Vertigo ...is not fear of heights ...

Vertigo is a bummer

Guzzler said:

Vertigo is a bummer

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I get it frequently but seems to be entirely psychological. My trigger is seeing someone else who is, for instance, standing on the edge of a cliff. It happens not only in real life but even if I am watching a TV program where someone is in such a situation.

(I also get vertigo if in such a situation myself, but that's very rare because you would never catch me deliberately putting myself there!)

Edited to add: This is surely completely different from "medical" vertigo.

Grateful said:

I get it frequently but seems to be entirely psychological. My trigger is seeing someone else who is, for instance, standing on the edge of a cliff. It happens not only in real life but even if I am watching a TV program where someone is in such a situation.

(I also get vertigo if in such a situation myself, but that's very rare because you would never catch me deliberately putting myself there!)

Edited to add: This is surely completely different from "medical" vertigo.

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Vertigo has absolutely nothing to do with a fear of heights. Nothing.
There is no such term as 'medical vertigo'. Vertigo is what it is, a physiological response to stimuli.
I have a condition that causes acute attacks of vertigo, I may be in the infancy stage of my research into T2 but vertigo is something I know and live with. Believe me when I say that feeling a bit queasy at the sight of of a Big Dipper ride is nowt.

Guzzler said:

Believe me when I say that feeling a bit queasy at the sight of of a Big Dipper ride is nowt.

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I stand corrected.

Debzz_ said:

Lol this isn’t vertigo - vertigo is an imbalance of the inner ear .

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As I said already, I stand corrected. I learn something new every day.

Edited to add: Hope you get better soon.

Upon further research, I pinned down the error.

"Fear of heights" is called "acrophobia." I probably have a fairly extreme version of it. I was watching the TV news tonight and they had a feature on a sport called "slacklining" which basically involves stringing lines between mountains and walking along them. I could barely watch and when I did, had this really queasy sensation in my stomach.

What may have happened is a linguistic mixup. My first language is French and our word for "fear of heights" is "vertige." So this is what we call linguistically a "false friend." When I learned most of my English (after the age of 10) I must have just commingled that with the English word "vertigo."

@Debzz_ I do hope you get better soon and sorry for the misunderstanding. I do love walking, and hiking, especially in the UK when I get the chance to go there (I am in America).

Well I've just learned something new too. I always thought I had vertigo. I can't climb ladders more than 4-5 feet, and don't like being on narrow high places like mountain ridges, which was a problem as I liked hiking holidays. But it seems it might be acrophobia rather than vertigo.

I blame that old, black and white movie starring Jimmy Stewart.