About a year or two ago I was reading Nevil Shute's autobiography, Slide Rule, in which he related a story of a man who had come to Shute's airplane manufacturing company looking for work on the blimp they were constructing, this being during the great depression. The job entailed working at heights, so as part of the qualification process the man had to climb up a rope, perhaps it was a ladder, as far as he could. Of course, this man had a fear of heights, and he came upon a level where he would not advance any farther, below the qualifying level. After climbing down, the man asked to have another go at it, desperate was he to work. And so, the man climbed up again, but this time he advanced farther than he had before, before reaching a new point which he was terrified to progress any farther. He climbed back down, asked to go again, and again, each time pushing the boundary of what was acceptable to him, until he surpassed the level he had to reach. The man got the job, and like those men who work upon skyscrapers, he worked at heights terrifying to the rest of us.
Shute surmised that the fear of heights could be overcome, one just needed to follow the fellow's process of increasing exposure to get used to the concept.
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