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What I learned about myself from wild camping (and how I wasn’t anxious)

Lucy Hyde on 15 October 2021

At the end of September I took a solo trip walking and wild camping. In this blog I share my reflections on what it taught me, and the value of doing something new to learn about yourself.

Lone camping was a first for me. I’ve done plenty of walking alone, and I’ve camped with my partner occasionally, but I decided to do this 2-night trip, because the notion came to me one sleepless night, and I wanted to see if I could.

I was excited about the prospect of being in my own company for 48 hours. This feels like quite a new thing for me; traditionally I’ve sought out the company of others and am quite gregarious. But I’ve come to understand recently that partly, that’s because I didn’t like being left alone with my own thoughts, that being around other people was a way of keeping busy. AND (thanks to the lockdown experience) I realised that actually time alone is needed recovery time, as my people-pleaser aspect tends to be on alert when I’m around other people – I’m always trying a little bit harder.

Don’t get me wrong – I still enjoy spending time in company. But the idea of not having to think of anyone else – and in fact, being unreachable through circumstance (i.e. no phone signal) rather than avoidance – had an appeal. No one was going to expect anything of me for the whole of that time. I was going into country I’d not walked before. It was going to just be me, and my food for 3 days, and my ‘home’ for 2 nights, and the hills, and the birds. Writing this now, the idea of it seems exciting all over again!

And the reality?

Yeah, there were some moments when I was really happy to be in the middle of nowhere with the ravens, where I was excited to think “I’m doing it!” These mostly coincided with sunny bright weather and feeling confident having successfully put the tent up (or having successfully stowed it away).

There was some swearing– when I snapped a tent pole, and at the steady increase of the rain just as I arrived at camp.

There were NO moments when I thought “I wish I wasn’t here” or even “I wish I had someone else here”. (Though there might have been, had I snapped the tent pole when I was putting it up in the rain, rather than when I was taking it down on my last morning.)

And there was, more than anything else, a lot of just-keeping-going and not particularly noticing how I felt at all. It surprised me how much ‘in-between’, neutral time there was, given that I had imagined that, with all that time alone, I’d be likely to get lost in my thoughts, or to get busy worrying. Yet I found myself taken up with being, with getting through it.

For example, a day’s walk on fairly good paths and gently hilly terrain felt more of a feat of endurance with a heavy pack than I’d bargained for. I found myself going more slowly, taking smaller steps. I was careful to eat regularly, yet often didn’t feel particularly hungry – instead I was focused on making sure I had the necessary fuel to make sure I was capable of putting my tent up at the end of the day.

At some level, even though I wasn’t scared at the remoteness, I suppose I was aware of the reality of having to depend on me, of being careful of husbanding my strength, of not risking injury by sudden movements.

And this process, I guess, kept me very focused in the now, and that’s probably why there were very few points when I felt anxious. My anxiety is often linked to worrying about what I need to do, or anticipating problems (that may or may not arrive), or imagining or assuming what others think about me. Somehow, here, there was less space for worrying about the future: too much attention on ‘now’ (my shoulders hurt, how can I adjust my pack?) to leave room for anticipating problems; and no one around, or expecting anything of me, for me to worry about.

So what DID I learn from the experience?

A few things……..

Sometimes comparing your situation with others’ CAN actually be helpful.

This is not at all a maxim I normally believe in. Many times I’ve had a conversation with a client where we’re trying to undo their tendency to punish themselves because they think other people have it worse than them so they’re not allowed to find things tough. Yet in this situation I was doing something similar.

I was halfway through a book before I’d headed off to the hills – A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell (check it out – it’s quite the adventure story). It’s a biography of Virginia Hall, who was an Allied forces agent during World War II, who built up and coordinated units in the French resistance. She had a prosthesis following a leg amputation, and the tale of her having to escape through the Pyrenees in winter with insufficient clothing and food are astonishing. Yet she survived, and even thrived, in gruelling conditions.

She came to mind when, 4 miles from the nearest available shelter, I‘d just pitched my tent in the pouring rain and had crawled into it, damp, trying to keep wet and dry stuff separate, and to get warm. In that moment I managed to make a little bit of space for the part of me that was finding it All A Bit Much and say “yeah, of course you’re finding this hard! You’ve not done it before”, and to remind myself that Virginia Hall had gone through way harder things and come out OK on the other side – and I would too.

What was important in this moment was my attitude towards myself. Instead of telling myself I wasn’t allowed to find it hard because my issues were too insignificant, I reminded myself that people can come through difficult times and still be OK, while also validating my reaction. (My Focusing practice helped with this – you can learn more about that process here.)

It’s OK to find something challenging even if you’re not the first person ever in the world to do it.

You wouldn’t think this was rocket science, but apparently it’s a lesson I need to keep on learning.

I’d borrowed the kit off a bike-packing friend, and I knew that ‘lots of people wild camp’. And that’s when the more unhelpful side of comparing myself with others kicked in. You know, comparing apples (people who are experienced) with pears (me, the novice). I realised, only when I was catching up with friends afterwards, that a part of me had assumed I wasn’t allowed to find my trip difficult at times.

When I was met with the Wow, that’s quite an undertaking – weren’t you frightened? I recalibrated that judgment of myself as somehow inadequate at not immediately being a comfortable camper. And even allowed myself a little glow of satisfaction that I hadn’t been frightened (well, not much).

On the upside, I can see, looking back, that my survival instinct actually prompted me, when feeling a bit low, to be compassionate towards myself and – in the moment – reassure the wearied bit of me that it was OK to find it a bit tough, so that the judgmental part didn’t take over.

Compartmentalising can make me miss the obvious.

The obvious being: carrying stuff is hard work. I know! Who could imagine?

What happened was: I looked at my route before setting off. My longest day’s walk was 11 or 12 miles. Quite a long way, but I knew it was within my capabilities, especially on good paths. I also packed up my rucsac, completely, a couple of days before going, so I could check everything fitted in, and put it on to see how heavy it was. Heavier than I’d usually carry on a day trip, but within my capabilities.

What I omitted to do was to put ‘long day’s walk’ and ‘heavy rucsac’ together. Oops. It didn’t take many miles before I was feeling that, in various parts of my body in turn. Somehow that principle I share with clients, of noticing when you’ve got more than one stressor in your life, cos the impact is greater, fell by the wayside…….which takes me onto my next discovery.

It’s surprising what you can do when you don’t have the option NOT to.

My walk was harder going than I’d estimated, AND it was also fine. By the time I’d realised the miscalculation of effort, I was well into the moors and would have had as far to go back as I did to continue. If my foot (or hip, or knee) was sore, the only thing I could do was adjust things slightly to see if that helped – and to carry on. And actually that knowledge stopped me focusing on the discomfort, and so I wasn’t as aware of pain.

This was a helpful learning for me. I really value listening to my body. But this experience flagged up that I can sometimes allow fear to stop me pushing myself – in this case anxiety about damage to my body, and worry that I can’t do as much as I used to (probably linked ultimately to a fear of age and even death). It reminded me of the key role that the brain has in the way we experience physical pain (you can read more about the mental – emotional- physical connections of pain here ).

I discovered that I can control time!

When was the last time you did nothing? Like, literally, NOTHING? I honestly can’t remember, prior to this experience.

I’ve got much better at giving myself a break over the last decade or so. Gone (well, mostly gone) are the days when I would feel inadequate or a failure if I hadn’t been somewhere new or achieved a significant task on a weekend. Now I let myself sit and read the weekend papers over breakfast for an hour or two, I potter, I lie on the sofa with a book for an hour.

But even though I don’t think of myself as ‘keeping busy’, actually doing nothing – that’s very unfamiliar. When I was camping, there was around 12 hours of darkness. I was in a tent I couldn’t sit up in. I had limited power and no signal on my phone. So I lay in my sleeping bag pretty much from 7pm to 7am, even though I wasn’t tired enough to sleep (and didn’t, much, even when I was).

And yet, most of that time, I wasn’t particularly bored. I was just, kind of………..there. Existing. Tuning in and out to the noises around me. Noticing my toes warming up in my sleeping bag. Wondering whether it was going to pish down again the next day.

It felt weird to be in that not-doing space.

Time behaves differently when you’re not doing. For many of us, that’s WHY we keep busy, right? We’re often scared of the empty space because we’re not sure what will creep into it. Empty space fosters anxiety, and over-thinking. We avoid it at all costs. The flipside of that is that we keep so busy that times passes quickly, the more so as we get older, and we end up feeling like we’re running out of it!

I felt like my two nights out were way longer than a weekend. So, perhaps a way of stopping time feeling like it’s going so quickly, is to stop ourselves – and just do nothing. How much time just disappears when you’re scrolling through social media, for example?

I’m not sure how easy I’ll find it to do nothing now I’m back home, surrounded by all the things that ‘need doing’, with my phone available to distract me. But I’m going to give it a go.

It’s good to do something new, even if it’s hard.

I feel like I gained a lot from this experience. That’s not consciously why I did it. I wasn’t on some mission of personal growth. And when it was challenging I thought “I don’t know if I’ll do this again”. But I learned some new stuff about myself because it was sometimes hard, and – as I told my therapist later – it feels like this experience is a little resource that’s sitting on my shoulder. I don’t know quite what to do with it yet, but I like that it’s there.

finding your way Lucy Hyde online counsellor

So…..would you take the plunge to do something new?

To be honest, I don’t recommend heading off on your own wild camping experience right now. Winter is coming (if you’re in the northern hemisphere) and nights are colder. But if there’s something you’ve thought you’d like to try but are a bit scared of, or not sure whether you’ll be good at it (hint: probably not, the very first time) I would really encourage you to give it a go.

Final tip:
if there IS something you have in mind – tell someone about it. In one step, this makes it more likely to happen. Getting to the point of telling someone is a move in itself – it can be scary, if you think ‘I can’t back out if I tell someone!’ – yet actually, that’s not true, is it? But if you tell someone you have a dream, it makes it a little bit more real. It brings it closer. And then it’s more within your reach.

walking in the rain Lucy Hyde walk and talk

References and further info:

Book: A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell

Pain: Not all in your head, it’s in your brain

Focusing and how it can help manage anxiety

How to feel more in control by setting goals for the year

Lucy Hyde on 25 January 2021

Feel more in control Lucy Hyde online therapy

“You never know ahead of time what something’s really going to be like.”
Katherine Paterson, ‘Bridge to Terabithia’

Please note that this article was written at the start of 2021 and references dates accordingly.

At the start of a new year, I always feel a sense of hope. The year is spread out in front of me like a beautiful expanse of pristine snow just waiting for me to make a path off into the distance. Or indeed, rush off, fall over and flail around getting wet. Even the start of 2021 had that sense of hope, although I didn’t buy in to the fantasy that 2021 was going to be wonderful, as if we could somehow close the door on what happened in 2020 when it was still happening.

I like to set goals at the start of the year. I don’t like New Year Resolutions (you can read more about this in my blog ‘Drop the Resolutions’). Even the word ‘goals’ smacks of business and sales targets, when what I’m talking about is a reflecting on what I want for myself – but ‘goals’ is the word that seems to fit best, so bear with me!

You may feel that with everything still so uncertain in the world, there’s no point in planning ahead. Perhaps you feel as if you’re just keeping your head above water in the latest phase of the pandemic battle. But goal-setting doesn’t have to be about major life changes or dream holiday plans.

Reflecting on what you want in the medium- or long-term can be a way to regain some control of your life, and can help provide a sense of purpose to support you when you’re finding things difficult, especially if you approach it in a way that is compassionate towards those parts of you that may be feeling anxious or worried.

So how to do it?

How to follow your path Lucy Hyde online counsellor

This is the process that works for me. I like to do it with paper and pen; you could do it on your laptop – but what’s important is to record your thoughts somehow so you can go back to them.

1. Review the previous year
2. Set your goals for the coming year
3. Check how you’ll know you’ve achieved your goals
4. Consider what might get in the way
5. Think how you’ll support yourself to get there
6. Review and refine your goals
7. Choose your Word of the Year
8. Keep your goals under review

Let’s talk about these in more detail.

1. Review the previous year

OK, so 2020 was a bit of shit-storm in many ways, and there are very few of us who didn’t find some of it difficult to a small or MASSIVE degree. This exercise needs to include acknowledging that, and appreciating that you got through it and survived.

But you can still take a bit of time to notice what went well for you, and/or what you achieved. For me, although my business increased and I feel very fortunate in that, what was more of an achievement, was noticing that I’d prioritised work over me. Revisiting what I needed in terms of my life balance led to me wild swimming regularly – in the process, discovering something new.

Over the last year, the circumstances we’ve been living in have meant that many more people have struggled with anxiety, with low mood or depression, or with feeling they have no control. If you feel you didn’t achieve anything, try to step outside yourself, look at what you were up against and how you’re still here. No achievement is too small to acknowledge.

If you did set goals last year, where are you in relation to them? What got in the way (hm, let me think, was it by any chance a pandemic?) and what can you learn from that? I didn’t achieve ANY of my goals from last year, other than my target client hours, and I’m fine with that, because I believe I focused my efforts to the best of my ability in the 2020 storm and ended the year healthy and mostly content.

2. Set your goals for the year

Do you have some kind of idea what you would like from your year? Probably. But it can still be helpful to think about it. If you’re self-employed, like me, then there’s a temptation to assume the goal is to increase income – but this may not always be entirely within your control, and anyway may not fit with what you actually want deep down.

Some people find it helpful to look at where they want to be in 5 years’ time, and then reflect on what this might mean for the coming year.

And this doesn’t have to be about professional goals. I always include at least one non-work goal, sometimes more, depending on what’s going on in my life. If the idea of setting goals doesn’t fit for you, you could try the ‘average perfect day’ exercise, where you spend time dreaming about what the average, routine day in your life would look like in an ideal world, in detail, so you can focus your attention on the gap between ‘here’ and ‘there’. You can read more about this exercise at ‘Average Perfect Day’ .

Spend some time daydreaming to help you set some goals – ideally 3 at the most, so be strict with yourself!

3. How will you know you’ve achieved your goals?

Thinking about this will help you refine your goals if they’re a bit ‘woolly’.

As an example, if I set a goal ‘to write more’, how am I going to know at the end of the year if I’ve written more than I did the year before? And what am I writing? On the other hand, if my goal is that I’ll have published a blog per month……….. if I get to the end of the year and I’ve published only 6 blogs since January, I’ll know I haven’t attained that goal (here’s a clue as to what one of my 2020 goals was ?).

Imagine you’re at the other end of the year looking back. Think about how the You in 12 months’ time is going to know whether you’ve got what you wanted. Getting a sense of this now will help you celebrate, but may also help you see where things have got in the way of your achieving what you wanted.

Are your goals concrete and clear enough?

Setting your goals with the help of therapy

4. What might get in the way?

It’s tempting to avoid thinking about this……… but ignoring it can be your downfall!

a. How might you sabotage yourself or allow others to sabotage you? It’s all very well to have ideals but it’s easy for old patterns of thinking to cut in and prevent us achieving them, with the result that we feel bad for not getting there and then get into self-blame for feeling bad.

Here’s an example. My main goal for 2021 is to complete my Focusing Practitioner Training, which I’m partway through. In order to be able to focus on my own training this year, I’ve decided to restrict my workload – but I know that this’ll create some anxiety for me around ‘not being a real therapist’; this anxiety has the potential to push me to take on more work, thereby sabotaging myself by not leaving enough time for the training course.

b. What will achieving your goals cost you? With any goal of doing something additional or different, there’s going to be something sacrificed – time, energy, money, etc. With the example above, achieving my training goal will cost me money this year, as my earnings are going to be lower. On the other had, what you sacrifice may be something you’re quite glad to let go – a toxic relationship, for example.

It’s important to take the cost into account, so that you can be more mindful that you have made a choice to prioritise one thing over another.

5. How can you support yourself?

The flip side of No. 4!

a. What will you gain in achieving your goals? This can be useful to consider, alongside the question of what achieving your goals will cost you. You may need to allow yourself to mourn for what you have to let go in order to achieve your goals, but you can balance that against what you’ll gain – why do you want this?

b. What do you need to do or NOT do to achieve your goals? Look at your responses to how you might sabotage yourself. So, with my example; I need to say No to additional clients over and above what I’ve decided is an OK level for me to maintain alongside my training. I also need to review my goals on a regular basis, so that if I’m struggling, I can decide what to prioritise, and what needs reassessing.

c. What resources do you need, and who might support you? This question will help you be realistic; you need to have the resources to get to where you want – whether it be financial, or emotional, or something else. For example, I need to remind myself that social supports are important for me – to ensure that I maintain contact with the people in my life who nourish me. If you can’t see where you can get the resources or support you need, you may need to get creative – perhaps by discussing this exercise with a friend or family member.

6. Review and refine your goals

Once you’ve completed steps 3 to 5, go back to the goals you set, and consider again whether they feel achievable. The purpose of those last few steps was to help you set goals that are realistic. If we continue to live through a series of lockdowns for the coming year, will this affect the achievability of your goals? Are they within your control? Are there less ambitious goals that are within your control and would move you toward where you ultimately want to be?

There’s a tendency to think that setting yourself high targets makes you work harder. Well, that might be the case for some people, but for most of us, we’re already pretty good at seeing where we feel we’ve failed; we don’t need to set ourselves up to do that.

Can you simplify or reduce your goals? Can you make it easier for yourself? Setting a goal or a target or a to-do list that some part of you believes is ‘too easy’ is more effective and more motivational than setting yourself one that you feel you ‘should’ be able to reach. Trust me on this, I’ve been there.

Now – adjust or rewrite your goals if necessary.

Using goals to feel more in control of your path

7. Choose a word for the year

You might already have something in mind, stimulated by this exercise. For example, the word that floated up for me was ‘Choice’ as it feels particularly relevant when I’ve chosen to commit to a goal that is going to affect how much work I can take on this year. Reminding myself that of ‘choice’ when I think ‘I have to’ is going to be useful.

If you don’t know where to begin, you could try simply writing down the first 20 words that come to mind and see if one fits, or do an internet search for ideas, such as 2021 Word of the Year . There’s no right or wrong with this.

Once you have your word, stick it up where you can see it from time to time.

8. Don’t leave your goals just lying there

Once you’ve done this exercise, come back to your goals in a week or so, to give yourself ‘settling time’. Read them over and see if there’s anything you want to add or change. Then, consider what smaller steps you can take to move forward. Break your goals down into the very smallest steps you can take.

Looking at the interim steps in this way might be particularly important if your ultimate goal is, for example, dependent on an end to pandemic restrictions. At some point, we will reach a less constrained ‘new normal’, and so there’s a good chance that there are smaller steps you can take to get yourself into a good position. Don’t forget to include attending to your own wellbeing as part of this process; your ultimate success requires you to be resilient and resourced.

Then pop a reminder somewhere to review your goals monthly or quarterly. Life gets in the way and for sure at the moment there may be lots of reasons why you feel you’re just plodding on. So make time for an occasional review of what you thought you wanted at the beginning of the year; this isn’t set in stone, so check – are your goals still relevant? What can you do to get closer to them?

And finally………..

Setting goals at the moment can feel as if it’s just another thing to make life hard. I’m tired of hearing about people who’ve seized the opportunity of lockdown to become expert on the piano, learn a foreign language from scratch or write a book. But this doesn’t have to be an opportunity to make yourself feel shitter; reflecting on what you want in your life can give structure and focus and bring your attention to what you can control rather than what you can’t. And by approaching it in a self-compassionate way, you might even help your dreams come true.

If you know what you want but aren’t sure how to get there (or if you don’t know what you want) you might find it helpful to speak to a therapist to clarify what you want for yourself and how you might make changes to help you move towards your goals. Get in touch with me via Contact details or search in a reputable online directory such as Counselling Directory , BACP or ACTO .

Online therapy to help you find your path

Therapist heal thyself

Lucy Hyde on 1 February 2019

This week I’ve been fighting a bug. (You don’t need to feel sorry for me, I’m doing a great job at that.) As I decided each day whether to go ahead with client appointments I’ve been reflecting on what was The Best Thing To Do – for me and for my clients. Never an easy one to figure out, this is even less clearcut with online work when the factor of “Is it in the best interest of my clients to be infected with my snotty bug?” is removed. And I don’t have the additional effort of hauling myself through the cold to a rented room in the city.

I’ve been remembering an article I read when I first started working with clients which spoke of the ethical requirements of self-care. That as therapists we have a professional obligation to look after ourselves so that we are in the best possible position to look after others. At the time I read it this was gold for me; if I had a duty to look after myself it meant that I would do it, as I could circumnavigate the internal messages that told me I was being self-indulgent.

Doing self-care ‘right’

The downside of my interpretation of this requirement is that my tendency to ‘do things right’ then kicks in, in the area of self-care, too; I find myself asking myself if I’m short-changing clients by working when I’m not 100% in peak physical and mental condition (i.e. coming down with a cold). That battles against the belief that my clients need me, that I’m letting them down by cancelling. (As counsellors we sometimes forget that our clients continue to live and function OK the other 167 hours of the week that we’re not with them.)

I’m sure my perspective is skewed by being inside the therapy world, but sometimes it feels to me that counsellors are particularly demanding of themselves and each other in the need to do things right. Counselling attracts people who care, who want to do well for others, who want to ‘make people happy’. But sometimes we can be blinded to the value of making mistakes, of having to make a judgment call in a fuzzy situation. Black and white decision making is so much easier!

Is it OK for counsellors to have needs, too?

Self-care isn’t all chocolate cake and scented candles, as has been pointed out before. In this context – of whether or not to cancel appointments – it’s not just a question of feeling sorry for myself and curling up under a blanket. Even where I may have felt anxious in anticipation, often I feel energised after an appointment – something about being so focused on that person, about being allowed a little way into their world, about our relationship, about the magic that happens in therapy. Is depriving myself of that feeling self-care? The total focus that I bring to a counselling session means that sometimes I feel as I’m ‘coming back into the world’ afterwards. It’s therefore an opportunity for me to be centred on something other than feeling under-the-weather – surely a form of self-care?

And as therapists we often feel uncomfortable talking about the reality that our work is also our livelihood – we don’t like the idea that we’re charging people a fee for ‘being nice to them’. (Reframe: therapists are people you pay to teach you how to care for yourself.) We need to make a living, and I would be dishonest pretending that potential loss of earnings isn’t a factor – financial survival is self-care too. There’s a practical business aspect to this though: we need to be ‘good-enough’ therapists otherwise our clients won’t come back. If we’re putting ourselves under pressure or making a habit of working when we’re not up to it, that won’t help the bottom line.

Giving it our best guess

All of the above comes with the caveat that we need to not push ourselves to extremes – either of overwork or of self-care! As an example; today I felt I was functioning at 85%; I went ahead with the appointment; I did feel I had more energy afterwards but I knew also that I had recovery time, a buffer of a few hours before the next client.

I have worked in jobs where I would go in when I was feeling rubbish – ‘presenteeism’ we called it in the HR world – because there was stuff that I could do that took less of my energy, and because I believed I had to ‘look keen’. I’ve also worked in jobs where I really needed to be 100% fit to cope with the demand of the role. Being self-employed, the only person I’m fooling is myself, and I just need to make a judgment and make the best of the situation.

As a therapist part of my work is modelling behaviour to the clients I work with. What am I modelling if I feel like shit and go to work anyway for the sake of my client? That the other person is always more important than the self, that I have to rescue them?

Sometimes there’s no formula

Instead I need to check each day as it comes with the information that I have; am I fit enough to work? And check at the end of the day; was I a good-enough counsellor? If some days I decide I would have been better taking the day off, that’s information for the future. And that way I’m modelling what it is to be human, that there are very few black and white decisions and that being human is good enough.

***As a footnote: the week after I wrote this, the bug really kicked in, totally flooring me. At one point I started to wonder if I would ever be well again. This was a good reality-check to my musings; there was no way I could have worked in that state – I could barely even think, let alone ‘focus on my client’. It was a reminder that sometimes there are black and white decisions!

References:

‘therapists are people you pay……’

What self care really means