Your Erickson recollection about a "fear of flying being a socially accepted means of expressing a fear of losing control" got me wondering, Rob, if you've had any success treating people for fear of heights?

I've had a fear of heights for all of my life (as far as I can remember). If I go near the edge of a large drop that doesn't have some sort of "protection" - e.g. a solid handrail, a fence, or similar - I get severe vertigo, to the point where I sometimes need to sit down and back away from the edge. I'm happy to say it hasn't stopped me going to the top of tall buildings, flying in a balloon, and even hang-gliding, and I'm comfortable enough with it now to treat it as just a restriction I have to live with, but I've never been able to cure the vertigo.

I say "restriction" here, because a lot of my friends can go to the edges of the same drops, without any vertigo, so I can't participate in some of the activities they do - e.g. rock-climbing.

A couple of years ago I acquired a brain injury that destroyed my ability to balance, so I've experienced the feeling of having control taken away. It wasn't pleasant, but after three months of physical rehab I learnt to balance again and am mostly back to where I was before. Still get the vertigo though.

So I'm curious if you or anyone has had success helping people to overcome vertigo through hypnotherapy, or if there are just some situations that are not just mental, but also physical?