Managing Fear on Outdoor Adventures: Climbing, Mountaineering, Backpacking, Hiking, or Camping

If you read my last blog post and watched the accompanying video, then you know that I’ve had some experience with fear. This new video, on managing fear draws from some other experiences in my past, but not so much the cancer diagnosis. I don’t want to keep droning on about that issue in video after video ;)

But I can say that these same techniques on managing fear, and which I apply to my outdoor pursuits, have been just as invaluable to my experience with blood cancer in the time of COVID. I’ve been doing “exposure therapy” on an almost daily basis as I re-enter a world in which the vaccines offer me little protection and for which catching COVID results in a high probability of death (about 38% according to the last systematic study).

For example, my kids just had a music concert at their school. Of course, a small horde of parents were packed into the gym to watch their kids. It was the first crowd I’ve been in since the pandemic began. The reality is that I used two of the main techniques I discuss in the video:

First, I visited the school and became familiar with the entry, exit, and gym. I know that sounds like overkill, but it really wasn’t about studying it in any specific way. What it was about was calming my anxiety when the concert happened. I had been there before; it wasn’t a big crowd AND unknown. One less thing.

Second, I wrote the school an email and asked them to estimate the number of attendees, the duration of the concert, and asked them about the air filtration. Here, I was moving fear to my rational brain and asking, “Am I in real danger, or is this just uncomfortable.” Of course, the answer to that question, in this context, is illusive, but I was at least acting purposefully, now, rather than instinctually. Instinctually doesn’t help, here. Fighting isn’t an option. That just leaves flight.

And climbing and outdoor pursuits are (usually) the same. There usually isn’t anything to fight (unless the fear is due to an animal attack or something), so you are left with a flight response. Do I really need to bail on my climb or outing? Is the danger real? Sometimes it is, but often times it isn’t. So, you keep climbing.

…or you go to the elementary school music concert.