of the City Museum many times, I have never been on the Ferris Wheel, I have avoided the school bus that hangs off the edge of the roof, and I have not climbed inside or on top of the big dome room because of my fear of heights. I pretty much had always thought that the rooftop was boring, even though it was my friends’ favorite attraction there.

We took the elevator to the top and started with the four-story ferris wheel. I rode it once with Darrell, and didn’t feel anxious at all. Then, I rode it by myself, and again, I felt completely fine. So we moved on to the slide. We took the stairs to the top of the dome and I went down the three-story slide. These things had come pretty easily to me, so Darrell and Geries thought I needed to try something harder.

It was on to the dome. Inside the three-story dome room, which is also on the roof, is an iron cage. It’s open so that you can climb inside of it. The path starts at the floor, runs up the wall, across the ceiling, and into a bird cage-like structure in the middle of the ceiling. You can climb out through the top of this bird cage and you will be back at the top of the three-story slide. Many people recognize this part of the City Museum by the giant praying mantis, which sits on the top of the dome.

As we walked inside the dome, we watched three teenage kids run in, climb into the cage and scale to the top, like it was no big deal. They jumped around inside the bird cage for a few minutes and then disappeared through the hole in the ceiling. I turned and saw Geries and Darrell looking at me as if to say, “Are you going up next?” And of course, the answer was “Yes.” I was not about to leave a challenge from this day undone.

I think it was at this point in the day that something in me changed. I was tired, physically and mentally, from the day so far. As I looked up and down this obstacle, I started to doubt myself. I had watched those kids climb up there so easily, but what if it wasn’t as easy for me to do it? What if I started climbing this thing and got stuck? Well, I decided I wasn’t going to allow myself to fail in front of people, so onward and upward I went.

I got about 20 feet or so up, and I froze. I told myself, ”You can do this; you have to do this,” but my hands and feet did not want to move. About this time Darrell, from the ground, asked me what my anxiety level was. I answered, “About a 9.5.” What was going through my mind at that moment was this: I am a grown woman, crying in a rooftop playground. I’m only a fourth of the way up, and I am stuck, and my boss/coach/friend is climbing up here right now to help me get myself unstuck because I can’t do it by myself. I felt ridiculous.

It has taken me a couple of weeks to realize that this was actually the most triumphant moment of that day. I wanted to give up and climb back down and pretend that I had never tried to climb up there in the first place, but I didn’t. I cried, and I had to stop several times to catch my breath, and each time we paused, Darrell used techniques to help me bring my anxiety level back down so that we could climb a few feet higher, but I did not give up. Eventually, I made it to the top, and I climbed out through the hole in the roof of the ‘bird cage.’

Just like before, at the ropes course, Darrell and Geries congratulated me and asked how it felt to accomplish what I had set out to accomplish. Just like before, I think I puzzled them with my less than ecstatic response, “It feels fine.” Why wasn’t I ecstatic? It took me a little while to discover an answer to that question.

I am a perfectionist. Something that I learned from this experience is that what I fear even more than heights, is failure. It’s true for me in all areas of life, and especially when people are watching. I had not been excited the day I completed the ropes course or climbed the dome at the City Museum, because I had not done it perfectly. In my mind, the relaxation and visualization exercises in my therapy session had gone so well that I expected the rest to be easy. I had set an expectation for myself, without even realizing it, to complete this challenge with flying colors. When I hadn’t done it perfectly, I was disappointed in myself, therefore robbing myself of the joy of my progress and accomplishment.

We please Him most, not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections and believing that He understands everything — and still loves us. A.W. Tozer

Perectionism is debilitating. Throughout my life, I have often held myself back, or missed out for fear of failure, or fear of not doing something perfectly. I am learning how it robs a person of the joy in life. It diminishes the beautiful gift of grace that God has given us. Expecting perfection will make a failure out of us every time, because we will never be perfect. In truth, the beauty of humanity, in light of the beauty of who God is, is that we are flawed and God loves us and values us anyway.