Climbing is basically a sport to practice being scared

On the weekend, I climbed a UIAA 7 / French grade 6B route on an arête (outside corner), on a set of triangular / trapezoidal holds with bumps on them for the thumb and fingers to secure on them. The footholds are always angled, so that the climber would feel very insecure standing on them. I found that I had enough grip strength to hang on to the holds. The route is more about balancing and being able to use the holds securely without requiring too much force. However, since this style of handholds and footholds are brand new to me. I constantly felt insecure, whenever I had to shift positions to do the next move. As someone who hating falling, I would basically clip super high (way over my head, as soon as my finger tip could reach a quickdraw), and would hang after every move. Basically, because I felt so insecure on the route, I would grab the holds much harder than necessary to stay on the wall, and that would tire me out super fast. Also, I had difficulty seeing the next badly angled foothold when reaching from one side wall to the other corner side wall. Near the top, I was ready to give up and go down, but I managed to talk to myself and say I can do it, which I could, because I had enough strength left to finish it. 

Early on when I was climbing, the fear was always there, but my limiting factor was mainly that I had no muscle strength left to do the next moves. Now I am happy I am at a point of my "climbing career" where my endurance is better, so I am mainly fighting with my head psychology. The desire to cut climbing short now is completely about my brain being tired of being scared/feeling insecure, and wanting to be in a more secure feeling place (the ground). 

Right after this fear/sweat inducing climb, I went to a UIAA 6+/7- / French grade 6A/6A+ green route that, on Friday, I had felt quite insecure doing it, due to the reachiness of the route. However, after the extreme insecurity-inducing blue 6B route, this route now felt like a cake walk. The footholds were flat. My feet did not need to stand on some funny angle. The handholds also felt amazingly secure. The anxiety was way down and both P and I could rush through the route with feeling almost no insecurity. This was kind of an eye-opening experience. It's as if, to prepare for a public speaking event with 200 audience in attendance, the solution to stress reduction would be to do a public speaking event with 2000 fake audience members in advance. The heart rates, nervous shakes and all literally calm way down.

For my last climb on a overhang 5C though, I did feel my core tiring out near the end and had to take a hang break. So far I haven't figured out if I could tough that out too or if it's better to let my more naturally build endurance. I do feel though that my current shallow breathing patterns limit my endurance. If I could learn to improving my breathing, my endurance would improve too.