But watch your language when it comes to casual talk about “going over the fiscal cliff”. We Public Safety Enthusiasts are alarmed at the decision by those who frame our discussions this way. To call the upcoming budget deadline a “Fiscal Cliff” does not give enough credit to cliffs!
No Cliff Talk!
A real cliff is a very serious thing indeed. Real cliffs don’t discriminate between the rich and the poor. They are not indexed and there are no exemptions. Think of a cliff as the sudden withdrawal of terrestrial support while gravity remain in place and is as vigorous as ever.
Can we survive without earth under our feet? I say no! This is undeniable. Instead, pundits gab with mock seriousness about “going over”.
This kind of talk creates what is widely known as a reverse visioning hazard. We already understand that visioning is a key principle in leading an organization – helping people “see” their future in order to make it happen. The more we envision a thing, like going over a cliff together, the closer it comes to reality.
And what if we DO go over the “cliff”, and it turns out to be Not That Bad? Suddenly, cliffs become part of the everyday lexicon, and “going over” is just something you do every now and then. No big deal? Wrong! Let’s make sure cliffs remain dreadful. We should speak of them in hushed tones, and stay away from every kind – figurative, fiscal, and physical. That’s my advice!
Yours in groundedness,
B.S.O. Rafferty
Have you ever gotten over a useful, protective fear?
Good morning. There is no danger that I will get too close to the edge of a cliff. I don’t understand why some people walk right up to the edge of a cliff and stand there. Don’t they know that it could crumble or they could slip?
I am not even interested in over coming my fear of falling off cliffs. I have been able to over come my fear of power saws. When I see the blade of a table saw or a similar saw I am sure I will cut my fingers off if I try to use it. However, I do like to use power saws and manage to operate them very carefully. I was sure that my neighbor was going have a bad accident when I saw him holding siding for his house in one hand and cutting it with power circular saw held in the other hand while standing on a ladder. I would never do that.
I have told this story on here, that I used to have terrible stage fright. And I was a little late learning to ride a bike, terrified of falling. So how many times have I fallen in all my years of biking? Not many, but four were bad. But I never think about it when riding.
But cliffs, and heights–never going to get past that.
I have had my lags banging pretty good while doing some of those hikes where the drop off is inches away on a 9 inch wide trail hugging the corner of the mountain
I had a lot of fear of making speeches when young. I don’t have any trouble with that now. I have never done any acting. I guess I am at the point where I could give acting a try if the opportunity came my way. I certainly would have had trouble preforming on stage when I was younger due to my fear of giving speeches.
The sudden withdrawal of terrestrial support… Great definination bsor
I used to get tingles in my legs so dramatically they would tickle and make me laugh, kind of unnerving while you are supposed to be scared and trying to deal with it. As a kid I had fear of the unknown, I would angst over most anything dreading the chance it may come out the wrong way
Ulcers at age 12 took 6 years to pop. Once I realized how neurotic I was and what I was doing to myself I started dealing with my anxiety differently, i still angst over the unknown but I do it a little differently now.
For years, I have had the same dream that I am playing in my college band on a narrow stage very high up. Sometime the floor of the stage is tilted downwards toward the edge. As band plays, the stage becomes narrower and narrower, until it is evident that we are all going to fall over the edge. I always wake up before we start pitching into the abyss. I haved no idea what that dream is all about, but it is very scary. I hate heights. It was pretty scary when we toured Mesa Verde and climbed up into the ruins under the direction of the park rangers. I have no idea how the original residents managed to live there and not fall off into the canyons.
I never like to go to the top of look out towers that aren’t enclosed. If a tower is very tall I usually end up not making it to the top when I try to go up there. I’ve worked as a roofer and don’t have any trouble with doing that. I had a little trouble with fear of falling when I started working on roofs and over came that fear by becoming familiar with safe ways of working on a roof.
When I was in Norway, I foolishly went to the top of the Holmenkollen ski jump tower. It was okay looking out over the back side – looking out to the mountains and nearby countryside, but looking out on the ski jump side made me woozy. The start of the jump ramp looks like it’s practically vertical when you look down at it from the tower. I could never ever ever try ski jumping if drops like that are involved.
Reminds me of a similar dream. Standing on the edge of a precipice. About a foot wide piece of the whole cliff (not just what’s under my feet) breaks off. I step to the solid land when the same thing happens again. Step, a foot wide piece breaks off, step, a foot wide piece breaks off. Sort of like a hamster on a wheel but scarier.
I haven’t had that one since my youth.
When I first started working on web sites I had a dread fear of the code underneath the pages. I could use the content management tool to write content for the pages, format it, link to other pages…but the html code gave me the heebie jeebies. I was dreadfully afraid of breaking things irreparably. Until one day when it was easier to make the changes I needed to make in the code instead of the WYSIWYG tool. So I dove in. And broke things. And talked to the developers. And figured out if I really broke things they could roll the page back to a prior version, so there was a safety net. Then I broke things some more. And got better and understanding the tagging. And then I moved into breaking the JavaScript…
I know what you are talking about. Our techie was very protective of code and scripting, which made it hard for me to do what I was supposed to do, which got him made at me, which made him complain to my partner. It was one f the seeds that destroyed our partnership.
I was fortunate to work with developers who were happy to show me how things worked. They figured if I knew how to fix what I had broken, they would ultimately have less to fix. Plus they just seemed happy to teach me stuff.
I’m not sure I’ve completely gotten over any of my fears, whether they’re useful or not. I will, of my own free will, touch a snake (just did so at the Zoo three weeks ago), even if I know in my heart of hearts that they are slimy. I have gone up in a hot air balloon despite not liking open-air heights at all. I’ve even flown in a bi-plane, which was also open. I did a submarine ride once (although they tell me I was a little green when we were 120 feet down). So I have the ability to push through the fear but I don’t think it’s the same thing as getting over a fear; I still have to hold on for dear life on the escalator at the Science Museum!
Come on, vs, snakes are not slimy. They have enough of a bum rap without being called slimy. 🙂 Now eels, they’re slimy, very slippery and difficult to hold onto.
I know they are not slimy in my brain. I didn’t want Child to be afraid of snakes so when she was younger, I began my “touch snakes” campaign and have touched many snakes over the years. But my heart is always surprised, every single time, because no matter how many times I feel that dry skin under my fingers, my heart is still convinced snakes are slimy!
I have a friend who is afraid of snakes. To work on her fear, when at an open house at her local vetrinarian’s clinic, she asked a vet tech if she could pet his python. That went OK, but then, as she was conversing with the tech, she felt the snake crawling up her arm. When she turned to see what the python was up to, the snake jumped (pythons can apparently jump half their length to seize prey) and sunk its fangs into her eye. Fortunately, she had the presence of mind to not try to rip the snake away, but rather supported the weight of the 3-foot snake. The vet tech ran to get the house herpetologist, while the python proceeded to try to suck her eyeball out. Pythons apparently have rows of teeth, like sharks, that clamp on to prey.
The herpetologist managed to unhinge the snake’s jaw and release her. She went immediately to the hospital emergency room, hand over eye, blood streaming down her arm, and waited there until an opthamologist was available. Though youngish, he didn’t seem exceptionally surprised when she took her hand away from her eye and told him what had happened. She asked him why he seemed so nonplussed. “That’s what pythons do”, he told her. He had seen it before.
Fortunately, the snake bite had missed the corneal area. With a very extensive course of antibiotic eyedrops (every 4 hours around the clock for weeks), she is good as new. She’s less enthusiastic about working on her fear of snakes, though.
Can’t say that I blame her, bill. I’ve always been more fascinated by snakes than fearful of them, and I recognize that even non-venomous snakes can deliver a painful and nasty bite. While working in a summer-camp in Southern Illinois, we had one camper who was bitten by a copperhead; he had tried to pick it up with his bare hands! It was amazing to see how quickly his hand swelled to an unrecognizable lump of red and very painful tissue. I don’t think he’ll ever pick up a snake again.
Not to worry… there is no scenario in which I would be in the same room with a python and I not be watching it every second. There would be no “felt it crawling up my arm”.
The fear of public speaking is pretty widespread, although I don’t think it can logically be classified as useful or protective unless you think of it as protecting you from making a complete fool of yourself. While in college I was petrified at the thought of having to get up in front of the whole class, and, mind you, this was my speech class. I think it might have been a sophomore level class that I had put off taking until spring quarter of my senior year, that’s how scared I was. Once I embarked on my career in office administration, I voluntarily signed up for Toastmasters thinking that it would be helpful to be able to speak in public with some confidence. As it turned out, I loved it, and ended up participating in several regional speech contests. It’s a skill that can be learned, and a little practice made all the difference in the world.
Then there are spiders! Don’t know that fear is the correct term for what I feel, it’s more of an aversion. I seriously do not like spiders, especially the big hairy ones, and I don’t care much for centipedes either. Ugh!
As a bug lover, I always tell everyone that bugs are our friends. There are not very many people who agree with me. Fear of insects, spiders and other creepy crawly creatures is very wide spread. That doesn’t mean that I think that you shouldn’t be careful around bugs because some of them can bite or sting you. I just don’t think it is a good thing to be excessively afraid of bugs, but I know this is very common.
My mom convinced me when I was in jr. high to play piano to accompany the little kids’ Sunday school class. I was scared stiff, practiced from their song book all week, and survived it on Sunday. It got easier the more I did it. I eventually played for some of our skits in college – discovered that there was so much else going on besides my accompaniment, no one else really knew when I screwed up which I did plenty. (Not sure what the protective part of that fear was, now that I re-read the question.)
I’m scared of driving 85-100 mph on a crowded freeway while changing lanes constantly. I’m also scared of taking a freeway exit on the right when I’m in the far left lane until 10 feet before the exit. Also making a left turn when I’ve been in the far right lane of city streets. I hope I don’t get over these fears, but there seems to be quite a few people driving around who aren’t scared to do these things.
i used to be scared of switching drivers going down the road without pulling over and made a rule against ding it but modified that to be no switching drivers while going over 100.believe it or not those rules likely came into platy a time or two in my wilder days
My first thought is – don’t do those things. Don’t drive at 85-100, keep lane changes to a minimum. Don’t be in the left lane if you know your exit approacheth or the right lane of a city street when you want to turn left. If you find yourself in either of the latter two, skip the exit or the turn and recover down the road.
Aha – you are not saying that YOU do those things but wish other people would QUIT doing them. Makes sense.
Nevermind.
I do everything I can to avoid driving in rush hour,. A good fear as far as I am concerned. Don’t take this personally, but you big-city dwellers are nuts. It did not used to bother me. I used to drive in rush hour in big cites all over America.
It’s not just rush hour here in Minneapolis, Clyde. I rarely drive in rush hour and every time I do drive somewhere, I’m amazed at the things I see. Heck, I’m amazed every time I walk somewhere and see what drivers do…it seems like there should be hundreds more car accidents than there are.
Once when I was in Duluth, I was leaving my mom’s apartment, near the UMD campus, to go to my sister’s house at the far west end of Duluth, almost to Jay Cooke State Park. My sister told me, “You know it’s rush hour.” I got on the freeway and laughed at her. “THIS is rush hour? Ha!”
Mankato has a clearly visible rush hour in the downtown area. It last about 6 minutes.
I think I will never be sure if people have gotten that much worse or if I’v just gotten that crotchety.
There’s a Golden Smog song that contains the line “If I live too long I’m afraid I’ll die”…a reasonable fear, but probably not a very useful one. Any way to get over that?
I sometimes have dreams in which I’m under water, trying to hold my breath, and then when I can’t hold my breath any longer and think I’m about to drown, I discover I can breathe water. That dream freaks me out a little.
Trail Baboon 
Good morning. There is no danger that I will get too close to the edge of a cliff. I don’t understand why some people walk right up to the edge of a cliff and stand there. Don’t they know that it could crumble or they could slip?
I am not even interested in over coming my fear of falling off cliffs. I have been able to over come my fear of power saws. When I see the blade of a table saw or a similar saw I am sure I will cut my fingers off if I try to use it. However, I do like to use power saws and manage to operate them very carefully. I was sure that my neighbor was going have a bad accident when I saw him holding siding for his house in one hand and cutting it with power circular saw held in the other hand while standing on a ladder. I would never do that.
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I have told this story on here, that I used to have terrible stage fright. And I was a little late learning to ride a bike, terrified of falling. So how many times have I fallen in all my years of biking? Not many, but four were bad. But I never think about it when riding.
But cliffs, and heights–never going to get past that.
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I have had my lags banging pretty good while doing some of those hikes where the drop off is inches away on a 9 inch wide trail hugging the corner of the mountain
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I had a lot of fear of making speeches when young. I don’t have any trouble with that now. I have never done any acting. I guess I am at the point where I could give acting a try if the opportunity came my way. I certainly would have had trouble preforming on stage when I was younger due to my fear of giving speeches.
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The sudden withdrawal of terrestrial support… Great definination bsor
I used to get tingles in my legs so dramatically they would tickle and make me laugh, kind of unnerving while you are supposed to be scared and trying to deal with it. As a kid I had fear of the unknown, I would angst over most anything dreading the chance it may come out the wrong way
Ulcers at age 12 took 6 years to pop. Once I realized how neurotic I was and what I was doing to myself I started dealing with my anxiety differently, i still angst over the unknown but I do it a little differently now.
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Huh – you had ulcers at age 12 and got over it? (My dad did too, as a teenager.)
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That is surprising to me, tim. You don’t seem neurotic or anxious to me and I’m usually perceptive about those things.
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For years, I have had the same dream that I am playing in my college band on a narrow stage very high up. Sometime the floor of the stage is tilted downwards toward the edge. As band plays, the stage becomes narrower and narrower, until it is evident that we are all going to fall over the edge. I always wake up before we start pitching into the abyss. I haved no idea what that dream is all about, but it is very scary. I hate heights. It was pretty scary when we toured Mesa Verde and climbed up into the ruins under the direction of the park rangers. I have no idea how the original residents managed to live there and not fall off into the canyons.
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I never like to go to the top of look out towers that aren’t enclosed. If a tower is very tall I usually end up not making it to the top when I try to go up there. I’ve worked as a roofer and don’t have any trouble with doing that. I had a little trouble with fear of falling when I started working on roofs and over came that fear by becoming familiar with safe ways of working on a roof.
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When I was in Norway, I foolishly went to the top of the Holmenkollen ski jump tower. It was okay looking out over the back side – looking out to the mountains and nearby countryside, but looking out on the ski jump side made me woozy. The start of the jump ramp looks like it’s practically vertical when you look down at it from the tower. I could never ever ever try ski jumping if drops like that are involved.
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Uffda! Holmenkollen – who in their right mind..
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i think id pay somebody a dollar to get that dream anaylized renee. thats a pip
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Reminds me of a similar dream. Standing on the edge of a precipice. About a foot wide piece of the whole cliff (not just what’s under my feet) breaks off. I step to the solid land when the same thing happens again. Step, a foot wide piece breaks off, step, a foot wide piece breaks off. Sort of like a hamster on a wheel but scarier.
I haven’t had that one since my youth.
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When I first started working on web sites I had a dread fear of the code underneath the pages. I could use the content management tool to write content for the pages, format it, link to other pages…but the html code gave me the heebie jeebies. I was dreadfully afraid of breaking things irreparably. Until one day when it was easier to make the changes I needed to make in the code instead of the WYSIWYG tool. So I dove in. And broke things. And talked to the developers. And figured out if I really broke things they could roll the page back to a prior version, so there was a safety net. Then I broke things some more. And got better and understanding the tagging. And then I moved into breaking the JavaScript…
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I know what you are talking about. Our techie was very protective of code and scripting, which made it hard for me to do what I was supposed to do, which got him made at me, which made him complain to my partner. It was one f the seeds that destroyed our partnership.
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I was fortunate to work with developers who were happy to show me how things worked. They figured if I knew how to fix what I had broken, they would ultimately have less to fix. Plus they just seemed happy to teach me stuff.
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Techies are an interesting group; you found the right ones.
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Morning all. Home now but seriously worn out!
I’m not sure I’ve completely gotten over any of my fears, whether they’re useful or not. I will, of my own free will, touch a snake (just did so at the Zoo three weeks ago), even if I know in my heart of hearts that they are slimy. I have gone up in a hot air balloon despite not liking open-air heights at all. I’ve even flown in a bi-plane, which was also open. I did a submarine ride once (although they tell me I was a little green when we were 120 feet down). So I have the ability to push through the fear but I don’t think it’s the same thing as getting over a fear; I still have to hold on for dear life on the escalator at the Science Museum!
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Come on, vs, snakes are not slimy. They have enough of a bum rap without being called slimy. 🙂 Now eels, they’re slimy, very slippery and difficult to hold onto.
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I know they are not slimy in my brain. I didn’t want Child to be afraid of snakes so when she was younger, I began my “touch snakes” campaign and have touched many snakes over the years. But my heart is always surprised, every single time, because no matter how many times I feel that dry skin under my fingers, my heart is still convinced snakes are slimy!
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I have a friend who is afraid of snakes. To work on her fear, when at an open house at her local vetrinarian’s clinic, she asked a vet tech if she could pet his python. That went OK, but then, as she was conversing with the tech, she felt the snake crawling up her arm. When she turned to see what the python was up to, the snake jumped (pythons can apparently jump half their length to seize prey) and sunk its fangs into her eye. Fortunately, she had the presence of mind to not try to rip the snake away, but rather supported the weight of the 3-foot snake. The vet tech ran to get the house herpetologist, while the python proceeded to try to suck her eyeball out. Pythons apparently have rows of teeth, like sharks, that clamp on to prey.
The herpetologist managed to unhinge the snake’s jaw and release her. She went immediately to the hospital emergency room, hand over eye, blood streaming down her arm, and waited there until an opthamologist was available. Though youngish, he didn’t seem exceptionally surprised when she took her hand away from her eye and told him what had happened. She asked him why he seemed so nonplussed. “That’s what pythons do”, he told her. He had seen it before.
Fortunately, the snake bite had missed the corneal area. With a very extensive course of antibiotic eyedrops (every 4 hours around the clock for weeks), she is good as new. She’s less enthusiastic about working on her fear of snakes, though.
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Horrible! That would have cemented my fear of snakes forever.
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Despite the happy ending?
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Can’t say that I blame her, bill. I’ve always been more fascinated by snakes than fearful of them, and I recognize that even non-venomous snakes can deliver a painful and nasty bite. While working in a summer-camp in Southern Illinois, we had one camper who was bitten by a copperhead; he had tried to pick it up with his bare hands! It was amazing to see how quickly his hand swelled to an unrecognizable lump of red and very painful tissue. I don’t think he’ll ever pick up a snake again.
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At least it wasn’t slimy…
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Way to help VS with her fear, Bill!
(what a story!) I had always assumed that constricting snakes don’t bite.
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Not to worry… there is no scenario in which I would be in the same room with a python and I not be watching it every second. There would be no “felt it crawling up my arm”.
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Remind me not to work on my fears of anything!
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The fear of public speaking is pretty widespread, although I don’t think it can logically be classified as useful or protective unless you think of it as protecting you from making a complete fool of yourself. While in college I was petrified at the thought of having to get up in front of the whole class, and, mind you, this was my speech class. I think it might have been a sophomore level class that I had put off taking until spring quarter of my senior year, that’s how scared I was. Once I embarked on my career in office administration, I voluntarily signed up for Toastmasters thinking that it would be helpful to be able to speak in public with some confidence. As it turned out, I loved it, and ended up participating in several regional speech contests. It’s a skill that can be learned, and a little practice made all the difference in the world.
Then there are spiders! Don’t know that fear is the correct term for what I feel, it’s more of an aversion. I seriously do not like spiders, especially the big hairy ones, and I don’t care much for centipedes either. Ugh!
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my office mate 41 year old guy. is scared to death of spiders and squeals like a little girl,. it is one of the funnier things in life
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That’s me. Although I’m getting better. Unless it’s the fat brown ones at the farm. I still squeal and hop about when I see them…
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As a bug lover, I always tell everyone that bugs are our friends. There are not very many people who agree with me. Fear of insects, spiders and other creepy crawly creatures is very wide spread. That doesn’t mean that I think that you shouldn’t be careful around bugs because some of them can bite or sting you. I just don’t think it is a good thing to be excessively afraid of bugs, but I know this is very common.
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My mom convinced me when I was in jr. high to play piano to accompany the little kids’ Sunday school class. I was scared stiff, practiced from their song book all week, and survived it on Sunday. It got easier the more I did it. I eventually played for some of our skits in college – discovered that there was so much else going on besides my accompaniment, no one else really knew when I screwed up which I did plenty. (Not sure what the protective part of that fear was, now that I re-read the question.)
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This question confuses me. Why would I want to get over a useful, protective fear? I will mull it over in two waiting rooms today.
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good point. its there sometimes to keep you safe
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I’m scared of driving 85-100 mph on a crowded freeway while changing lanes constantly. I’m also scared of taking a freeway exit on the right when I’m in the far left lane until 10 feet before the exit. Also making a left turn when I’ve been in the far right lane of city streets. I hope I don’t get over these fears, but there seems to be quite a few people driving around who aren’t scared to do these things.
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i used to be scared of switching drivers going down the road without pulling over and made a rule against ding it but modified that to be no switching drivers while going over 100.believe it or not those rules likely came into platy a time or two in my wilder days
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Maybe I should add “riding in a car that tim is driving” to my list of fears.
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My first thought is – don’t do those things. Don’t drive at 85-100, keep lane changes to a minimum. Don’t be in the left lane if you know your exit approacheth or the right lane of a city street when you want to turn left. If you find yourself in either of the latter two, skip the exit or the turn and recover down the road.
Aha – you are not saying that YOU do those things but wish other people would QUIT doing them. Makes sense.
Nevermind.
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I’m too scared to even try to do them.And it amazes me that other people do these things regularly.
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I do everything I can to avoid driving in rush hour,. A good fear as far as I am concerned. Don’t take this personally, but you big-city dwellers are nuts. It did not used to bother me. I used to drive in rush hour in big cites all over America.
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i think the punks and 30 somethings that used to brand seatle as over caffinated have spread to encompass the earth, watch out
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I think the bigger change is in me.
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It’s not just rush hour here in Minneapolis, Clyde. I rarely drive in rush hour and every time I do drive somewhere, I’m amazed at the things I see. Heck, I’m amazed every time I walk somewhere and see what drivers do…it seems like there should be hundreds more car accidents than there are.
Once when I was in Duluth, I was leaving my mom’s apartment, near the UMD campus, to go to my sister’s house at the far west end of Duluth, almost to Jay Cooke State Park. My sister told me, “You know it’s rush hour.” I got on the freeway and laughed at her. “THIS is rush hour? Ha!”
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Mankato has a clearly visible rush hour in the downtown area. It last about 6 minutes.
I think I will never be sure if people have gotten that much worse or if I’v just gotten that crotchety.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLIDuu1XsRc
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There’s a Golden Smog song that contains the line “If I live too long I’m afraid I’ll die”…a reasonable fear, but probably not a very useful one. Any way to get over that?
I sometimes have dreams in which I’m under water, trying to hold my breath, and then when I can’t hold my breath any longer and think I’m about to drown, I discover I can breathe water. That dream freaks me out a little.
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I hope you did not just infect me with it!! I may be angry at you in the morning.
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Dream about the python in the eye instead, then. 😉
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