Anxiety is a breathless inner agitation brought on by longing or uncertainty (definition from the Devoto Oli dictionary).
Symptoms of anxiety
Physiological symptoms of Anxiety:
Heart palpitations, heavy sweating, trembling, nausea, unjustifiably rapid breathing, a feeling of tightness in the stomach, and others...
Psychological symptoms of Anxiety:
Depression, pessimism, fear that something will go wrong, exaggerated fears, excessive reactions to difficult situations, the urge to run away.
Anxiety in the mountains
In the mountains uncertainty is a constant, for many reasons:
the changeable weather;the difficulty of finding your way;the presence of animals in the woods;the unknowns along the route;the objective risk of getting hurt.
Bringing the anxiety and the problems of everyday life into the mountains can only make our overall emotional state worse. This is even more true in sports like mountaineering and, to a lesser extent, in hiking.
They are sports that demand self-control and the ability to concentrate coolly. Carrying your own baggage of anxieties along while mountaineering makes our emotional state worse, to the point where in some cases it ends in panic attacks.
One of the complications that comes from anxiety is the onset of so-called panic attacks.
You feel unable to stand on your own legs, unjustified trembling, a racing heart and laboured breathing, nausea, a feeling of a knot in your throat and in your stomach, your ability to make decisions blocked.
Although it is said that sport is good for managing anxiety, it is just as true that this therapy for anxiety through physical movement has to be handled gradually and in safe settings.
There's no point putting yourself under mental stress by tackling demanding mountaineering routes that require concentration and peace of mind.
A good thing, on the other hand, is to go on long treks on simple routes that call for no special technical skills and no extra psychological resources.
Treating anxiety through physical activity
Physical activity sets our whole body in motion. Hormonal substances are produced, such as (but not only) endorphins, which have analgesic properties (they reduce pain) and properties that regulate the activity of neurotransmitters.
These are in fact substances that can bring on feelings of euphoria and mental clarity.
According to some research, chronic anxiety and depression seem to have similar symptoms, including difficulty concentrating, sleep disorders and excessive tiredness.
However, sport alone is not enough to resolve anxious behaviour. Before asking an extra effort of our body and our psyche, we need to face our anxieties without fighting them. You start by accepting yourself and your own means, reassessing your own state of being. Walking is an activity that, in this sense, fills us with confidence in ourselves.
As Erri De Luca wrote, “Whoever walks is invincible”. And that's just how it is.
Once we have learnt to trust our own means and become aware of what we can achieve, only then will it be possible to take on more demanding activities such as mountaineering and hiking.
Again: we feel like suggesting long walks, to give yourself the time to reflect on your personal matters. To give yourself the time to work them out in your head.
In the mountains, even on paths that don't climb too high, you manage to see your own life “in perspective”. You look at your life from the right distance, and the problems we had blown out of all proportion become, so to speak, “normal”. That's how, by walking, by spending time in the mountains, you manage to digest life's problems more effectively.
It is with this (physical) distance and this (mental) remoteness from everyday life that we manage to see our life more clearly, more objectively and more calmly, with its whole load of problems and difficulties.
Setting out on long treks on mountain paths can only help us, free us from our anxieties and improve not only our physical state but above all our psychological one.