17
FURTHER AFIELD
CYCLING CHALLENGE #2: CAN I VENTURE FURTHER AFIELD? WHAT ABOUT RIDING TO MY MUM’S HOUSE AND BACK?
ANSWER #2: I’M NOT SURE, BUT I’LL GIVE IT A GO.
Quite frankly, the simple task of cycling somewhere else … on another route … to another place is a significant enough variable to extend my already bulging comfort zone from a six-piece Peppa Pig jigsaw puzzle to the next stage: a twenty-four-piece Paw Patrol one, target age group five to six years. There are more roads to navigate on the route to my mum’s house, and therefore increased exposure to wanker white-van drivers and other non-cycling-friendly imbeciles on the move. However, there will only be a small section of riding along the canal towpath required, so fewer bumpy cobbles to traverse and hopefully not so many dog-walkers with mile-long extendable leads and accompanying piles of sloppy excrement for me to dodge. All things considered, this is variation – and it is therefore progression.
I’m taking things a little more seriously for this ride, though. I decide to ditch my daughter’s pink fluffy unicorns water bottle and instead, I replace it with an Orange* Mountain Bike one I’ve found in the cupboard. I know that these are merely aesthetic, insignificant matters, but they are incremental to my morphing into a ‘proper cyclist’ and not somebody who has hijacked a child’s bike, and also made off with their water bottle and bike lock.
Cycling on the roads is still a real panic for me. I have absolutely no confidence riding amongst traffic, and I try to telepathically communicate my intentions to the other road users rather than venturing to take one hand off the handlebars to indicate a change of direction. I particularly struggle when approaching a certain busy T-junction at the bottom of the hill, when I am required to BRAKE WHILST CHANGING GEARS AND INDICATING! I’ve absolutely no idea how doing all three things together is possible, and so I opt for doing just one of them – the most important one. I decide to BRAKE. Nobody knows that I intend turning right when the traffic lights change to green, and equally, nobody knows that I’m in the most ridiculously high gear, and that I won’t even be able to pedal my bike when the lights do eventually change. Myself included.
I can feel my heart rate increasing as the seconds tick by, waiting anxiously for the red light to change to amber … to change to green. I need to be ahead of the game, here: lives are at stake! On this occasion, the drivers around me are forgiving. They hang back and allow me to miss my pedals. I crank my gears to the point where the bike jerks suddenly, and I can hear the chain being jolted roughly from one cog to another, and then another. Thankfully, I recover and I manage to half-raise an apologetic hand to the drivers around me, who have opted not to run me over on this occasion.
‘Well done, love,’ says Mum, sounding both surprised and relieved that I’ve arrived. As I sit drinking coffee on her sofa, I’m buzzing slightly, and feeling disproportionately chuffed with my little self, whilst my Trek bike waits patiently for me on the ground floor of her apartment block. I’m not sure if it’s the sudden shot of caffeine, the mini boost of endorphins now swimming around my body, or the aftershock of adrenalin I’m experiencing on realising that I have arrived at my mum’s house unscathed, and my bike is still in one piece. No doubt it’s a combination of all these things, together with a generous dose of YAY ME! Kick-ass, ‘This Girl Can’, sticking-two-fingers-up-to-my-Bastard-Chimp kind of vibe.
I finish my coffee and the pair of us (myself and Trek) cycle home exactly the same way we’ve come. I’m still terrified on approaching the dreaded T-junction, only this time, I don’t make the mistake of leaving myself in the highest possible gear: I think ahead and gently change down the gears without any offensive jerking movements before coming to a complete stop. I even manage to set off with the flow of traffic when the lights change to green, and I just about manage to raise my hand an inch above the handlebars to indicate that I will be turning left.
I’m still entirely focused on continuing my journey safely and navigating my way back home, but inside my head I can already feel the celebrations commencing at the prospect of successfully completing this, the second mini challenge I have set myself on my trusty bike. I can also feel the early onset of my Bastard Chimp sulking in a corner, as he will have to once again remain in his sad little box, having been unable to convince me that I’m indeed too shit to even try riding a bike. Oh, and I only stop twice to catch my breath whilst cycling up Slug Trail hill. Result!
My phone bings. It’s a text message from Mum: Have you arrived back home yet, Rach? I was watching you from my window. You didn’t look overly confident on the roads, love. Let me know when you’re back safely. Ma x
My confidence is dented ever so slightly. I may have looked like I could cycle straight up the back end of a Skoda or have a close shave with a Corsa at any given moment, but I made it home. It’s another mini victory in the small-fry book of minor achievements in my life – job done!
__________
* Orange are a well-known mountain biking manufacturer based in my home town of Halifax. They make real mountain bikes for real mountain bikers, and I can only apologise to them for any association with myself on two wheels.
18
THE HILL
CYCLING CHALLENGE #3: CAN I CYCLE UP A THREE-MILE HILL CLIMB?
ANSWER #3: I’M NOT SURE, BUT I’LL GIVE IT A GO.
There’s a bastard of a hill close to where we live. A little over three miles in length, it’s just found itself on my radar of ‘incremental arse-kicking mini cycling challenges’ in the continuum of progression I’m now on. What’s more, I feel to be on a roll, albeit a very small one.
I’m on rather a steep learning curve – we’re talking just over a week, thus far. But already I can feel that my confidence is on the up. I can tell that in facing my Bastard Chimp head-on, with his permanent goading and his incessant quest to belittle me and to destroy my self-worth, that I have discovered some new weaponry. I’m keen to continue challenging myself and to keep putting mini obstacles in my own way, because I know for certain that in doing so, I’m giving myself every possible chance of wrestling my self-esteem back from the unforgiving grip of my Bastard Chimp. He has – sadly – been able to take a firm hold of it since the recent loss of my running, but this is another way I’m discovering that I can slowly begin to regain control. And it feels good.
This challenge is simple enough: I can either cycle three miles up a very steep hill, or I can’t. What’s the worst that can happen? I’ll have to get off my bike and push it. And if I do, so fucking what? I decide to give it a whirl.
I look outside and the weather gods are not on my side, today. Thick, persistent rain is coming down in waves as I gaze out onto the sodden fields outside our kitchen window, and the branches of the trees look to be swaying heavily under the weight. It would be so easy to change my plans and to reschedule my ride to another, sunnier day. I haven’t had the experience of cycling in horrendous weather conditions yet, so this could make my third mini challenge even more dubious. How will the rain affect my control of the bike? I wonder. Will the roads be slippery? Will I lose control of the wheels and skid helplessly into the back end of a Calderdale Council recycling truck? Will I even be able to see where I’m riding, or will the rain obscure my vision, resulting in me unwittingly cycling into a ditch? I remind myself that the worst-case-possible-canal-submersion-scenario never happened on my bike ride to the gym, so perhaps my mind is once again getting ahead of itself with these outlandish ‘what ifs’. Thankfully, it helps to reduce the impact of this fearful ‘Bastard Chimp’ way of thinking.
Mercifully, I have some very basic waterproof kit to wear, courtesy of my very brief flirtation with cycling, back in 2010. I purchased my trusty Trek mountain bike during the winter months and so invested in a Gore-Tex windstopper jacket and some waterproof trousers at the same time. They smell slightly musty as I dig them out of the box in the damp cellar, and they’re a good two sizes too big for me now, but they’ll do.
Within seconds of leaving the house, I’m completely saturated. My Gore-Tex jacket is sodden, and I can feel large droplets of icy rain trickling down the back of my neck. Regardless, I head off in the direction of my goal for today: the hill. A ten-tonne truck thunders past me on the country lane by our house, but this time, I don’t panic like I did before. I feel undeniable palpitations as spray from the road whips up and around my face, but I hold my nerve and keep pedalling: my focus is already on today’s hill challenge.
Mentally, I prepare myself as I approach the hill. I settle in, pushing steadily and consistently in as high a gear as I can manage, enabling me to still have sufficient ‘torque’, this being the force I am applying through the pedals, whilst maintaining my ‘cadence’, the speed at which I turn the pedals. (See, who is this absolute cycling wanker I have become?) Digging my off-road trainers into my pedals, I push down hard. I breathe deeply as I continue to push, push, push down on them. I’m working harder now, and the wheels are turning slowly, but they’re still turning, nonetheless.
There are two blokes on skinny, light-framed road bikes just ahead of me on the hill. As I approach them, I’m suddenly aware that I don’t look like a real cyclist at all, but here I am, gate-crashing their party – and without wearing cleats (special cycling shoes that clip into the pedals). Embarrassingly, I overtake them. I don’t know whether to apologise as I grind my way past on my heavy Trek mountain bike, pushing down on the plastic pedals with my off-road trainers whilst wearing rather out-dated, and now completely saturated, waterproofs.
Once I’ve reached the top of the climb, I stand up on my pedals and lift my bum high in the air for the most incredible downhill section, and I feel a kind of elation that I haven’t experienced in a long time. YAYYYYYYY! I CAN FUCKING DO THIS! I shout to myself as the wind blows rain and snot sideways across my face. Such is the increase in my confidence, I even take one hand off the handle bars and wipe the snot from my top lip/chin area, which has been dangling there for approximately fifteen minutes.
Back at home, I strip out of my sodden clothing in the kitchen and I make myself a cup of hot, sweet tea before taking a moment to reflect on my mini YAY! moments from today:
•Successfully riding my bike in the pissing rain;
•Achieving my main goal and managing to ride my heavy Trek mountain bike up a three-mile hill climb;
•Unexpectedly overtaking two road cyclists on the aforementioned hill climb;
•Standing up on my pedals for the downhill section;
•Managing to take one hand off my handle bars (albeit briefly) to wipe snot from my face;
•Almost – almost – beginning to feel like a real cyclist.
This, my friends, is a breakthrough.
19
DISCOMFORT
During this part of the treatment, you will begin to practise a change in behaviour that will result in less anxiety and a better quality of life in the long term. This is the practical application of the CBT model, and this is where you will spend the most time and energy during treatment.
Working through the BDD recovery programme is about to become significantly more challenging. I’m now entering the practical phase of treatment, where I will start to put into practice all that I’ve learned so far. Understanding the theory behind this model of treating body dysmorphia has been easy enough up to this point: I can grasp the general concepts, and I have faced up to the many thoughts and beliefs which may have led me to this place, thinking back to my sedentary teenage self, and the ‘me’ I came face-to-face with in the mirror every single day, with my delinquent unfit-for-purpose young body. Contrasting her with the Rachel I morphed myself into whilst at university – blonder and a few stone lighter, but with asymmetrical breasts and the paranoia of being judged and labelled as FLAWED. The breast reduction surgery remedied one problem, but did it inadvertently create another? I never stopped to consider my quest for perfection had to end somewhere. Ironically, I always said – and I still believe – that breast surgery was the best decision for me to make at the time. I could wear a fitted T-shirt and a normal bra without fear of anxiety taking over my vulnerable nineteen-year-old mind, but perhaps it opened the floodgates to an endless search for perfection which I would never be able to attain.
I don’t know the answer.
Perhaps more damaging for me back then was the difference I felt my change in appearance made in my everyday life. From being all but invisible as a slightly overweight teen, my relatively modest physical transformation seemed to result in a disproportionately large shift in the way people responded to me. In hindsight, this is likely to have been more my own perception than reality, but the messages flooded my mind that to be accepted, I needed to be something far away from my invisible, physically flawed seventeen-year-old self. I believe this is where my futile quest began – I simply had no idea that I would end up here.
So, I now understand where body dysmorphia may have come from, and – more importantly – I know with absolute certainty that my handling of BDD up to this point has not helped me. In fact, I’ve only made the condition worse. I didn’t realise how my avoidance and reassurance-seeking behaviours became so deeply entrenched, and how counter-intuitive they were. Rather than helping me, these behaviours only deepened the grooves of body dysmorphia in my mind, prolonging my misery in the long term. Discovering that running was one of my most successful avoidance techniques was akin to the early Greek philosophers, who worked out that the earth was round – fanciful and incredulous, but somehow entirely believable.*
I remember hearing the phrase ‘Exposure Therapy’ during my very first video chat with Dr G, after I’d been accepted onto the programme. Hearing the words sent a shudder down my spine, as there was no doubt in my mind what this meant. According to the dictionary definition, the word ‘exposure’ means ‘the state of having no protection from something harmful’. A suggested synonym for the word is ‘vulnerability’. Becoming vulnerable. That’s what I will be required to do as part of this therapy: I will have to make myself become vulnerable, which goes against our innate human instinct. So, this is where I’m at – I’m about to purposefully make myself EVEN MORE vulnerable.
I’m filling out my BDD diary as normal, only I’m now having to write about my selected ‘exposure therapy’ challenges. Where was I? What specific exposure therapy did I choose to confront? What happened? How did I feel? But I feel ridiculous. These things I’m about to ‘expose myself’ to are ridiculous – or they would be to most people. I fill out my diary and I feel ashamed and embarrassed, but I know that I must do it. It’s the only thing I have left to try and tackle this beast. My online ‘exposure therapy’ (or ‘ET’) diary looks like this:
ET situation 1: 6:45 a.m. – I wake up after a disturbed night’s sleep, and I’m worrying about having bags/dark circles under my (probably bloodshot) eyes, and looking tired (we’ve been here before, haven’t we?).
Exposure therapy: I won’t reach for the mirror on my bedside table, or practise caking multiple layers of concealer underneath my eyes before I’ve even woken up properly. Instead, I lie still and I breathe, imagining the Good Cop SWAT team are busy at work, identifying interpretation traps, whilst I’m here doing my job: starving my Bastard Chimp of oxygen, and refusing to play his futile games. I breathe in slowly, and then back out again. In, and out – that’s as much as I can do.
ET situation 2: 7:05 a.m. – I get up and head downstairs, but I don’t go straight into the bathroom, like normal. I’m going to take Tilly to school this morning WITHOUT having a shower and WITHOUT washing my hair. I feel awkward, uncomfortable and unclean, but it’s a biggie, and I know that Dr G will be pleased with me if I can do this. I comb my hair, making a parting down the middle, which I then turn into two French plaits. I’m convinced that I can feel a layer of grease on my hair that would rival any respectable chipshop fryer, and my skin feels kind of crawly. I can only face going out of the house with my hair tied back, and
then wearing a baseball cap, which I realise could be interpreted as an attempt to disguise my ‘flaw’, but hey, it’s a start!
ET situation 3: 8:45 a.m. – Me and Tills walk out of our front door and past my neighbour, who is standing in her dressing gown and slippers on the doorstep. ‘Morning!’ my chirpy neighbour says as she picks up her red-topped bottle of milk. ‘Morning, Nora!’ we say back. I wonder if she can tell that I haven’t had a shower OR washed my hair today. Does she think I’m completely gross? oh jesus, how embarrassing! Maybe she thinks I’m unwell? Should I go back and explain why I look like this, so she won’t worry about me?
BUT WAIT! My Good Cop SWAT team are on guard and they release a flare, warning me of an imminent threat: INTERPRETATION TRAP! I realise that I’m MIND-READING, and I have absolutely no grounds for presuming Nora is thinking either of those things. Perhaps she’s thinking about making herself a cup of tea with her fresh pint of milk from the doorstep, and possibly having some cornflakes? Or maybe she isn’t thinking about anything at all? I breathe a sigh of relief, and we head off to school in the car.
ET situation 4: 8:54 a. m. – We park up outside Tilly’s school and I’m momentarily consumed with anxiety. ‘Can we get out of the car, Mum?’ Tilly asks, as we’ve been pulled up with the engine turned off for more than sixty seconds, but it feels much longer than that. ‘Oh, er, yeah, sure … Hey, this is your favourite song, Tills. Shall we wait until it’s finished?’ I say, desperately trying to delay facing the playground mums for as long as I possibly can.
A Midlife Cyclist Page 10