I had been on this exact climb before. It was down on the warm up wall. It was that easy one we quickly ran up to get in a first lap.
There was no real challenge in it for me at this point in my climbing career. When I had brought my family here (a group of individuals who didn’t climb regularly), I brought them to this route as an easy place to play on. That time, about 6 months before this story takes place, I had so easily put up the route. No problem.
But it was a new day. And in the space between now and then, my world had taken a turn.
On this new day, I was halfway up the route. I had clipped my rope into the third bolt and was making my way towards the fourth.
And I wasn’t having fun.
My breath had started feeling heavy early on. That was strange. I wasn’t physically exerting myself, and it didn’t make sense for fear to come grip me here in what should’ve been a space of ease.
Now, at this point in the climb – halfway up the short route – my breath had left me and my chest now felt as if it were being crushed. My head spun. My legs were shaking.
The third bold was at my feet. I had pulled a few easy moves to get myself up to here, and now getting to the fourth one would involve one more big step – a big reach up to a next good hold.
My mind flew through all the scary things that could happen: If I fell here, it would be a large fall. If I fell that far, what could happen? My mind ran through all the terrible (yet seriously irrational) possibilities.
I called in the rational part of my mind. It had to be here somewhere. I knew the hold was good. I had been here before. There was no way I was going to fall. This climb was easy.
But my body shook. The nausea arose. My limbs began to tremble.
It’s times like these I am trained for, I tell myself. I’ve done the work. My meditation practice has enabled me to more readily let go of scary thoughts and focus. My years as an athlete have enabled me to shut out what needs to be shut out and get the job done.
My years of climbing have combined these skills together to shut out the scary thoughts, stay calm, stay focused, and reach for the next hold.
I tell myself I need to find my breath. I can relax. It’s all in my head. It’s easy. I’m fine.
My body responds. My legs shake. My arms tremble. And as my chest collapses in I struggle for air.
It was not all in my head. And I was not fine.
Through tears, I yelled down the words that stabbed at my heart. Words that I never allowed myself to speak before:
“I can’t do this. Please let me down.”
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The power of the human mind
For many years I prized the capabilities of the human mind. It’s a topic that pulled me in and asked that it be explored fully.
For a while I chose an academic perspective for this exploration – reading all that I could about the brain and mind, taking college courses, and even performing my own research in laboratories. I yearned to collect all the information I could on this extraordinary biological creation.
Later on, I found that an experiential examination of my own mind was needed – one that involved day after day spent on the meditation cushion, examining its powers and limitations; how it supported me, and how it deceived me. On the cushion I learned to focus my attention – to recognize all the noise that moved through my mind space and to let it all go, keeping my focus where I wanted it to be.
Year after year I explored the depths of the human mind, and this served me greatly when I found myself with ample opportunity to be outside on rock walls, ascending upward, chasing down one ascent after the next as I worked through one challenge after another.
This space made sense to me. It provided a spectacular playground where I could test myself and improve my mental & physical capabilities.
It all made sense, and the progression upward through it all brightened my world.
Then, one day, things stopped making sense, and I was forced to learn a new perspective on the mind, the body, and the entire human experience.
–
Back to the story
I’d been here many times before. As one my favorite crags with many of my favorite tough climbs, I had come here over the years, progressing up through the grades, having a blast with heart open wide and ego smiling at each accomplishment.
It’s what I loved most: progressing as I got stronger, improving my technique, overcoming fears, and all-the-while finding joy and fulfillment out in the great outdoors with great companions.
It didn’t get much better than that 🙂
But mixed in with these days of immense joy and excitement found through rock climbing, I also was experiencing a profound darkness. It’s one I will speak very few words to here, but instead shall only let it be known that, as the months passed by overwhelmed with one dark hardship after the next, I found myself clinging with all I had to this one joyful and rewarding space.
Here, in this space, there was a need to let the rest of the world go and focus intently on what was right in front of me. Here, climbing up a cliff wall, there was no space to think further than the present moment, for it was each moment that required focus to ensure that I safely ascended.
Being in the present moment – it’s a skill I had worked so hard to cultivate, and one I prided myself on when I could be here, in this space, and focus directly on that which I wanted to focus on.
But how do we really know where the best place to put our attention is? How do we truly understand if our attentive efforts are leading us in a positive direction?
When I was a little girl I was told I could do what I wanted in life – that, if I worked hard enough, I could be whatever I wanted to be. It’s a privilege that not everyone has, and knowing this, I clung to it tightly, taking it into my core as I charged forward through life, head down, intent on following along an important path laid down before me.
It helped that I was so good at it. I was so quick to learn, and so capable of taking on so much. I zoomed through my science and engineering degrees and bounded forward out into the real world.
And that’s where it all fell apart. The shiny objects I had worked so hard for through all those schooling days – they were nowhere to be found. Out here, there were new rules promising new heights, and I wasn’t prepared.
It all started falling apart, and I clung to climbing to keep it together. I dug my claws tighter and tighter into this message that had served me so well: that with right attention and enough hard work, I could make things happen. I could create that life I’d been chasing down – if only I kept my attention fully on the prize and kept working hard.
If only I had diverted my attention just enough so that I could hear the whispers. If only someone had taught me how to listen.
I didn’t divert my attention, and I didn’t listen to the whispers as they got louder and louder.
I didn’t listen until one fateful day up on an easy climb – one where my world finally caved in around me and screamed at me that it was time to listen:
You forgot something – you forgot something so deeply important that now you will be forced to live here, in this new space, getting to know it for all that it is.
The power of the human body
Once upon a time, I became deeply interest in behavior, learning all that I could about the conscious and unconscious mind, and how each drives behavior in different ways.
I became particularly interested in the unconscious mind – it is filled with mechanisms and pathways that I could speak to for day upon day, listing out statistics and other numbers that speak to its power. Once upon a time I was interested in the unconscious mind – one more aspect of the “power of the human mind” story that I had chased down for so long.
But I don’t think this way any more. At least, not entirely.
My thinking shifted when the power of my human mind became nothing compared to the power of my body – that is, when I lost the ability to control my thoughts and emotions and instead suffered the fate of what my body told me I needed to hear.
My thinking shifted when I had my beloved rock climbing taken from me: When I was forced to stay grounded, learning to find my way back to safety far away from the cliff walls I loved deeply.
My thinking shifted, and now I have no interest in telling tales of numbers and mechanisms and the importance of understanding the human mind. Instead, what I now desire to tell the world is how deeply important it is that we learn to listen into our whole selves – and, yes, that certainly includes our dear bodies.
Photos: shortly before the panic attacks started, sending (completing) my last ascent (with injured wrist), and embracing the immense joy that is to be experienced when everything aligns
Back to the story
The first whispers I could’ve listened to involved my wrist.
These were the obvious whispers, ones that told me – through low levels of pain – that I was damaging my tissues. Had I listened, then I wouldn’t have continued to push harder and tear the ligaments that enabled me to pull up on the wall.
But this isn’t the story of a wrist injury. It’s the story of a deep and dark mark carved into my being, and so it is that the real whispers that needed to be listened to were those that arose from this space:
From within me as my body told me, day after day, that things were not okay.
If only I had known how to listen. But, instead, my fate collapsed in a moment where my ligaments and nervous system broke down on me all at once.
The result was physical pain that could no longer be ignored. It became clear: I had to take time off from climbing, that was sure.
Had it only been physical damage to the ligaments, I would have returned to my beloved climbing a few short months later. Instead, a darker mark was left imprinted there, in my wrist, such that upon returning to climbing, I found that even the gentlest pressure on my wrist awoke them – my demons – to take me over as my breath collapsed and I found myself back again in the dark places.
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I tell you this story because, to me, it points to how incredibly irrational trauma is. Dark energy stored in my ligaments such that, when tugged upon, unleash demons that take over my existence? Try explaining that to my earlier model of mind over body!
I write it out for you, here, because I have tried – many times – to explain this new way of viewing the human experience to a world supported by ideas of the power of mind over body.
Have you heard these ideas? I, for one, knew them so well.
I heard one story after the next as a young girl, brought up by a culture that prized the mind over all else.
I heard one story after the next through my college years – one professor after the next proclaiming how powerful the mind can be and how important it is that we keep our attention towards data, knowledge, and facts.
Then it came time when I entered the climbing community, and every speech after the next was about the power of the human mind to overcome anything if only we can divert our attention to the right place.
I get it. I understand completely how powerful the human mind can be. I’ve lived the story. I’ve studied its depths.
And.
And, I’ve lived a different story, one that tells of the high power of the human body – one that has its own intelligence, and one that has the ability to take over everything.
I tell this story because I now recognize a large gap within our understanding of human behavior – that we cling far too dearly to stories of the power of our conscious human minds, while having so little consideration for the power of the rest of ourselves.
I tell this story because I wish to shed light on trauma and its effects, and this includes the power to wash over the mind as direct effects take place in the body.
I also tell this story because, with all the time I have spent getting to understand the power of my human body, I now recognize that this gap goes so much further than the power to drag us down.
Could it be that this same path – that is, a path of learning to listen into our own bodies – is also the path for us to head back up into the light?
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Healing
I am doing much better these days. In a way, I feel like I can say -given a tenacious intention to move forward through this dark challenge that entered into my world – I have, indeed, been able to work through it and come out the other side.
In a way, I feel like I can say that I healed. I now experience very few panic attacks, and I am able to climb again facing only what I would call a rational fear.
At the same time, I know to use caution with this word, healing. What I did not do is fully resolve a problem that I never have to deal with again. What I did not do is seal up a wound that cannot be re-opened.
What I did do – I believe – is get to know my demons, and to understand the important messages they had for me. What I also did – and this is the essential and often missing piece! – is learn to live my life in accordance with these messages.
And here’s the thing about that: My demons – I do not believe they were here to play games with me. And, while I certainly felt harmed by them, I do not believe that they were here to force me away from the things I love most as punishment nor any form of hateful deed.
Instead, what I know is that these demons – they arose within me to guide me into a wiser space, one that opened my awareness up to the greater expanse and deeper realities of life.
In this sense, maybe they weren’t really demons after all, but instead, messengers sent to guide me further to better places in life. I only wish they had better tactics, but hey, that’s not for me to dictate.
–
In the next part of this series, I will turn our attention to the healing process, and what that means to me now having lived through two years of panic, crippling anxiety, and other symptoms of trauma that kept me feeling like I was being pulled down into dark depths.
In this next part of the series, I will speak to how I learned to stay grounded – safely held while the dark energies moved through me. I will also speak to the path that led me away from this darkness and back to the cliff walls – a space where I am once again able to play the game that is focusing my attention, drawing upon the full strength of my body, and calling upon all that I am to move upward.
All that I am – it’s a framework that has now shifted, no longer a story of mind over matter, but instead, one of a deeper integration of all the parts of my whole self.
My whole self: it includes my powerful human mind – one that is greatly capable of focusing my attention and guiding the hard work I do that moves me forward to brighter places in life. And, it includes so much more, including vastly complex and unconscious systems that, if awoken, have strong powers that have their own intelligence to share, if only we are willing to listen.
We’ll talk more to this as we move forward in this series.
