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!
Pass the Salt 