The healing power of movement.
Age: 20 Year: 2014
The shrill sound of my alarm forces me into awareness. 'Who the hell set that?' I wonder, unaccustomed to the rude awakening. The day is barely dawning, 6am. Then I remember. Right, I set it. Today I want to do stuff, and I have DBT. I roll over, questioning whether to actually follow through on yesterday's carefully prepared game plan for today. After pressing snooze twice, I decide it is better to get up and try than not try at all. At least, that's what they tell me.
Trying not to think too much about what is on my list, I go about the process of ticking things off. Shower, tick. Brush teeth, tick. Medications, tick. Breakfast, tick. Just putting those little black ticks on the paper is enough to get me to that point. Then I get to 'Go to DBT' and I hit a block. That's hard, I'm not sure if I want to do hard today. Mum reassures me that it might not be as bad as I think, managing to shuffle me into the car as she does. With my DBT diary, colouring pages, textas and medications in my bag, we make our way to the hospital.
I sit through DBT, learning about distress tolerance, mindfulness, emotional regulation and interpersonal effectiveness. The content is interesting and it helps, but today my mind is at war with me again. I take a valium and try to do the very thing they are teaching us, sit with distress. I do make it through the day, although don't remember much of the content after the light flickered and I began to wonder who was watching. With the help of the group I gathered some rationalisations and was able to stay in the room the whole time and colour in, but my mind was gone again. See, they are still there, following me. I am forever being watched because I did the wrong thing. I lived.
As me and mum head home in the mid afternoon, the distress of the morning follows me. I am restless, unable to sit still or catch a thought before the next one flies in. Question after question, worry after worry. I try to breathe, to be in the moment, but the moment hurts to be in, and the more I focus on my breath the more I become distressed that I might be choking for real. Once we are home, rather than turn to medications again, mum and I follow a routine that has become more powerful than any medication ever was.
Shorts, t-shirt, shoes, and we are out the door. Mum rides her bike beside me as I break into a run. I am still not allowed alone, because when I try to run alone the thoughts that rule my mind often win. But with mum beside me I am safe from them, and I just run.
I feel the bay air across my body and the thud of my feet on the footpath. The way my breath naturally reaches a rhythmic equilibrium calms me. But the most amazing thing I have found about being in motion, is the way my mind is able to become more empty than I can ever remember it being in my entire life.
Sometimes, me and mum chat away, as I am more able to organise my thoughts and explain things to her while I am in movement. The restlessness of my body and mind is taken care of by the effort it takes to move, so I am more open and able to explore my inner world. Even though what I talk about are things that distress me in other circumstances, I find the level of comfort I need through knowing there is a reason why my heart is beating fast, why my breathing is deep and quickened, and why I am uncomfortable.
It is an odd contrast to experience, being so comfortably uncomfortable. But after years of being in pain I couldn't describe or understand, I have found a new solace in this healthy, normal, 'pain'. Although, I don't experience it as pain. It is something similar, but the fact that it has a clear explanation and a start and end whenever I choose; That is more comforting and empowering than pain could ever be described as.
Today, we are most silent, as I try to process where my mind is taking me. I still can't quite believe that what my mind is telling me isn't true, but I can find some flaws in the thought patterns that ail me. I am learning more about myself in this moment than I ever have in a therapy room.
Eventually we reach the point where it gets physically hard enough that I can no longer think so much. I merely feel. I feel the power in my legs propelling me forward. The fatigue seeping in with the way it makes me shorten my stride, and the release of sweat that somehow makes me feel clean rather than dirty.
We make it back to the house in record time. 5km in 29:58. I just broke 30 minutes for 5km for the first time in my life. I am empowered by the knowledge that I couldn't do that last week and that I just ran faster than I have ever run before. I was able to endure the fatigue a little longer. It makes me wonder what else I can do. I never believed I could have done that. I was wrong, it seems I can do hard things. So maybe I am more capable than my mind tells me? Maybe, I can endure emotional pain a little longer too before I act.
Maybe, the internal voices that have convinced me I am unworthy of a place on this earth are wrong.
Showered, fed and safely tucked up in bed, the dark thoughts do return. I am yet to know an existence without them, but I do have a little more fire to fight back tonight. I am a little stronger and a little more prepared. I am slowly finding a little more me.
"The restlessness of my body and mind is taken care of by the effort it takes to move, so I am more open and able to explore my inner world. "
Yep, this is where running entered my world. In the aftermath of my complete breakdown, I was still in a constant struggle. Part of me was reassured each passing day as my delusional thoughts of my family dying weren't coming true, but the belief I was 'past my due date' as I wrote in my diary stuck around for a long time.
I had always been sporty and active. Growing up I was the kid that played a different team sport before and after school every day and would never sit still. Sport had always been an incredible part of my life that helped me express who I was and what I wanted to become. But once I became acutely unwell, the team sports that had kept me going for years, basketball and football, became harder. I had an incredible football team and coach that were supportive beyond belief, and played basketball in a mixed team with my family, but I struggled. I struggled because the anxiety and negative thoughts had found their way into the game, arching up every time I missed a shot or made a bad pass. Every time I perceived I had let them team down. The constant worry of what others were thinking, or who could see my scars, or if people could hear my thoughts, overruled the joy the sports bought.
When I found running though, it was different. The first run I remember was me running away from the hospital out of complete desperation to get home. I started the run distressed as ever, but soon found that without the other people around, the movement was more comforting than I ever thought it could be. I found a 'drug' that worked better than any pill I had ever taken.
It didn't stop at running for me though. Any solo endurance activity was able to bring about a similar sense of peace, so I would cycle, swim, and do endurance gym work. Running was the one I was most drawn to though, and having the help and support of my family made it possible.
One of my favourite photos from this time is the one below. I am running my first run run (aside from a couple of run for the kids in high school), the City2Sea 15km. I genuinely have zero memory of this race, as I don't remember most of the time between August 2014 - May 2015. My shirt is on backwards and my body looks like it is in all sorts with tape/bandages. That cast on my hand is because one of my delusions became that the evil within me lived in my left pinky, so I cut it off and it had to be reattached (gruesome I know, even I cringe, but that's the reality).
Yet despite all that, the smile on my face says it all. I was happy.
Through running, I realised a power I didn't know I possessed. When trying to deal with pain that is forced upon us, there is incredible power to be gained through choosing to be uncomfortable, and learning to endure that chosen discomfort first. Running helped teach me that and many other things, and my life wouldn't be the same without it.
But running in itself did not heal me. In the months following this I was still in and out of hospital, still in therapy constantly, and ended up having electroconvulsive therapy among other things. I will discuss other treatments in future posts. What it did do thought, was give me more hope and purpose.
Running and exercise never have been, and never will be, 'the answer' to mental health troubles. I know from experience (pretty sure many readers would too), that relying on any one thing and holding onto it so tightly out of fear, usually just ends up in losing it. Running is so special to me that I never want to rely on it, so I have made sure running and movement are just one amazing part of the many that make up the foundation of my recovery.
"Movement is the universal language of personal freedom."
~ Louis Chevrolet ~
Still We Rise.