Acceptance and Commitment, the sea swimming way

I have always struggled with therapy. Experience and curiosity is the way that I have managed my mental illness alongside medication and lots of rest. But recently I have come to realise that the type of therapy I experienced, a significant time ago, may not have been right for me. And that there are many types of therapy including some that may be more suited to my state of mind. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) may just be a therapy that would have had more of a positive effect on managing my mental illness. It’s never too late as they say and on reading about it I have realised I’m already practising many of the methods. As ever by swimming in the sea!

The types of therapies I have experienced in the past encourage you to challenge and change your thoughts. This just served to reinforce that my brain was wired differently, to what felt like, everyone around me. I needed to change. I was different. I strived to be the elusive normal. In contrast, ACT encourages you to sit with those thoughts and accept that pain and unhappiness are valid and we must get comfortable with them, because they are part of life and not going away. To experience human existence is to suffer. We will all suffer at some point in our lives.

When you swim in the cold sea the only way in or out of it is through the waves. I’m going to get brain freeze. My breath will be stolen, I will struggle to breathe and quite possibly panic. My skin is going to burn and hurt like hell. Doing this over and over and over again, the physical feelings don’t diminish. But it’s significance reduces and can all but disappear.

Well most of the time. Once a week I swim early in the morning. During the winter months this can be in the dark. A few weeks ago the sea was forecast to be a bit lumpy, the tail end of a storm, and a flooding tide. My swim mate and I decided to head down to get a better look. He confidently marched in, dived straight through the waves, and resurfaced grinning. I stood in the shallows convinced I could see huge storm flotsam in the half light where there was none. When the sun rose the waves weren’t nearly as big as I had imagined. I had felt that the inevitable physical reactions upon entering the water were going to be beyond my abilities. Enough so that I physically froze at the waters edge. So what happened next? Well, my swim mate came back out of the water to walk me in. And I had a safe and bouncy swim to start the day.

I now recognise, the thoughts that initially prevented me from getting in as fear. I don’t often experience fear when getting in the sea. Getting out yes!, but not getting in. I was able to process this once I’d got over the fear and was in the water having a wonderful chinwag with my mate and afterwards on the beach warm and dry. The fear was there, real or imagined, but with the helping hand of my mate it’s significance was reduced. Playing a fictious scenario over and over in my head was causing my feet to stay rooted to the ground. But accepting that my fear was real and there but it could be diffused really helped. Sometimes fear is useful when sea swimming as it allows us to be cautious. I couldn’t influence the sea state or make the feelings of fear go away but it wasn’t beyond my ability to swim in it. It didn’t disappear altogether when I got in the sea either but hung around in the background ready for when it was time to get out. But accepting it was there and getting past it, left me elated. She who dares swims!

By swimming in the sea I have developed a new relationship with my depression and anxiety. There is no longer a denial or fruitless quest to rid myself of it. Only to live with it. At times this can be a struggle and at others times it’s manageable. I have no choice but to live with it. Being in the sea creates a space for my emotions and feelings. It puts them in perspective and reduces the overwhelm. It defuses and dilutes my out of proportion thoughts. One of the issues I have always had with wellness practioners and mindfulness is that you are completely unable to be mindful when you are having a mental illness episode. Which is normally when I was prescribed therapy. It enrages me when I am in the midst of an episode and someone suggests meditation. However, when I am well enough to function I can achieve a version of it by swimming in the sea as a response to the inevitable suffering life will throw at us all from time to time.

The other important aspect of ACT is the “commitment to take action and bring positive changes into your life” Once again I have drawn upon my love of sea swimming as a back drop for this. I left my corporate career a decade ago. For a few years I was too ill to work. I returned to work slowly first in the voluntary sector and then the third sector. Unfortunately, the culture of productivity at all costs and nepotism was apparent in them all. So once again I was jobless and unwell. By coincidence so was another ‘mum I knew’. She’d also left her third sector job, burnt out and unable to influence a change in her working environment. So we began to swim in the sea regularly together and created a plan that that was aligned with our values and would give us purpose. Setting up Seabirds Community Interest Company was out commitment to take action and bring positive changes into our lives.

More recently I have put Acceptance and Commitment therapy into practice. I am in a Channel Swimming relay team set to swim across to France in July. There are days when I have literally no idea why I signed up to do this when my anxiety is standing on my chest and I am completely unable to breathe. But I’ve committed to it.

Training for the channel, I am alone with my thoughts, in a pool, ploughing up and down the same boring lane for hours on end. I hate the pool. I more than hate the pool. I am scared of the pool. I can swim. Obviously. And you are never more than a few metres away from the edge. But pools still petrify me. Because they are full of people. I have social anxiety and claustrophobia. There are unwritten rules for pools. Lane etiquette is just one of them. What to wear, where to get changed, taking off shoes, getting lost in the changing rooms, the showers. All full of strange unfamiliar rituals that terrify the uninitiated me. I have had a panic attack in a pool before during a coached session. Avoiding pools has prevented me from attempting or achieving so many swimming milestones. And until recently I just didn’t go.

I imagine all of the other swimmers are questioning why I have chosen their lane. I’m too slow, my propulsion is off point, my goggles are shit. In my head the whole pool is looking at me rather than the black line on the bottom of the pool. They are judging, sniggering tutting. These thoughts don’t leave me for the entire time I am in the pool. The first 15 minutes is a battle between my brain and my body. I am exhausted by the time I have finished my warm up but not from the swimming. Laboured, anxious, agitated breathing is not the relaxed trickle breathing required for swimming long distances. Every length is a diatribe of dialogue telling me to make an excuse and get out. You are not a swimmer! I have been known to cry into my goggles whilst swimming and I regularly cry when I get out.

But to be able to train for the channel relay, I have to get in the pool. I am committed to it! So, I brave it each week, in a quiet lane to myself I’ve orchestrated. Still full of negative thoughts in a a place I cannot escape them., I allow them the space to play out. And after about 15 minutes I’m into my stride, a slow relaxed rolling stroke and I feel like I could swim forever. ( I can’t I knackered if I swim over an hour) Even leaking goggles, gob full of chlorinated choking water or hitting the lane rope can’t put me off my rhythm. The thoughts still come to the forefront occasionally, about being a swimming imposter mainly and letting the team down but they spindrift away again when I don’t give them undue attention. These thoughts are mine. They will always be there. But I’m still swimming.

I had no idea that pool training for a channel relay would be therapy! Swimming in a boring pool has helped me see my thoughts are transient like a tidal stream of words and images. I can’t swim away from them but while I focus on my stroke technique in the here and now they don’t get the attention they need to overwhelm me. The purpose of the pool is to to be physically and mentally fit for something I have committed to, something that has given me purpose.

Although I still can’t wait for the training to move to the sea!

Sink or Swim

This blog had a very different working title when I started it and then I watched Channel 4’s Stand Up to Cancer series Sink or Swim. Keri-anne Payne and Ross Edgely have 12 weeks to get non-swimming celebrities ready to be in a relay team to cross the Channel. I was lucky enough to spend three days with Keri-anne, back in June, as she facilitated my Level 2 Open Water Coaching award course. Since then all of the participants and Keri-anne have stayed in touch providing each other with overwhelming levels of support. So when we knew the Keri-anne was involved in the SOS programme we naturally all tuned in.

 

I undertook the Open Water Coaching course so I would have the relevant skills, knowledge and qualifications to run courses to encourage other people to try wild swimming. I swim for my mental health and am an advocate of it’s wellbeing benefits. Doing something on my own, away from home, is something I am not always able to do. Sometimes my anxiety wins. Sometimes it is all I can do to leave the house to walk the dog. (This is the very reason I have a dog!) I am not even always able to to head down to the beach for a swim. Fortunately this is rare but it does happen. So turning up for the course was a massive achievement for me.

Initially I felt like a fish out of water amongst my fellow course mates. They were/are swimmers extraordinaire. But they soon had me at ease and we’ve all stayed in touch since the course providing each other with advice and support. Some of them have gone on to achieve incredible feats. One has relayed around the IOW, one has relayed across the channel and another has relayed there and back across the channel, to name but a few. Things I could never dream of achieving. But I have achieved, in my own way and their cheers were just as loud.

I’ve been thinking a lot about achievement lately. I am surrounded by people I admire who have achieved impressive feats of human endurance. But also other, smaller but just as significant achievements. Achievement is something very different for every individual. I can swim and I am relatively fit for my age yet I would never consider swimming the channel. Yet swimming without a wetsuit all year round in sea temperatures as low as 3 degrees with snow on the beach does not faze me. Entering a rough sea does not concern me (not life threateningly rough). Not knowing what lies beneath the surface and being touched by a creature of the sea does not bother me. My friends and family see this as an achievement and I brush it off. Not arrogantly, it’s just I know it’s within my limit and therefore I can achieve it.

I know that swimming the channel is not within my limits of attainment. I would not be able to swim in the dark, I would be distracted by jellyfish and try to catch them, and I would be risking my mental health by spending that much time alone in my head. So I stick to doing things that push my limits outside of my comfort zone but are achievable. And what that looks like for me is something very different to what it looks like for other people.

I watched Sink or Swim already in awe of the celebrities that had signed up to do it as I wouldn’t ever consider it. Some of them couldn’t swim, couldn’t float, had previous bad swimming experiences, had physical challenges and mental challenges. Yet they agreed to give it a go. What an achievement. They had just 3 months to learn to swim and train for it. Can you believe that? What an achievement. As I write this I have no idea if any or how many drop out, or if they make it, as the swim is scheduled for next month. But because even contemplating it is beyond my limit I already see them as achievers.

I have been able to achieve my year round skin swimmer status by getting to know my limits. This wasn’t initially a conscious decision, I just didn’t put my wetsuit on one year when the temperature began to drop. However, it did allow me to really reflect on what my body is capable of and get in tune with what it was telling me without words. In the sea you are able to really focus on yourself, your whole self,  and start to see what it can do. I soon knew I would be able to skin swim all year round –  my limit was how long I could last in the water. This I was able to push, within a limit of being safe, and soon my body just adapted to the cold.

It’s hard to see achievement when somethings are comfortably within your limits. I can run. I am one of those annoying people that can talk while they run and can run substantial distances with little training. I have done a couple of marathons and although one year I was plagued with IT band problems I didn’t find the training or event too arduous.  So I made the decision to never sponsor anyone, unless they were doing a marathon or more. If you wanted sponsoring for a 5km you could jog on. I completely failed to see that running a 5km could be a massive achievement for someone that had only started running 2 weeks ago, was recently bereaved, had no childcare, had agoraphobia, had heath issues, the list goes on. I wasn’t intentionally being unkind or  dismissive, but I was, because running is comfortably within my limit.

What was interesting on Sink or Swim were the number of athletes taking part. Linford Christie was was once, the fastest man in the planet, but he couldn’t swim for toffee (Sorry Linford). Then there is Greg Rutherford and Tessa Sanderson. All achieved huge accolades at the pinnacle of their careers but struggled to swim 500m in the open water. Yet they have signed up to swim the Channel. What an achievement. Georgia Kousoulou, is a reality TV star, who suffers from anxiety and panic attacks. She is on TV without make-up, in a swim hat and unflattering neoprene, which for me is no big deal, but for someone like her, who, by the nature of her fame needs to always be insta-ready this is an achievement. Her experience resonated with me in others ways though, as she struggled to regulate her breathing. Controlling your breathing is the best tool in your toolbox if you suffer with anxiety. It’s also the key to being able to swim front crawl. Having you face in the water means you cannot decide when you are going to breathe. Yet she still signed up to do it. What an achievement.

Since swimming in the sea with a huge variety of people, I no longer have a fixed idea of what an achievement is. We are all unique individuals so it makes sense that our achievements would also be unique. One individual’s 500m swim is another individual’s Channel swim.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, achievement is; a thing done successfully with effort, skill, or courage. Using this definition,  many things individuals do in their day to day is an achievement. Some of the people I have coached with acute anxiety have turned up, that took effort and courage. Putting on a wetsuit for the first time, that took effort and skill. Swimming in the open water, that took effort, skill and courage. Therefore, by it’s very definition, it is an achievement.

The toughest battle most people face is with their own mind. We all have that voice that sometimes tells us we can’t do something. If the voice shouts loud enough, some people don’t even bother to try. I know there are a lot of things I do not do because my head tells me I can’t. But those that do, despite the internal dialogue, even if they ‘fail’, have achieved. They tried and sometimes this is the only way to push your limits to know if it something you can achieve. The difference between try and triumph is a little ‘umph’.

The all or nothing approach to achievement is something I always have to keep in check. I am, by nature a sink or swim person. I either swim 1km as planned or I have not achieved. This can be really detrimental to my wellbeing. So I have had to adjust the way I view and approach achievement. I now count every step forward towards my end goal as an achievement. I am still trying to achieve, but to remain positive and engaged in the process as I am able to celebrate each incremental step in the process. In this way I am able to maintain some semblance of resilience if things do not go according to plan as the smaller steps of goal setting allows more flexibility.

What I have learnt through my consideration of achievement is that I need to be kinder to myself and kinder to others and recognise achievement in all it’s forms.  I firmly believe that if at first you don’t achieve, try, try again. Being afraid is OK, but it shouldn’t stop you from striving to achieve. Just by trying, you have achieved.

Author: Seabird Kath

NB a significant achievement for me was being able to spell achievement by the time I had finished writing this blog! I before E.