Not perfect, but possible - Dr Jenni Myers
Ten years ago I was in a losing battle with my mind. I was gripped by a crippling anxiety and struggled to see how things could ever get better. I thought that getting better would be something which would happen overnight. A media filled with people spreading the word that hope is possible left me feeling nothing but hopeless. The problem is you don’t see the struggles and the journey they went on to find this sense of hope. No one tells you that you will have more bad days than good. No one tells you that getting better doesn’t mean it’s gone away. Instead it means you have learned to adapt, to live with it. No one tells you that you will be so busy living that you haven’t realised you can finally live.
It can be difficult for people to understand why I feel so immensely proud of myself when I reach the top of a mountain, or cycle the 11 miles to and from work. Ten years ago, walking 200 metres from my car to work was my mount Everest. It is difficult to put into words but it was probably one of the most mentally challenging things I have ever faced. That journey from my car to work. A challenge which I had to face every day. And now, ten years later, not only can I walk those 200 metres, I can leave my car at home and cycle the whole way.
So why am I telling you this? Because I know that there will be someone out there who feels just like I did. I want them to know that finding themselves in a better place is not going to be a perfect journey, but it is a possible one. My journey is one in which I changed my relationship with the outside world through embracing adventure and exploring the limits of my resilience.
It started with a run. Not a marathon, not a 10k, not even a 5k. A run to the end of my road. The end of my road was ¾ of a mile, totalling 1.5 miles there and back. Initially this felt like an impossible challenge. Not only did I have to face my agoraphobia and venture away from my safe space, my home. I also had to do this in a state of physical exhaustion. I was not a runner, I never have been. This meant that an already anxiety induced high heart rate was increased even further with the physical exertion of running. This in turn created even more anxiety. But I persisted.
I have always been an analytical person, needing to understand the world around me and I think this fuelled my anxiety. In this case I had reasoned that as I became fitter and was able to run further, the distance I could travel away from home without feeling anxious would also increase. The way I reasoned this in my mind was if something was within running distance or walking distance of my house then it really couldn’t be that far away. Flawed logic, I know, but it was what I needed to tell myself.
It turned out that running was not for me, I didn’t enjoy it. But I had the theory and was determined to put it to the test.
This is where cycling came in. If you look back through photos of my childhood I have always been on a bike. I love cycling and this was to be my weapon in fighting my agoraphobia. Initially I started with rides less than 10 miles. Again, this sounds like such a short distance, but at first it felt like I was cycling to the other end of the country.
I had to be clever in the way I planned rides. If I wanted to cycle further I had to plan circular rides around my house so I was never any further away than a few miles. Then I began to plan linear rides but with a means of return other than my bike. I would ride to work and get a lift home. To the outside world this may have seemed lazy, but it was what I needed to be able to get there. An escape route.
As I cycled further the world felt smaller and as the world felt smaller it felt safer. The key word here is safer, not safe. The truth of it is, the world still does not feel a safe place for me and I don’t think it ever will, that’s just part of who I am. However, I now know I have the strength to face my fear, to survive and know I will be ok, not matter how hard it may feel.
Eight years ago I attempted to hike up Hellvelyn, a mountain in the heart of the Lake District. This was an unsuccessful attempt in which agoraphobia won. It hit me hard and returned me to the question of will I ever get better. A few years later I returned to this mountain and reached the summit. This was a massive achievement for me. Not overcoming the physical hike, but overcoming the mental hike, the demons in my mind. Again, I do not want to paint a perfect picture of triumph which gives unrealistic hope. It was hard. There were points on this hike where I was entering full blown panic mode, but I had no choice but to push on. I didn’t learn that I could do it and it would be easy. I learnt that it would be hard but I could survive and this lesson was invaluable.
This has given me the strength to push on, go further, try harder. I started gradually pushing the distance I could run and ride. Distances which a few years ago I perceived so unattainable I may as well have been aiming for the moon and back, now feel like a leisurely jaunt on a sunny afternoon. It’s bizarre how your perspective shifts as your relationship with the world around you changes. Although I still feel overwhelmingly daunted by my endeavours, I am in a position where I have the trust in myself to be able to wake up one morning, hop on a train with my bike to some unknown destination and ride back home, taking each wobble as it comes. Oh yes, there definitely are still some big wobbles. But the 23-year-old me who sat on a train station platform, crying and very much alone, would be so proud of where I am today.
I know the distance you can run or ride should not be important, but every mile represents another mile further away from brokenness and another mile closer towards hope for a brighter future. Over the last ten years I have found a love for bikepacking, planning multiday trips, wild camping and meeting fellow travellers in bothies. I began to understand how my relationship with nature was the key to unlocking the parts of me which were held prisoner by my agoraphobia. To explore this discovery further I completed a PhD in wilderness therapy and created an on-line ecotherapy programme called The Nature Mind. My hope is to help other people unlock their potential through exploration and adventure in the outdoors.
I am also on a quest to explore my own potential and capabilities. Last year I began to dabble in the world of weird and wonderful challenges. Inspired by Beau Miles I ran 1 mile every hour for 24 hours. It wasn’t perfect, but it was possible. Next year I plan to do a triathlon the length of Great Britain. I will ride from Lands End to John O’Groats, stopping off to run up each of the national three peaks and swim across three bodies of water. But that’s a whole other story. For now I know that I will ride further, even though it will take patience, time and kindness towards myself. The steps I am taking are still tiny, but they are steps and they are in the right direction. I do want to travel the world but it still feels so far from possible that it breaks my heart that I may never do it. However, it is there and it is there for me to conquer. Maybe in years to come standing at the other side of the world may feel like I’m standing in my back garden. I am not going to think about that for now. I am going to concentrate on tomorrow and tomorrow has another mountain that I WILL conquer. Living is not perfect, but it is possible.
Written by Dr Jenni Myers, find her work at thenaturemind.com and follow her adventures on Instagram @adventures_of_drjen.
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