By Donna Shea & Nadine Briggs
NOTE: This is a post that I (Donna) put up in a hiking group that I belong to on Facebook. Anxiety impacts people of all ages, children included. When I ask children to do the hard cognitive behavioral work of managing anxiety, I come to them from a place of having to do it myself. This is a story of pushing through what scares you.
I quit hiking the White Mountains in New Hampshire three times. My significant other, Mike, and I started hiking in 2010. Not knowing much as beginners, we attempted Mount Washington up Tuckerman’s Ravine. I sobbed with panic, made it to the top and took the shuttle back down, and I swore I would never go up again. We continued with what I called our “nice hikes” until 2013 when I tried the 4K’s again. Three trips once again took me down with panic. Ledges, heights, and steepness took their toll.
Mike had the bug to do the 48 badly, (there is a list of 48 peaks to climb that are 4000 feet or higher), so in 2015, I tried again. We made another three trips, and I had to tell him that I couldn’t do it. Mike went on to finish the 48 in 2015, and even went back and repeated the ones we had already done so that he could have them all in one hiking season. I became his support person and would drop him off and pick him up for traverses. I would frequently hike in with him in the morning and then turn around and then hike in again at the end of the day to meet him. I liked the exercise; I couldn’t cope with the fear once I got too far in and it started getting technically tough. I considered myself a trail bottom feeder. Other hikers would ask what number Mike and I were on, and I always had to answer that I wasn’t completing the list of hikes, Mike was. I always felt a little “less than” in those conversations.
In 2016, he somehow tricked me up Zealand Mountain (we’ll just go to the lookout, he said.) We tried again with the Kinsmans. I made it, but I quit yet again. It isn’t fun to have public panic attacks. We went back to nice hikes. Unfortunately, even those started to become panic situations, and I started to feel sick on even the easier trails, thinking that I was going to have a heart attack or collapse out in the woods. I’ve always “run on anxiety,” but it was beginning to impact not only hiking but the quality of life in general. I knew what it was, but it was getting beyond coping with it on my own.
At the risk of over-sharing, because maybe this will help someone, somewhere, I talked to my doctor about it. As I am 53 years old, we decided that the increase in panic attacks and anxiety was tied into change-of-life stuff. I tried six more months to manage it on my own and then I had enough. I agreed to try a low dose of anti-anxiety medication. In a week or two, I was feeling much better.
I don’t remember how we decided to try one more time, but I did. In July of 2017, we went up Mount Hale. Then Cannon (up and down Kinsmann Ridge Trail, which is not easy!). I discovered that a happy side effect of the medication was that my fear of hiking was no longer there. Instead of my brain telling me that I was going to fall and die out there (the amygdala), I was able to access the parts of my brain that just simply looked for where I needed to put my foot next (the frontal cortex). We talk to kids about how anxiety impacts these parts of the brain. I went on to finish ten peaks in 2017, bringing my total to 20.
The success of 2017 spurred me on, and this year, we made a big push to the finish. We climbed 28 peaks between the end of May and this past weekend. One particularly tough mountain I had saved until the end caused some panic, as I expected it would, but I was able to stand there, shake it off and tell myself that I couldn’t quit (as much as I desperately wanted to).
So even though I felt silly, this is why I danced on #48. And while I appreciate the passion that most hikers have for climbing those 4000 footers, I am ready to go back to my nice hikes, but this time, knowing that I’m a member of the 4000 footer club, earned my certificate, looked fear in the face and conquered it.
