Alpine Stoicism, Gym Psych, and Being Human

Over the past six years I have moved through many roles in the climbing community – the psyched newbie, a key member of a bunch of “lady crushers”, part of many bouldering send trains, the student, the instructor, the backcountry greenhorn, the burned out climber, and the really awkwardly shy new girl in town.

First non-instructor led backcountry experience - that snow field freaked me out.

Through all this, the climbing community is a place where I have felt at times very accepted and at other times extremely lonely. It can be an intimidating group to fit in with. They are intelligent, energetic, able to take calculated risks, and super athletic.

This is written to anyone who has felt at any time that they didn't measure up. The inspiration for writing this stems from witnessing many climbers get shut down from their own mental state, other life commitments, or physical insecurities. At times I have been in that place and I will likely visit it again. Emotions happen and suddenly I show up to the gym feeling lost in a sea of climber psych, techno music, confusing social dynamics and badass stories. I get instant total sensory overload.

To some extent my emotions affect my focus at school, my social skills, my work, my climbing, my eating habits, and my sleep, yet when I visualize a successful climber, I see a cool, collected, stoic person or someone with just never ending energy and psych. Sometimes I have one or the other and sometimes both, and sometimes they are just not there.

I freaking love teaching this stuff

Recently I confided in a friend that I wish I could ignore these emotions. Life would be easier then. If I always ate healthy, never got illogically scared, and always felt like trying hard - heck, I’d probably climb 5.13 and be a financially stable engineer right now. He responded he had made a habit of ignoring his emotions all his life and that he wishes he couldn’t.

What? For the first time a strong white guy told me he wishes he wasn’t cool and collected.

This led me to think back to when I was 13 and first felt a new stab of the gender roles defined. I was so angry at what people assumed of me. Among other attributes I was supposedly more in touch with my feelings, more social, and more scared of things because I was female. Whether these were true or not didn’t matter. What frustrated me was that it was assumed because of one chromosome that that’s who I was and what frustrated me even more was that men would now get a free pass like “I’m a dude, I don’t get it, so there.” I thought the whole thing was bullshit. Until recently, I thought females got the short end of the straw, but I have realized that maybe it is the opposite. Through the lens of our culture, I perceive emotions as weakness and stoicism as strength, but that is just what I have been taught, not what is necessarily true.

Now that's a genuine outfit - especially with the pooper scooper we brought just in case...

I started thinking about the people I climb with and the people I avoid climbing with and realized how hypocritical I have been in the past. I seek strong reliable people to climb with and yet I fluctuate between feeling strong and fearless, crappy and tired, or insecure and weak. I can get frustrated listening to people talk about how they are too scared to fall or that they should push themselves more or lose weight and yet sometimes I start those conversations.

I think, though, that I have found a better way to include these emotions into my climbing:

On a recent climbing trip, I looked up at a 95 foot beautiful route which started with an intimidating roof leading to a long, slight overhang. I looked at the route, and then looked at my partner and said,

“I am currently afraid of becoming afraid up there.”

He nodded and said he understood the feeling. Just in saying that and being validated, I felt better. Still felt scared, but better.

In a week where all my usual climbing partners were too busy to climb with me, I finally told them,

“I know you’re busy, but I have felt really sad and lonely this whole week because no one has time to climb with me and I’m tired of bouldering by myself!!! It's not as fun and I climb like shit!”

Rather than trying to be that totally self-reliant climber, I decided to just be human and I again, instantly felt better.

I got to listen to a women’s panel on climbing, and a conversation on emotions came up among these very established professional climbers. One woman mentioned that her climbing partner would cry in stressful situations.

Her partner interrupted,

“Are you saying I cry a lot?”

“You cry more than anyone I have ever climbed with... And because of that I trust you the most.”

One of my most spontaneous and random sport climbing days, loved climbing with these crazy ladies!

In none of these are people apologizing for their feelings or even dwelling on them. They are accepting them. I have found accepting feelings a lot less detrimental to my focus or climbing or social life. I don’t have to be a stoic person or even a positive person, emotions aren’t really holding me back, and life is really meaningful and deep if I accept the wild ride they take me on. Alex Honnold is in a completely different emotional place than me: he knows he won’t fall, so why he even need a rope? I will never be where he is. I think leading outdoor 5.11 sport is spicy enough right now because I’m carrying a bunch of fear, excitement, and expectations with me up a cliff (along with a rope and some gear) and that’s a lot of work!

Sometimes life beats you down and you just don't give a shit...

I think back to conversations which annoy me at the gym and how drained I can feel after listening to someone battle their mental game or get down on themselves for the recent plateau they have found themselves on. I don’t think it’s their emotions that I find draining, so much as it’s the talking about them, dwelling on them, and rationalizing or defending them that I have to listen to. It’s also that when there is too much of it, I don’t feel like I can add my own insecurities or we’ll all just spiral down into a bunch of self-critical rambling. It’s the fact that you feel bad for having emotions, the fact that it feels like you can’t be real around me, that it feels like you aren’t present with me, that all we are connecting over is negative self-talk - that is what I find draining.

...And sometimes you need a nap...

Do you remember your first day of climbing? Do you remember how playful it felt to be horizontal or to try to stretch out as far as you possibly could to grab something you could just barely reach? I think I climbed a couple weird boulder problems and spent the rest of the time doing gymnastics on the mats. I didn’t analyze my progress or my fears; I did what I felt like doing. I would like to invite you back to that day, and to keep that day with you every time you climb. Let your training and experience only enhance that feeling and never detract from it. And I would invite you to accept your fluctuating emotions and your own ever changing motivation for being at the gym or outside on a cliff. Maybe one day you can be the stoic trad climber and the next you’ll feel like the stoic trad climber’s hyper little sibling, and the next day you’ll feel like a lazy bum – and that is so totally fine! I won’t judge you for it if you don’t judge yourself for it. 

...And sometimes you get up at 4 in the morning and
get to see this beautiful valley before anyone else.

So, do you want to climb hard things with me and get scared with me and tell me that you’re scared? Do you want to try things that frustrate you and tell me straight up that it drives you nuts? Do you want to practice complex rope systems with me until we either feel like geniuses or our heads hurt and we wonder how we made it through college? Do you want to get burned out for a few days and realize we need to go make friends with some random non-climbing strangers for a while? If the answer is yes, then cool, let’s climb together. I think we could really go places.