Sunday Thoughts: Anxiety, Running, and Self-acceptance

As I ran yesterday, walking every few minutes as part of my “return-from-injury” protocol that I’ve developed for myself, I felt anxiety creeping in. Nothing was hurting as a trotted down the woods trails in the Presidio, yet my brain seemed overly sensitized and hyper aware of every stimulus moving through my body. Nothing was wrong, but I was looking for something, certain it was there. Why do we become fearful when things are going “right”? I thought about this for the rest of my (short) run, digging into my anxiety around injury, and, in particular, the reason why fear persists even when I’m not injured.

We, as humans, are motivated by loss more than almost anything else. The thought of losing something good, something we rely on, something that makes us whole, is beyond devastating. It’s unthinkable. It’s terrifying. It can even make you a little nuts!!

I’ve struggled with anxiety my whole life. As a kid, it presented as a fear of separation from my family. In high school, surrounded by a core group of friends and boyfriends and sports teams, I felt a sense of community that dissipated those anxious tendencies. It was during those years where my perfectionism faded, and I embraced life in a liberating way that I haven’t been able to since. And I’m okay with that, because it’s my anxiety, and subsequent drive, that I have to thank for almost everything in my life. Part-way through college, it reared its ugly head again, and I developed horrible panic attacks, insomnia, and sleep anxiety as a result. But I worked through this, refusing to miss a beat, determined to live up to the internal expectations I had for myself, driven to keep achieving, and unwilling to be slowed down.

It was around this time that I began running. It’s funny that, given my success with it in the years following, I didn’t realize my love for it earlier in life, or even my natural capacity for endurance sports. I was always a team sports gal. But running was different. I felt it right way — it spoke to me in ways that nothing ever had. It had the power to eliminate my fears, lift my spirits, and make me feel free of all the theoretical hands that grabbed and pulled at me. It cured my anxiety.

A few years later, running became more than anxiety relief. It constituted my ego, my goals, my dreams, and my community. I was really, really good at it. It brought me this false sense of security in a new way, because if I won races, I couldn’t doubt my abilities or my capacity for success. I’ve always marveled at running in that way. It is so pure, so primal -- it’s nothing but your mind and your body, working as one to push you forward. When you cross a finish line, there is actually no way for imposter syndrome to creep in. How could it? You, and only you, propelled yourself from the start to the finish, and the clock doesn’t lie.

How does this relate? Because it’s important as the backdrop for the loss I experienced when I had to stop running. I know there are so many runners who can relate — anyone who has loved something so dearly can relate. I won’t go into detail about all the injuries and autoimmune diseases that came next, because those would each take up their own post, but what I did face was obstacle after obstacle over the course of about five years. Injury after injury, which I later found out was mostly due to my autoimmune diseases diagnosed over the years that followed. 

So, hi anxiety, my old friend, welcome back. When you lose something that you’ve built your life around -- emotionally, physically, socially, mentally, and spiritually -- it’s hard to escape fear. Fear out of hopelessness, imperfection, and failure. My anxiety returned, full-force. And every time I hit a set-back in running, side-lined by an injury, I went through the experience of it's death again and again. But I kept coming back to it. As soon as I felt healthy again, I was running again. And then another injury, another autoimmune diagnosis. And again, anxiety, fear, sadness, and the pain of loss. 

So about two years ago, I had enough. I didn’t “quit” running, but I separated myself from it. I withdrew from my goals -- my dreams of the Olympic trials, continuing to race with my elite sponsored team -- and I refocused my energy. I stopped anticipating when I would be able to run again, and while I would be thrilled when I could, I never returned to 5-minute miles. I never returned to much at all. I treaded oh-so-carefully, my only goal being to avoid any injuries or set-backs. I figured the way to do that was to barely run, and when I did, to go slowly, cautiously, and infrequently. Even though my physical therapist and friend would continue to encourage me,  “Abbie, I believe you can get back to being the runner you are”, I would nod and smile and continue to live within the new relationship dynamics I had created with running.

Now here we are, it’s September of 2019, and I’m running cautiously. I’m walking every few minutes, but honestly, I’m not unhappy about it. In fact, I’m extremely grateful. I’m also acutely aware that, ironically, I’ve developed anxiety around the one thing that used to cure me of it. Every step I take on those (very few and far between) runs, I wince, I analyze, I focus on every twitch and ache and niggle in my body. Is my ankle hurting? Is my hamstring injured? Am I developing plantar fasciitis again? Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of joyful moments as I trot along, getting my stride back, watching my pace get a little faster again. But I thought about it yesterday morning, as I ran and walked in the woods, how interesting it is that we have so much trouble releasing ourselves from fear when things are seemingly going “right”. We are so anxious about things going wrong, so worried that we might have to endure emotional or physical pain again (especially when we know exactly what that pain feels like), that we ruin our experience of the present moment.

I wanted to write this down, or share it with whoever out there stumbles upon it, because I believe so strongly in the importance of self-exploration and acceptance. I believe there is power in recognizing our own patterns and the ways in which we might be self-sabotaging. It is even more critical for us to act on it. Joy, purpose, and identity can be achieved in a multitude of ways, and there is no single thing that defines who we are. I can promise you that. My departure from competitive running has opened me up to SO MANY THINGS. To my creative side, to my ability to be in a relationship with the love of my life, to coaching runners and cyclists, to my passion for helping others through autoimmune disease, to working with those who want to improve their relationship with food, to studying nutrition, to starting my own practice where I can do all of those things. 

But where does that leave me, my running, and my anxiety? I work on it every day. I coach myself through it, I journal, I talk openly with others. I’ve developed tools and skills that have made me resilient and allowed me to adapt, over and over. And I will keep adapting. I will keep moving forward, always staying open to change. I will build up all the different dimensions of my life, such that no one loss would mean the end of me. So to tie this all up, I want to encourage you to keep expanding the definition of who you are, but also embrace those characteristics that may never fully go away. And make that commitment to yourself. Because if you can have compassion for the real you, flaws and all, maybe you can slowly achieve the peace that comes with acceptance -- which, I have found, is the antidote to anxiety.