Clarity.
That’s what I felt yesterday as I smeared the rubber of my shoes against the basalt corners of a climb called Charon. My last piece of protection was placed 10 feet beneath me; the thin corner seam above was not what I had anticipated. I felt my heart beating in my ears and noticed my breath growing shallow, fast and erratic. I recognized that fear was now occupying my body. I heard a familiar voice in my mind castigating me for not researching the route better, lacking strength, being scared, etc. My sympathetic nervous system then began executing its instinctive process: narrow vision, increase respiration, increase heart rate, flush skin. Forearms became pumped, legs started to shake… super good time.

That moment, fingers slotted in a thin crack, feet pushing onto small divots of rock, was a decision point; I could regulate my internal experience, or I could be overwhelmed by it.
Option 1: I choose to spiral, grip tighter, freeze on the wall in indecision and inevitably take a big fall.
Option 2: I choose to breathe, relax, manage my fear and increase the likelihood of staying on the rock.
Seldom am I offered such a tangible outcome for keeping my cool. The ability to regulate my internal experience was crucial at that moment.

Outside of climbing, how often are we faced with a similar option each day? Do we spiral or do we self-regulate?

When we look at what makes therapeutic climbing effective, we need to explore the sequence of events that happened on Charon. I became triggered while climbing, which led to a series of old, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and I eventually chose an alternate response to self-regulate.

So let’s look at those phrases: triggers, coping mechanisms and self-regulation.

• A trigger is an outside event that stimulates an internal, emotional reaction. i.e. a friend doesn’t invite you to his party, your boss throws you under the bus in a meeting, your partner lies to you, etc.
• A coping mechanism is our tried and true method of dealing with challenging emotions. Some coping mechanisms are definitely healthier than others, i.e. abusing substances, dissociating, meditating, exercising, compulsive shopping, etc.
• Self-regulation happens when we become aware of challenging emotions and choose to practice healthy coping mechanisms to return to a state of inner peace.

At Internal Ascent, we like triggers; they provide an opportunity for old coping mechanisms to show up in full force for our clients. Once you begin to develop awareness of a trigger, you can start noticing your patterns of response. We then have a chance to pause and explore the underlying belief that is concealed by the emotion that shows up with that trigger. As your awareness of these patterns increases, you’ll find effective and healthy coping mechanisms which will increase your ability to self-regulate (read: not lose your shit).

Ultimately, we all have some sort of emotional baggage that we carry with us. It seems that no-one escapes from childhood unscathed. Through having adverse experiences in our developmental process, we develop coping mechanisms (and often a great sense of humor) to help us maintain a sense of emotional equilibrium. These coping mechanisms can manifest in positive and negative ways, i.e. abusing substances, exercise, people pleasing, meditation, self harm, self-compassion practices etc. The crucial point about these coping mechanisms is that they are all an attempted solution to an internal problem. However, some coping mechanisms, like addiction, have really negative consequences. When we learn to regulate our nervous system, practice dis-identification with our thoughts and begin to build relationships with our inner “parts” (autonomous sub-personalities that often run the show), we can find new ways to respond to challenging situations and emotions. 

Maybe you’re interested in learning how to become a stronger lead climber with a bulletproof head-space; maybe you just want to learn how to deal with your constant anxiety. The goal with therapeutic climbing is to help you develop self awareness, find beneficial coping mechanisms and give you the tools to self-regulate.

We want you to climb hard and have as much fun as you can. Our deeper hope is that you can practice your new coping skills while dealing with your frustrating boss, when you’re stressed out with your kids or spiraling with anxiety. You can absolutely learn to move with more mental flexibility from anger or sadness back to a state of ease. This will also make you a better climber (and a more relaxed human).

And, as a bonus, we get to go climbing, which is sweet.

In that moment of fear described above, I was able to self-regulate. I realized that I could reposition my body, relax my grip, release some of the tension in my muscles, and breathe deeply. While I was still somewhat freaked out, I was able to move from fight or flight into a state closer to relaxation. I took a few moments to assess the next 10 feet of climbing and saw there was a good placement for a 0.3 cam about 6 feet higher that I hadn’t seen before. I moved upward, breathing deeply, maintaining awareness of my body until I could slot the cam into the crack and truly breathe a sigh of relief. I rested there and was then able to repeat the process: breathe, assess, and move. I eventually found myself standing at the top of the climb feeling quite happy (and quite relieved). Wrestling with the fear that was present deepened my awareness, gave me a chance to practice self-regulation, and led to me really enjoying the rest of the climb. All wins.

In part 2 we’ll look at the research that shows the efficacy of therapeutic climbing and how it might fit into a broader mental health treatment framework.

Thanks for reading!

Photo credit: Melanie Nomura. IG @tumbleweedrolls