experience doing Tough Mudder. After he made that first jump he
felt invincible. After making it multiple times it wasn’t even that
scary to him anymore. This reduction in fear is something he takes
back with him into his daily life. He felt his experiences at Tough
Mudder had changed him on a fundamental level, perhaps all the
way down to his DNA.
Looking for control on the mountain (or the Tough Mudder
course) can be especially attractive to those who might not have it
in their everyday life or to those who have a vague sense of dread,
anxiety, and lack of control in their lives. Being in a situation where
your actions have a direct impact on you and where the fear you
experience is direct and palpable might be a refreshing change of
pace.
It might be hard to imagine that a person who feels they
have little control over his or her life could put themselves in
a situation of great danger like scaling a mountain. But time and
time again the sensation-seekers I have interviewed told just this
kind of story. Having to focus their energy on a singular task in
the here and now was highly therapeutic for them. Interestingly,
the focus they achieve and the benefits of the experience mirror the
outcomes some get from meditation. In mindfulness meditation
focusing your awareness is a key component. What’s more, regular
meditation is associated with lower stress hormones and increased
self-esteem.^39
It’s not unusual for people to feel a free flowing sense of
anxiety that’s not linked to any specific thing. Many of us live under
a constant barrage of sensory stimulation: honking horns, loud
noises, random people yelling (sometimes at you, and for no appar-
ent reason). This can leave some people in a constant state of
ambiguous anxiety. Swapping all that ambiguous anxiety out for
a specific external fear that you can control may be therapeutic.
Anxiety is mushy. Fear is targeted toward a known, specific threat,
and there’s more than enough fear in most risky activities. An
externalized and directed fear can be diminished if the specific
threat is controlled. In some cases, the emotion must be wrestled
back to be able to achieve the task. This activity, creating and
conquering fear, can have an impact beyond the mountain.
Not all risky activities involve the short-term “crux” experi-
ences described earlier. Longer duration activities like ocean row-
ing or polar expeditions involve different kinds of emotional
regulation and agency. Skydivers need to use these strengths only91 / Sports and Adventure in High Sensation-SeekingDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:19:03, subject to the Cambridge