TBP 306 :: A Kinder Way to Work through Fear of Falling – Therapist Emma McAdam
I just published a new episode with a therapist about using exposure therapy and mindfulness to decrease your fear of falling in climbing! If you are struggling with fear of falling, whether that is on toprope, on lead, or on boulders, this episode will help you make an action plan to work on it so you feel less anxious and terrified when you’re climbing.
Even if you don’t struggle with fear but your partner or friends do, this episode will help you have more compassion for them and offer them helpful advice. Please share this episode with your people who need it.
Emma McAdam is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in Utah who has a youtube channel (@TherapyInANutshell) and online courses on her website therapyinanutshell.com where you can learn therapeutic tools on your own time. I really appreciate Emma’s warm, down-to-Earth approach and her relatable way of speaking and teaching, and I think her youtube videos are really well produced.
Luckily for us, she is also a climber and has a video all about how she used exposure therapy to decrease her fear of falling.
I reached out to her to invite her on the show to talk about her gentle approach to overcoming and managing fear of falling and she kindly accepted my invitation. We talked about all things exposure therapy, but with Emma’s compassionate approach injected into it.
Here’s what we covered:
✅ Where to start with fear of falling
✅ How to practice teaching your brain it’s safe to fall
✅ 2 things that fuel anxiety
✅ What is the emotion of fear asking you?
✅ Building an exposure hierarchy
✅ How to practice falling in a productive way
✅ Difference between risk “tolerance” and risk “choice”
I hope you love this interview as much as I did. Find episode 306 of The TrainingBeta Podcast in the link in our bio or wherever you get your podcasts.
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