Could you tell me a time when you felt in control?

My life has been a serious of ups and downs, having a baby at 18 and having to raise him as a single parent, attachment issues leading to a serious of failed and toxic relationships, an all or nothing approach to everything I did leading to extreme highs and extreme lows.

My need for feeling in control over my own life gave me the motivation to push myself hard, attaching my self esteem to accomplishing things. Through this I managed to get a masters degree, open my own clinic, competed at 5 different sports - road racing , cyclocross , bodybuilding , powerlifting and rowing. I would move on from one after achieving something in that sport, I would then have a bout of hopelessness and depression thinking ‘is that it now’ or ‘I won’t be important anymore’. Training would go out of the window and reckless habits and behaviours would take its place. Until I decided on the next goal then I was back in the zone. But it was like an addiction , whereby I needed to push myself and hurt myself in order to feel like I was in control of something.

This was hit on the head in the first lockdown when gyms closed and it was impossible to train for anything as nothing was happening anyway. As time went by I realised that I quite enjoyed the feeling of not putting pressure on myself and decided to seek the help of a naturopath to help me get on top of my diet. Little did I know that this would change my life as we talked about what I really wanted out of life. The word that kept coming up was ‘balance’.

I didn’t want to be all or nothing, high or low , tying my self worth to achieving something. It was a knife edge for me , quite black and white , I was either succeeding or I was failing. As I started to look deeper I started to understand that what I wanted from my life was balance, to be fit and healthy, and to spend more time in nature.

This lead to me finding wild swimming and increase my horizons with hiking which has helped me in so many ways. The cold water immersion has significant effects on the nervous system and has helped my moods to stabilise and give me a better quality of life overall. Now I train in the gym just to train , to be healthy. I don’t push myself beyond my limits or have the negative thought process that I must make myself suffer to feel in control. The water is my therapy now and it will never not be a part of my life. I feel connected to myself, I have better boundaries and I finally feel in control.