Nicole Antoinette (she/her) is obsessed with honest conversations. A writer, retreat facilitator, and host of the Real Talk Radio podcast, Nicole works to create resources and gatherings for people who crave deep, genuine connections—both with themselves and others. Offline, Nicole is an indoor kid turned long-distance hiker, and when she's not on trail you can find her living in a tiny white van named Trixie. In Episode 3, Nicole and Grizel talk about dealing with anxiety in a capitalistic nation, living to the expectations of others instead of ourselves, and how to be kind to ourselves and others when life doesn't go the way we expect it to. They also talk about the journey of long distance hiking, and the parallels to the deeper parts of life. At the end of the episode, there is a guided meditation focused on the discovery of compassion towards self.
Nicole Antoinette (she/her) is obsessed with honest conversations. A writer, retreat facilitator, and host of the Real Talk Radio podcast, Nicole works to create resources and gatherings for people who crave deep, genuine connections—both with themselves and others. Offline, Nicole is an indoor kid turned long-distance hiker, and when she's not on trail you can find her living in a tiny white van named Trixie.
In Episode 3, Nicole and Grizel talk about dealing with anxiety in a capitalistic nation, living to the expectations of others instead of ourselves, and how to be kind to ourselves and others when life doesn't go the way we expect it to. They also talk about the journey of long distance hiking, and the parallels to the deeper parts of life. At the end of the episode, there is a guided meditation focused on the discovery of compassion towards self.
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Nicole:
My experience of having high functioning, depression and anxiety has actually been quite lonely because you're not telling people the full truth of what's going on. So then they just take it sort of at face value and you're not having it genuine connections. Cause if you know, authenticity and vulnerability and more messiness is required to connect in a way that creates a sense of belonging, which I believe that it is. And you're not offering that up. Your connections. Aren't going to be that deep. You're not really going to feel known. You're not going to feel seen. And then who are you going to turn to when it feels bad? It's like this it's a cycle for me of loneliness. I think find a space where you feel like the truth is being told and hang out there.
Grizel :
My name is Grizel and this is Underneath it all. A podcast that tells the stories of everyday people who have, or currently are experiencing mental health difficulties and how the outdoors has influenced them. Although I am a therapist, these conversations should not be confused as therapy sessions, but instead open conversations about mental health. My hope is that through these stories, you can have a better understanding of others around you learn to accept and fully embrace your own narrative and to continue breaking the negative stigma that has engulfed mental health
Grizel :
In the midst of a global pandemic, more and more individuals are struggling with their mental health. Many of which never knew they had mental health struggles to begin with, but these are not normal times. And many of us are experiencing very new things. This overflow of experiences can be difficult to put into words, which is why I'm thrilled to introduce you to my friend, Nicole Antoinette, Nicole is obsessed with honest conversations. She's a writer, retreat facilitator and host for the real talk radio podcast. Nicole works to create resources and gatherings for people who crave deep, genuine connection, both with themselves and others offline. Nicole is an indoor kid, turned long distance hiker. And when she's not on trail, you can find her living in a tiny white van named Trixie. So my first memory for me of struggling personally, really wasn't until college. So I don't know if that means that I didn't struggle with it when I was younger or if it was just so under the radar.
Nicole:
But I remember, I think it was my second year in college and experiencing what I now know to be depression right at the time. I still didn't even really, I like kind of knew what it was in the words had floated around, but something that was always challenging for me is that I feel like in my experience, at least like mental illness was never talked about in specificity. It was like depression, right as this kind of like noun that exists, but it was never like brought down into reality at all. And I just remember having periods of time where everything felt quite hard for me and because nobody was talking about it, I just assumed that it was that hard for everyone. The real turning point for me and realizing maybe that's not the case as I was starting to have almost fantasies that something bad would happen to give me an excuse, to feel as bad as I was feeling, because I was really caught in that. What's wrong with you? Your life is great. You shouldn't feel this way, get over it. Right. Sort of that thought loop over and over again. You're otherwise healthy. You have friends, you have this great school you're doing well in school, all of this type of stuff. And I would catch myself thinking like, man, if only such and such person would get in
a car accident and I'd have a reason to be sad. And then I would feel horribly guilty of, Oh my God, what if they do have an accident? And I wish this upon them. It was this very strange period of time. And I thought, you know, if I'm sitting here wishing bad things would happen to people that I otherwise love so that I have an excuse to stay in bed all day. Maybe I should pull at this thread a little bit. That is
Grizel :
So relatable. This is the first time I've ever heard anyone else say that I had really bad depression and no one put a name to it. And I just had like thoughts of bad things happening to me because that's very depressive. Right. And just like isolating my myself and like thinking, well, maybe I would feel loved more if something bad happened to me. I've never heard anyone else say that, but yeah, that makes so much sense.
Nicole:
Yeah. And reflecting on it now, um, it was, it was just so real. That was what I wanted. And it didn't necessarily, like you said, have to be something bad happening to someone else. But even to me, I remember around that period of time, I think it was maybe a year later. And again, you know, it was another kind of depressive episode that I was having. I got mono, I came down with mono and was so grateful to be sick in a way that people understood, right. That it's like, obviously you're really low energy because you have this diagnosable, you know, not that, I mean, of course mental illness is diagnosed well too, but the, like they swapped the thing or whatever, take the test. And it's, you know, something to point to that other people can understand. And, you know, that was something for me to have, like wanting to be able to point to something external that nobody's going to argue with or have an opinion about. Right. And I felt so much relief being able to scale back what I was doing, be less available socially. And that also was an interesting time of realizing, okay, if I feel so much relief that I have this like thing to blame it on, maybe we should turn over some stones. Right. And like dig underneath that. And around that time was the first time that I started seeing a therapist.
Grizel :
Were your parents people that always saw the positive in things that you were like, just always so grateful for things? So it's hard for you to like really take a step back and think, wait, maybe there's something going on inside?
Nicole:
I don't think so. I think it just wasn't talked about, I, my mom was hospitalized for her depression when I was in high school and nobody told me that that's really what was happening. I was, I it's funny. I actually have quite a poor memory of this time, even though I was 15 or 16. And I think, you know, sometimes that happens with traumatic things of different kinds, right. Where you like self protect by blocking it out almost. And, um, I was told that she had some kind of stomach issue or something like, I wasn't really told the whole story and it was a lot of what I feel like was sort of gaslighting around what was happening. And so even though I didn't consciously know what had happened, I think I subconsciously knew what had happened. It was only when I started going to college and our college like health, I don't know, like health center or whatever. Every student got 10 free counseling sessions. And so like, that is what put it on my radar as a thing that existed that people could even do.
Grizel :
You said that you kind of realized that some things were happening when you were, you said sophomore in high school and college rather. Um, so what was it like when you kind of first started realizing something was a little off inside?
Nicole:
I mean, I Just felt differently than I had before the trouble was that I just assumed it was circumstantial. Right. Like my circumstances had changed. I had moved away from home. I was in right. Like under this more rigorous, you know, workload academically, I was working two or three jobs to be able to afford to be there. Right. So, and I'm sure some of it was circumstance or circumstances of course obviously affect things. But like I said, because it wasn't a topic of conversation amongst any of my peers or anything that I was seeing or reading it's certainly had nothing to do with what I was studying in school. That it was just a, Oh, I guess this is just how I feel now. So I don't even think at the beginning that it was an awareness of, this is something that can be helped. This is maybe something that's temporary, this is something that's treatable. It was just, "Oh, I feel not great. And I guess that's just how it is." And for me, I have what I think of as quite high functioning, depression and anxiety. So there's really only been
three, maybe four times where the way that I was feeling, you know, what I was going through in terms of depression and anxiety, that, that impacted my outward ability to do my life. As far as other people were concerned, I wasn't calling out of work. Right. It's not like I, you know, sometimes I would miss class, but I would only miss the amount of classes that you were allowed to miss on the syllabus. Right. It was like taking it right until there would be consequences. And so for me, it was sort of a double edged thing of it was I felt quite bad. Right. I felt pretty hopeless.
Nicole:
I felt really sad. Um, a lot of kind of weepiness crying is really a symptom for me of depression because anyone who knows me really well will say, that's absolutely not how I am in my, you know, periods of mental wellness. I'm just not a super emote through the eyeballs person. That's not really me. Um, and I just didn't, I felt all of these things, but I was still able to do my life. And if I'm honest, I think that got in the way of making any real, tangible progress or getting any effective treatment for years and years and years. Because, you know, once I did start to go to therapy and also a big entrance point for me was reading, um, like mental health memoirs, right? Like memoirs of people who had had depression or who had, you know, any of these different things.
Nicole:
And the books that I was reading were really helpful in that they gave me language around some of the things that were happening. But I think that they were really harmful in that the stories that I was reading. And I'm not sure if you can relate to this were quite extreme. It was, you know, stories of folks who were hospitalized right for their mental illness or who were not able to keep their jobs or who, you know, the depression would be nine months at a time, right. Like didn't leave their house for that period of time. And all of those stories were really powerful for me to read and I think absolutely deserve to be told and talked about as all of our stories do. But I think the things that tend to get publicized the most are the more dramatic stories, you know, that, Oh my gosh, you know, I can't believe this happened. They're almost still true, but sort of the more sensationalized end of things. And so it really made me think, well, my depression's not that bad, so maybe I don't actually have depression or, Oh, my anxiety, isn't so bad that I can't leave the house or that I'm having, you know, constant panic attacks or that type of stuff. So I should just get over it. And there was a lot of internal talk and I, I say internal talk, but I think it comes from the culture at large, this sort of, unless something is awful, suck it up, get over it. Especially as a person who has a lot of privileges, right. And that narrative of, well, it could be worse.
And it's taken me until, I'd say the last maybe five or six years to really start consciously opting out of a hierarchy of suffering. Right. Because the truth is, of course it could be worse. And that doesn't mean that I'm not in pain and me not treating, addressing, owning that Doesn't make it better for anyone, for whom it might be worse. Right. It's almost this like weird, like thought disassociation of, well, if I don't take care of myself okay. But that's not going to help any one. And so that really was, I would say, you know, five, six plus years of after realizing, okay. Depression and anxiety are things that I am experiencing until I allowed myself to take them more seriously.
Grizel :
Over the last few months, I feel like I have to keep pinching myself every day, asking myself if 2020 is as terrible as it feels. And I think many of us hold shame with that because the reality is that none of us are doing okay right now yet because it could in quotes be worse. We don't allow ourselves to accept the pain that many of us are facing. I was literally thinking about this earlier today, about how we are often praised as well for functioning with so much and like, wow, you just don't ever stop. Or wow. Like you're, you're always busy. And like, meanwhile, yeah, I'm always busy because of my, how high my anxiety is. And I hate, it's hard for me to sit still with my depression and anxiety and people praise that they praise the fact that you can do so much in such little time. It's
Nicole:
The like intense productivity of capitalism. Right. And of this culture that, I mean, you look at, I've never worked a corporate job. So I don't necessarily have the like deep ins and outs of like what corporate, like paid leave policy is and stuff. But even talking to friends of, you know, their mother died and I got two days off work. Right. And that's two days is a lot more than a lot of other people get. Right. And that type of thing, it's like, and that's, that's a pretty intense thing to have happen. Right. You lose a parent and it's like, you're expected to be just back. Right, right away. And so things like that, the messaging does seep in of something has to be catastrophic in order for you to stop the treadmill. Right. Like to stop moving. And if you, like you said, if you're someone who has received messaging that is positive, right. Praise for being strong, being consistent, being on time, always showing up, doing these types of things. It's really easy to then think I am only lovable if I check all of these boxes, right? Like if I am a good student, if I am producing good work, if you know, enough people are engaging with and liking this thing on social media, right. That it's very easy to think like these are, this is what I have to do transactionally in order, earn Rest or acceptance or belonging. And so if something is going on, depression, anxiety, that's getting in your way, get for me, at least getting in the way of potentially doing those things. I will let everything else go before I let anybody else down. I don't know. There's, there's something in that. That's, that's interesting to me, of the ways that we are willing to abandon ourselves and our own care. So is to be able to produce the things that people are expecting us to produce or to show up at the party or to do the thing or to not, or to not have anybody ask too many questions or my experience of having high functioning, depression and anxiety has actually been quite lonely because you're not telling people the full truth of what's going on. So then they just take it sort of at face value. And you're not having genuine connections because if you know, authenticity and vulnerability and more messiness is required to connect in a way that creates a sense of belonging, which I believe that it is. And you're not offering that up. Your connections. Aren't going to be that deep. You're not really going to feel known. You're not going to feel seen. And then who are you going to turn to when it feels bad? It's like this it's a cycle for me of loneliness. I think we are told that being a person like being impeccable with your word, right? Like being a person of your word, that that is a good thing to be. And I internalize that to mean, you either show up or you don't when actually, if your word is more nuanced and more human and leaves room for the actual, like up and down and cyclicals like a sporadic flow of
being a person in the world, then you can mean it. When you say that you are going to be there and also be able to with grace and humanity explained to someone what's going on when you can't. I,
Grizel :
I feel like I don't hear many people ever canceling because they're not doing well.
Nicole:
Or it has gotten so bad that they have to cancel everything you have to earn rest, right. Or rest is like, you're so burned out that there's no other option than to take it as someone. Yeah.
Grizel :
As someone who has a low level of constant depression feeling burnout is not a foreign feeling to me, the trouble with acknowledging our mental health struggles and challenges is that our society is not built to support people who are struggling in everyday living. Especially people like Nicole who are high functioning and appear like they have their ducks in a row or people like me who are constantly feeling the sucking energy of life's challenges like death eaters from Harry Potter.
Nicole:
Okay. So what do we do with that? Right. Like, so if this is, if we live in a culture that doesn't want us to rest and doesn't, you know, and wants us to keep every commitment, even if we're burning ourselves completely into a little tiny pulp in order to do it right. And if, if we're deciding, okay, that's not going to work for me, that is not sustainable. I would like to build a different life. I would like to build different relationships, right. That doesn't just happen with the flip of a light switch. And so I've been thinking about a couple of things. One, this sort of phenomenon almost as mental health has become less stigmatized still, of course stigmatized, I think more so in different communities, I think more so in different professions, right? Like I'm certainly not saying there isn't a stigma because there is, but it is a lot more talked about, I think now than it was, you know, and any year previously, however, I think that there is a certain type of conversation that we have sort of all agreed is okay to have about mental health. And that's the before and after conversation, the, I was really depressed and now I'm fine. Or from a place of doing well, I can sort of distance myself from when I wasn't doing well and I can talk about it. Right. I don't see a lot of talking about it in real time. And of course, nobody owes anyone else, you know, a real time look into their wellbeing or not, or their health or their privacy. Like privacy is very valid for me to have to really check myself of why am I comfortable hearing about somebody's experience of mental illness when it has a really pretty bow on it or when it has an ending of, but don't worry, I'm fine now, but am I less comfortable if a friend, you know, sits next to me at the park and says, I'm really struggling right now, can I sit with that?
Nicole:
Can I bear witness to them and not try to fix them? Right. Can I step away from that impulse that I think a lot of us have to want to rush through the feeling to get to the point where everything's okay again. And I mean, I do that to myself too. Like how can I feel better? I feel sad. How can I feel better as opposed to allowing sadness or anger or grief or any of what we call like, you know, quote negative emotions, right? Like, can I let all of that exist? Like basically the question is like, can we be more human when someone says, Oh, Hey, how are you? I'm fine. How are you? Can I break that script? And one of the things I've realized is that I'm not good at breaking that script when I'm in a dark place. And so the
challenge for that I have sort of given myself is when I am feeling well, not to forget what it feels like to be unwell.
Nicole:
We talk a lot about like mental illness. What is mental health? What is mental wellness, right? Like what does it mean or feel, or look like to be mentally? Well, it's almost like low stakes humanity, which sounds silly maybe, but like practice being more human practice. When someone, when someone says that to me, right? Like, you know, I'm feeling kind of tired. I'm feeling kind of down today, not what's wrong. How can I fix it? You know, like, Oh, tell me, can you tell me more about that? Do you want to talk about it? We don't know to hold
Grizel :
Space for others because we don't know how to hold space for ourselves. I mean, I'm such a prime example of doing, I can just tell my interactions drastically different. When I haven't taken time for myself, like 45 minutes ago, I was on the couch crying because I was like, I just need to feel this. And guess what? I feel so much better about being present and listening to you and being here. But if we don't know how to do that and like, listen to what our mind is saying and listen to what, like our shame is even saying, and even holding space for shame and sadness and trauma and all of that. Like how do we expect to do that with other people?
Nicole:
The things that we are the most uncomfortable with and judgemental about in other people, for the most part have roots in things that we are uncomfortable with or judgmental about with ourselves, at least for me, why do we want to rush other people through their hard time to get to the happy ending? Right. I think part of that for me, because of being so high functioning with my depression and anxiety, a lot of that high functioning has come through like a brute force. Like I said before, doing everything that I possibly can to make sure that I still show up for work. Right. Even if I'm depressed or do all that. And so part of me, and this is not a kind part of me, you know, if someone else is really struggling for me, I'm like, well, I pushed through it. Why can't you? And that's, that's not my action. That's not the way I actually feel. Right. That idea of like the first thought is the condition thought. And then the next thought is the true thought. I don't know where that quote comes from, but that's something I've heard before. And so I catch myself and say, no, no, that's not really how you feel. I think that sometimes our inability, like you said, to sit with other people's discomfort, it's like, can we sit with our own disk? What have we told ourselves about whether we can or cannot be messy? What have we told ourselves? Or what have we experienced about whether or not it is safe to not be okay? Like what, what have we, what have the negative consequences been of not being okay. Because I think that something else in this conversation that's really relevant is, you know, and I say this all the time that it's okay to not be okay.
Nicole:
And I think we can't pretend that that's true across the board. Like there are people who will not want to spend time with you if you are not okay, there are people who will think, Oh, your friend died in December. It's July. You should be over that by now. Right. And maybe they won't come out and say that, but there are that that's there. Right? And so if we have received, whether it's a big reaction or a small reaction or some someone's along the line has told us that it is not okay. It is not safe to feel the
way that we feel. At least for me, I'm less likely to reveal that again. And so you start to learn that over time, right? I'm more lovable if I do this and this
Nicole:
I'm more lovable if I keep these messy feelings to myself. Right. And it's not like someone has to come right out and say that, but we know we're not right. We're not stupid. The messages get through. And so I think a lot of this sort of, so what of this for me is how do I start to break that cycle within myself? Right. In some of the ways that we've already talked about, and then how do I become that person for other people? Like, I think a lot about this idea of like, what does it mean to be the kind of like port in the storm for people. Right. And I used to think that it meant always having my shit together, right? Like if I want to be someone that other people can count on or can rely on, then like I have to meet this impossible standard. When actually I think the more human I can be, the more safe other people can feel being human with me. And that's what it means to be the port in the storm.
Grizel :
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Grizel :
I was a chronic liar as a child. There are many reasons as to why I struggled so much with being honest, including forms of trauma, but I carried the cyclical habit as an adult. I would lie about things I didn't want to lie about because my need for acceptance and understanding trumped everything else. I didn't want people to know my true thoughts, my true motives, my deepest insecurities, my weaknesses. So I bent the truth so that it didn't have to share my depression thinking thoughts. Like if I told someone the truth, they would think it's not that big of a deal. Even though it is destroying me after years of therapy and self-acceptance work, I've gotten better at expressing what is actually going on with my mental wellness, without shame or fear of judgment from others. But it has taken continuous effort to let go of the negative stigma, but it's scary to be vulnerable. Isn't it to tell someone the truth about what's actually going on inside. And then what if the response to the vulnerability is a quick fix or even advice? How are we to believe the truth about who we are and how are we to relay the truth of who we are to others?
Nicole:
My most honest answer is that I feel quite uncomfortable giving people advice. And I say that as someone who gave a lot of advice for a very long time, and that came from trying to be seen as someone who was doing better, right better than theirs. There's obviously a lot of stuff we haven't talked about, um, you know, sobriety and other things in this conversation. But when I quit drinking, I was about nine years, a little over nine years ago. And what I needed at the beginning in order to stay sober was this sort of like chip on my shoulder, like really big ego belief in the fact that like, I'm better now, right? Like I was this really messy party girl who made all of these mistakes and all of these shameful choices before, but now I'm different now I'm better now I'm healed. And that got me into a lot of trouble because if you put yourself on that before and after pedestal, like eventually you're going to fall off. Cause guess what? None of us are perfect. I've made plenty of mistakes. I've done plenty of things that I've regret or feel ashamed of or wish that I would have handled differently since quitting drinking. Right. And so I think a lot about, I don't know, like the sort of dangers of giving other people advice almost, especially because what works for me might not work for you find a space where you feel like the truth is being told and hang out there. And for a lot of people that space isn't, their family's made, or maybe it isn't the people that's in your immediate social circle, maybe it is right. I feel like I've one or two friendships where the truth is told.
Nicole:
I feel like there are certain podcasts, there's certain media, there's certain corners of the internet where the truth is being told. I sometimes feel like almost this idea of the outdoors being like the cure, all for people's mental health, where it's like, we'll just go outside, just take a walk in nature. And like nature helps me a lot. Going outside helps me a lot. It doesn't completely help me. Right. It doesn't mean periods of time that I have been on medication, right? Like anti-anxiety meds or anything taking a longer walk wouldn't have meant that I didn't need that medication. Probably advice for myself is not to get caught up in the narrative, that there is a best or prettiest or most acts like acceptable way to get help.
Grizel :
I feel like it's just looking at this journey of life as fluid and there's seasons where there is that there are no fucking solutions and that should be okay. Or like seasons where you're just not, you're just not, and that should be way more accepted than it is. I just wish more people were okay with their truth. Every time I see someone who's having a hard time and people wanting to be there for them, they have this list of things and checklists things that they should be doing to feel better just being there for someone and just being in that place with someone should be enough. And being in that place for ourselves should be enough.
Nicole:
So I took two months off work this summer, right? Taking a sabbatical my first like time off in like proper, proper time off for more than a couple of days in like 15 years, even on long distance hikes, I've worked from every trail town. And I have been feeling a lot of pressure to have like the best time off ever. Oh my gosh, you have two months off. That's an unbelievable gift and privilege, which is true. But then sort of my anxiety ramps up of, you know, this needs to be the most restful, the most fun the Mo and you know, the mantra that I've come up with for myself this summer is just have a mediocre lovely time, or even just a mediocre time. Can we turn the dial down on how spectacular everything needs to be? Right. And I think about that even in this is not necessarily contradictory to what I said before, but maybe complimentary about finding a space where the truth is told.
Nicole:
I have struggled with performative vulnerability of like, or almost like the trauma Olympics, or like you have to tell the darkest secret or say like the most intense thing. Right. Or, and to be like, it can just be mediocre. Like, it doesn't have to be like the most intense reveal in order to have an authentic connection with someone, right? Like if someone says like one honest thing, it can be like a really, you know, simple, simple, honest thing. Like truth feels good. It does. I think sometimes it's, I forget that. I forget that we can connect on like more basic things as well.
Grizel :
In 2018, I met Nicole on the Pacific crest trail while I was experiencing one of the lowest parts of my PCT experience, having Giardia on trail, which for those of you who don't know what Giardia is, it is an intestinal infection caused by a parasite. That's commonly found an unsafe unpurified to say that I was sick is an understatement. Let's just say I never left the bathroom after breaking down to what was then a stranger. I can affirm that Nicole is extremely accurate with embracing her truth, as well as the truths of other people around her. Even when the truth sucks,
Nicole:
My anxiety stems from a bunch of things. But one of the patterns that I have noticed through kind of like tracking it, right, like through therapy is the gap between the expectation and the reality. Right? And I think that that can happen in the outdoors. It can happen anywhere, right? That it's. So I said at the beginning of this conversation that I didn't grow up as an outdoorsy kid, right. At all, like I had never gone camping. I had never really gone hiking. And so when I got into long distance hiking in 2016, it was the newest, it could possibly be to me, everyone who knew me couldn't believe that this was a thing that I was going to do. And, you know, I did a lot of research and looked at a lot of things on Instagram and talk to people and listen to podcast and you know, all of that. And I thought I had a pretty good idea of what it was going to be like, but the truth is that, like you can't ever understand what a thing is like until you do it. And my first long distance hiking experience was miserable. I did the Oregon section of the PCT. So it was 460 miles. I cried every single day. I mean, it was, it was, I hated it. Like there were, there were fun parts, right? There was some of it that I loved, but a lot of my misery was the difference. The huge gap between what people had made this thing seemed like it was and what, what, at least my experience was like, I don't wanna say what it actually was. Cause maybe they did really just have like a blissful time every single day. I, I can't interpret somebody else's truth, but for me, I was like, I think this idea of the gap between expectation and reality is really relevant because I think that's where a lot of my shame comes from. And I think that's true for other folks as well of what's wrong with me that I'm not enjoying this thing that so many other people really love.
Nicole:
I have since found a true love for long distance hiking. And that's that initial experience for me, I felt so anxious and so sad that I wasn't enjoying it enough. I had done all of this to take these weeks off and this, this could just be like our life. I think this is why people have a hard time at, you know, certain like big milestone birthdays, right? You turn 30, you turned 40 my life. Isn't how I thought it was going to be. Or my marriage. Isn't how I thought it was going to be or my career, anything. Right. Any of the things we have these pictures. And so part of it, I have to just ask myself like, am I willing to be wrong about what I think it's going to be? Or even am I willing to not spend so much time on the fantasy or on the expectation? Or like, can I just let my life be what it is like, can I just put my body in the space and show up and be open to the fact that some of it's going to be beautiful and some of it's going to be fucking awful. Can I let that be okay? You know, and I, I think about, I think that applies for, you know, for me for long distance, I can, but for other things too, the value of like opening up space, like opening up
space within ourselves to hold for ourselves, opening up more space, to be a little bit messier and more honest in our relationships. Right? Like opening up just more space for letting ourselves and other people not be okay. And like opening up more space for the fact that there could be a thing that you, that you genuinely want with your whole heart and you get it. And it is not what you thought it was going to be.
Grizel :
It just reminds me of nature so much because we've experienced nature elements. Right. And we don't tell mother nature, be like, listen, didn't sign up for this rainstorm. No, we're there for the experience, whatever comes our way. That's why I love through hiking so much as like I'm here to experience what you are bringing me. And I'm just, all I have to do was just take one step out of time and just keep going. And that's it, it is such a perfect parallel and metaphor for how I want to experience my life. Going back to what you said, there's just so many expectations on what we should be experiencing at certain age points or like what we should be doing. But that feels like I'm living a lie when I'm doing that. Ever since I started like really just embracing kind of what's right in front of me. I don't live with that shame anymore. That shame destroys me.
Nicole:
I relate so much to what you said about one of the benefits of long distance hiking being that the conditions are, the conditions are the conditions, the trail doesn't care about your bullshit. And I love that. That is true because as someone who didn't grow up with a love of nature, I have come to appreciate time spent in the outdoors, but that's not really the driving force for me. The driving force for me with long distance hiking is that the simplicity of a long distance hike, it's hard, but it is simple in that the goal is get from point a to point B don't die. Griz. All I want is for the rest of my life to make that much sense. The fact that I wake up in my tent and like the literally the only thing that I have to do is pack up my small amount of belongings.
Nicole:
I have no choice about what to wear. I eat one of the various, not that appetizing bars that I have in my food bag, if that's what's left. And then I just walk in the direction that I decided to walk and the freedom of realizing that I don't actually have control over anything other than like my own response to it. I have a very hard time accessing that in my off trail life. But on trail, that simplicity is the best alleviation for anxiety that I have ever felt. Personally, I wonder to what it is that makes us think that the struggle takes away from the beauty. If you're walking for like eight, 10 plus hours a day, right? Like various time in that day to feel every single emotion there's a lot of time. So why is my expectation that all of that time needs to be joyful?
Nicole:
I don't expect that anywhere else in my life, but I think you can be grateful. And also in pain, I think that, you know, one of the truest truest things that I have come or that I have come to believe are true, is that like we have the ability to hold like seemingly very contradictory feelings and thoughts at the exact same time. I can be profoundly grateful to be on trail and fucking miserable that I am on trail getting to a place of more neutrality with my emotions, right. Where it's not like feeling sad as bad and feeling happy as good. Like can there be just like a little bit more neutrality, rarely can I and not attach meaning to that feeling?
Grizel :
One of my favorite parts of this conversation with Nicole was the amount of space available to herself and to people around her. As we were talking through these topics, I found myself feeling accepted more and more for not only who I am, but the mistakes I've made in the past mistakes I'll make in the future. And even the feelings I feel as I'm writing this, to be able to be accepted and fully embraced for every complex part of ourselves is what mental wellness and self efficacy is. And as vague as that statement is it's extremely valid because each one of us has something that we struggle with. And to say that there is a binary solution to feel better is just far from true. I said it at the beginning of this conversation, but many of us are struggling right now to accept our reactions, our responses, to stress our responses to COVID, to our family members. And we can be really hard on ourselves as we maneuver through these times. So I want to take a few moments to work on self-efficacy together through a short meditation.
Grizel :
If you can find a comfortable way of sitting and settling down your body, you might close your eyes. You'll find that this meditation will ask you a repeating question. So you can explore that as we go, let's start by taking a full, nice, deep breath and with the out breath, letting go, and then breathing naturally notice if there are any obvious areas of tension or tightness and taking a few moments to let go, wherever you feel, holding softening the shoulders in the hands, softening in the belly, relaxing your heart. Now I want you to imagine the space that extends in your body, In your fingers and your toes and your feet and your shoulders. How does it feel?
Grizel :
Now- Imagine allowing whatever arises to be held with tenderness and care, letting go of judgment and fear and replacing it with understanding and love. Sometimes it helps me. If I placed my hand on my heart, listen to the truest form of yourself, or if that's difficult, think about someone who loves you unconditionally. It can be a spirit. It can be an animal. It can be a friend. What would they say to you in this moment that you need to hear. Listen, Take in that care, breathe in that truth, because it is truth. As we close, I'm going to read a quote that is from the teachings from an Indian master Bapu-ji. "Break your heart no longer. Each time you judge yourself, you break your heart. You pull away from the love. That is the wellspring of your vitality, but now the time has come your time to live and to trust the goodness that you are. There is no evil, no wrong in you. Your true essence is pure awareness alive. Newness love let no one, no idea or ideal obscure this truth. If one comes, forgive it for it's unknowing. Just let go and breathe into the goodness that you are. "
Grizel :
Again. Thank you so much, Nicole, for sharing this compassionate and open space with me, you can fall on Nicole @nic.antionette to watch her adventures and stay up to date her podcast. We will see you in two weeks. So in the meantime, consider leaving us a review on Apple podcasts or anywhere else you listen. It's a fast, free way to support the show. And it truly does make a difference in helping other people to find us. And if you're wanting to interact with more of this Austawesomein community, make sure to find us on social media. We're on Instagram at underneath it all pod and on Facebook, including our Facebook group for community questions, stories, and support, which you can find by searching underneath it all podcasts. You can also follow me on Instagram @_grizel_ for mental health Mondays, where I talk about the balance in my personal life and mental health and true music is created by a two person band, which includes myself. You can find our music on Spotify by searching Passiflora.
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