Fear and how to overcome it - Mark Twight

ACCEPTING FEAR

Inexperienced climbers hold the grand masters in awe because of their apparent fearlessness. But whatever their actions suggest, no person is immune to fear. Although the great climber feels comfortable in terrifying situations, he or she knows to fear only that which should be feared.

Don't imagine the grand master dispassionately contemplating the arrival of a killer storm. This climber is scared but not paralyzed, terrified but able to turn fear into productive action. The mind produces fear, so fear is subject to control and direction. Acquire the difficult yet essential skill of directing fear, harnessing it as a source of energy. There is no recipe for this skill, because each mind is different, but some concepts may provide direction.

Nobody controls a situation in the mountains. It is vanity to imagine one can. Instead grow comfortable with giving up control and acting within chaos and uncertainty. Attempting t dominate constantly changing circumstances in the mountains or to fight the loss of control serves only to increase fear and to multiply its effects. Embrace the inherent lack of control and focus on applying skills and ideals to the situation.

To climb through fear, to point fear up instead of down, you need to maintain the desire and strength, the will and discipline, to go until the end of the pitch. If you are scared, reinforce your confidence by biting of what you know you can chew. Successfully swallowing it will encourage you to take another big bite, another pitch. Try to keep sight of the long view. Any time your mind can accept a bigger bite, go for the top in one big gulp. Preserve your drive. Don't sketch around or get psyched out or consider lowering off to relinquish the lead. Trust in your skill, and give yourself up to the action.

The scared climber often points his fear at the ground, believing retreat will deliver a more comfortable state of mind. This climber has too strong a connection with the ground. An irrational fixation on retreat will impede upward progress when retreat isn't an option. Instead learn to aim fear at the belay above. My climbing partner Scott Backes once described a climber as "going for the belay". He meant the guy was psyched up - that if he hadn't run out of rope he would have kept going. He didn't just hit the target, he punched through it. Anyone who climbs like this will feel fear, greet it, and keep going.

When self discipline fails and fear runs unchecked, the spiral into panic is not far off. Panic is uncontrolled, undirected fear and as such is unproductive. It takes a huge amount of energy to panic, and you receive little enduring energy in return. Panic is great for lifting a car of a baby or fleeing a charging mastadon, but is is useless for getting out of dangerous situations on the mountains.  Panic blocks thought, if you can' think, you die.

A productive response to fear doesn't derive from te simple decision not to panic. I learned that during my formative years when I was climbing a lot of winter routes in the North Cascades of Washington State, where fear caused me to retreat numerous times. My ambition far outstretched my physical and psychological capacities. After a shouting match with Andy Nock on the summit of one of the Twin Sisters - He wanted to descend the climb and climb the other peak while I simply wanted to get out of there - I quit climbing all together. I wasn't comfortable in the mountain environment. Fear held me hostage.

My mentor, Gary Smith, believed I couldn't learn anything more from climbing itself. He had served with the marine reconnaissance in Vietnam, so he was well acquainted with Mr. Fear. Gary suggested I study martial arts and introduced me to a school in Seattle's Chinatown. I trained three nights a week, three hours each night, for eighteen months.

There were no belt ranks, no tournaments, and no bullshit - only discipline, hard work, and slowly emerging self-confidence.

Training with more experienced students, who were capable of really hurting me, taught reasonable responses to fear. The belief on my own strength - Developed during my time at the school and during early morning sessions with Gary learning to play the Japanese strategy game Go - eventually turned me back to the mountains. I said farewell to my mentor and the schools seifu, John Leong, to begin climbing again.

Every martial art and Eastern philosophy has at it's heart the "conquest" of fear. Breathing and relaxation techniques learned from the martial arts, meditation, or biofeedback training may be carried everywhere once you learn them. These techniques reshape panic into plain old fear or discomfort, thus gaining power over it or releasing it altogether.