Fear of Falling
The other day I slipped in the garden and fell into a flowerbed. It wasn’t serious as it was a raised bed so I didn’t fall far, though I did get a bit of a gash on my leg where I hit the little wall around it. It had been raining so everything was wet and I needed to clean myself up as well as clean my wound. I think it’s fair to say, though, that only my dignity really suffered (and a few plants got a bit squashed).
When I was safely back inside the house I got thinking about the difference between “to fall” and “to have a fall”. It seems to me that when someone is young you would say that they fell, but for an older person it would be that they “had a fall”. I’m not sure at what age the transition occurs, but I insist that I fell. I didn’t have a fall.
Thinking a bit more about it, perhaps it’s not the age of the person falling per se but the seriousness of the event. The likelihood of injury of course increases with age. If you fall you get up reasonably quickly afterwards. If you have a fall then you would probably be injured, possibly seriously, and might need assistance. If you have a great fall, of course, not even all the King’s horses and all the King’s men could help you.
All of which nonsense leads me to reflect on one of my phobias. I often say that I’m scared of heights, but it’s really not as simple as that. I have a fear of edges, i.e. sudden drops, even if they’re not particularly high. It gets worse with height – I had problems on my terrace in Barcelona, for example. This fear is irrational because I know I’m at no risk of falling, but there you go. Curiously, I don’t think I ever had this when I was a child.
Years ago when I was having therapy, this subject came up. The therapist guessed that it started when I got beaten up in Brighton back in the 1980s. During that event, I fell and, I think, hit my head on the edge of the pavement which knocked me out and scrambled my wits for some time afterwards. It’s possible being near a visible edge triggers some sort of flashback to this event.
I hope my more recent tumble doesn’t leave me with a fear of flower beds.
In the Dark 
July 28, 2024 at 8:56 pm
Interesting! We, my partner and I, distinguish two different types of fear of heights, but that does not have to do with the presence or absence of an edge. My partner has the more classical fear of height which occurs when he can look down very far. It is irrelevant whether he runs a risk of falling or not. I do not have that problem, but instead can be afraid of sometimes ridiculously low heights. That is because my fear arises when I have to descend that height, and it is not easy. I call his type of fear the irrational type (no real danger) and mine the rational type: I might fall when descending and get injured.