Mental Stress - Appalachian Trail

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#1

Thru hikers of the AT…Can you’all give some helpful tips on how to deal with the Mental Strain of doing a thru-hike…Thanks…

Unk

#2

remember that you’re there to have FUN

if it rains–play in it

if its muddy–wrestle in it

if its sunny–lay on a rock and take a nap

if its windy–make a kite

take pictures write (if you can im not good at it) sing on top of a mountain try hobo fishing enjoy yourself

have fun!!!

and if it gets you down, remember what Marv Levy, coach of the Buffalo Bills used to say to his players

Is there anywhere you’d rather be than right here, right now? Jump around in a huddle and headbutt people . I promise it will get you hyped.

big boy

#3

Be silly, say silly things, think silly things,

don’t look at your guidbook unless you need to

laugh at anything remotely funny

laugh at anything bad

laugh at everything

Grey Fox

#4

Eat a lot and don’t push the mileage.

I think a HUGE source of mental demoralization has a physical cause: your hungry, tired body injects “Let’s quit!” thoughts into your mind through some secret back channel.

It’s really weird. You get a big meal and a rest and suddenly your mental outlook changes. The world seems brighter, all the bad thoughts go away, and you’re ready to go on.

So eat a lot and don’t push the mileage.

Eric

#5

Don’t start out thinking about making it to Katahdin. Take your time, and enjoy every day. If you feel like staying an extra day in town, or a short mileage day, then do it. If you feel like challenging yourself and putting in a long day, then do it. If you feel like getting off the trail, give your decision at least 24 hours, then do it. Figure out what you want your hike to be, then hike that way. Enjoy yourself.

TANK

#6

Don’t give yourself deadlines of when to be finished or you’ll feel rushed. Don’t tell people you’ll meet them at a certain place on a certain date. Give them an estimate, but if they want to meet you, make their schedule meet yours, not the other way around.:girl

Xena

#7

Similar to what’s been said, I started to enjoy my hike the most once I became a lazy hiker, i.e., sleeping, eating and resting whenever I felt like it.
Like Eric said, and not just eating but proper nutrition plays a role.
Taking a zero day in a shelter helps.
It’s a tough question to answer, everybody’s a little different when it comes to mental stresses. It’s tough to beat, at least it was for me. I never would have guessed that the mental climbs would be harder to get over than the Georgia ones.

0101

#8

When I am up all night doing relational statistical analyses, I understand the term “mental strain”.

On the trail, however, anything to do with that term is 100% self-inflicted. In fact, my work is self-inflicted too, I suppose, so maybe most mental strain is self-inflicted on or off the trail.

My suggestion is to not put yourself through it. Take things as they come. Don’t EVER look at elevation profiles. LET IT GO MAN!

Tha Wookie

#9

scholar 04/05 says she goes for a walk and everything just clears up. her entry on 1/15/05 is just a perfect example of someone under strain and taking a little stroll.

blue jay Le Fey suggested i should just go ahead and start walking.

it was nice meeting both of them on trail.

burn

#10

Many of us seek that inner peace. Those of us that find it, find it one minute, one hour, one day at a time.

The old ugly mental stress/emotional strain always rears his or her ugly head up over and over again and we have to continue to shoot him or her back down, theyby achieving another brief and fleeting moment of inner peace.

Mental stress is self induced. It is the way we look at things, we can control it. Anxiety (mental stress/strain) is put inside us naturally to help us survive. And it does. But it is also self defeating if we don’t recognize it for what it is and deal with it in an appropriate fashion.

The experts all pretty much agree that the best thing to relieve stress is exercise. So if you feel stressed, hike an extra 10 miles----then you will be so dead tired, hungry, etc that the stress will not matter any more. All that will matter is the fact that you are tired and hungry.

The experts also agree that another thing to relieve stress is to stay busy, so do that by hiking, writing, exploring, talking, etc.

I agree with the “let it go” statements made by others above, but sometimes that is easier said than done.

I find that “STEP” works for me, S - stay busy, T - take vitimins, E - Exercise, and P - Pray.

So your stress is self induced. Study it, read up on it, learn from it. And above all learn to control it, and not let it control you.

Hope this helps.

BTW. Burn, that lantern is still burning there on the bottom of the lake where I acidently lost it several years ago. I will blow the lantern out, if you decrease the size of that fish you caught…LOL

And BTW, laughter is good medicine.

See you out there.:cheers

Maintain

#11

What mental stress? There is absolutely NO mental stress on the AT. You can wake up when you want, walk when you want, stop when you want, sleep when you want, listen to waterfalls and birds when you want…

Mental stress is the crap that goes out here in the numbered world. Mental stress is dealing with corporations, including our (mis)Government that view money as higher value than people, mental stress is living the world when you understand that neither of the two major parties give a crap about you or your life, mental stress is going to a meaningless job, mental stress is coming home from that meaningless job to plunk your butt in front of a TV and realize that your personal life also has no meaning…

How can walking with nature and living as we should POSSIBLY be stressful. The only people who get stressed on the AT are the people that cannot let go of the numbered world and bring their little spreadsheets out into the woods. The only stressed people are those that try to control the uncontrollable.

As it has been said… lose your numbered self in the woods… forget thinking you HAVE to walk a certain number of miles, forget elevation profiles… let nature seduce you. Remember being in the woods is more real than living in the plastic materialistic numbered world…

ASWAH

Aswah

#12

Have as many home problems resolved as you can before you go and then remember how lucky you are. Everyday!!!

Virginian

#13

“I agree with the “let it go” statements made by others above, but sometimes that is easier said than done.”

I respectfully disagree. Letting go is the easiest thing you ever have to do in your entire life. Holding on and hauling that self-induced pain is the hard thing to do.

You can practice it by doing this. Pick up a stick (hard part). Then hold it out 90 degrees to your body (also hard). Open your hand (easy). There. You did it.

Tha Wookie

#14

Having fun all the time is a good theory but not very practical. You won’t have fun everyday.

The best advice I got about thru-hiking came from the gear head at the local outfitter. The morning I was to leave for Georgia, I told him that I was just going to go have a good time. He reminded me that if that is my mental attitude I probably wouldn’t finish. And I think that is true.

Be thankful for our Government and Country. If you want to be a hiker bum, you can. If you want to work to make the world a better place, to make a differance, you have that choice too.

God bless America.

Officer Taco

#15

The grass is always greener…

Hunger is also self induced and comes from within…

Let go of your hunger, just don’t pay it any mind, and see what happens to you and your body over time…

If it is so easy to let go, why are mental clinics so full of people having problems dealing with stress and anxiety?

Why are there so many anti-depressant medications on the market if it is so “easy”?

So all things from within…love, hunger, thirst, rage, depression, anxiety…are not so easy to deal with at all unless you’re from another planet.

Try and tell a 14 year old young girl that she is not in love with her boyfriend, that what she is feeling is not “love” at all and that she should “let it go” and that it is easy to “let it go”.

Once again, it is not as easy to “let it go” as some people say. If you think it is you should do the following:

Pick up a 20 pound anvil with both hands (easy), raise it directly above and hold it directly above your head (easy), now “let it go”. Now please tell me how easy it was to “let it go”.

Also consider the following story: a young AT hiker was hiking down a ledge and slipped falling over the side. He grabbed a small tree growing out of the side of the cliff. It was clearly a 100 ft or more of a fall to the bottom and he could not reach the top of the ledge. Clearly he was in trouble. He yells and yells for help and prays. After praying and yelling for God to help him, a big booming voice descends down upon him saying “My son, I will help you but you first must have absolute faith in me. Do you place your trust in me and have absolute faith in me?” The young hiker said “Yes, God, I have absolute faith and trust in you”. Upon saying that, the voice responded “Let go of the tree”. A long silence passes and after a great long while, a voice from just over the edge of the ledge says “Is anybody else up there?”

So Unk, I will say this to you, “It is not easy to let it go”. Those who say it is, are not experiencing what you are feeling. They are not there in your shoes. It is so easy to stand back and say “let it go”. But it’s not easy for the one feeling the pain and the pressure.

May luck and joy and happiness be yours and may you find them and the peace you are seeking.

See you out there. :cheers

Maintain

#16

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

god bless the frikkin u. s. of aye brother.

milo

#17

Lifestyle and the social expectations that go along with it are big contributors to stress leading to unhappiness.

It is and isn’t so easy to let go of stressors. For some, like me, that letting go mean’t leaving a socially “ideal” situation, great job in a professionally responsible position with a major company working on the front lines of journalism, which just happened to not fit my idea of “ideal.”

Some people don’t even know that they have the option of letting go of stress. Some people know, but cannot do anything about it except medicate to make their minds fit the lives they have chosen and can’t abandon.

I agree with both Tha Wookie and Taco (believe it or not!): Letting go is unbelievably simple. But you have to KNOW you CAN let go, you have to know HOW to let go. And we do live in an extraordinary place, mostly through a happy accident of history and birth. We can choose to let go. Or not. Or we can medicate. Or we can do something about our stress and change our lives to fit better with our spirits.

Adolescent flag waving aside, the current administration is just a passing flavor in Washington, but our national values endure beyond whatever doofi occupy the buildings in Washington. Our values are purpose-built for self actualization: Life, liberty and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. Noone needs to settle for a situatioin that makes them miserable, but first they have to have the courage to make the changes to allow happiness.

People who don’t know they can choose to be happy are perfectly suited to be manipulated and taken advantage of by bad leadership and greedy corporate structures, including drug companies who sell the psycho-social medications (those that make you fit better into a disturbing lifestyle).

Me, I just like to walk. I can’t solve everyone’s problems, I can’t enlighten everyone. Happiness starts inside all of us. Letting go of control issues and knowing which ones to let go of is critical for happiness, both in the numbered world, like Aswah calls it, and on the Trail. This is just IMHO. See you out there! :cheers

Tyger

#18

How do you deal with mental strain?

By not reading this thread. Ha, ha, ha.

BTW, letting go can be easy or hard. It depends on what you’re holding, duh!!!

Kineo Kid

#19

Dear Unk,

I’m going to take your question literally.

We have in our lives positive stress and negative stress.

Positive stress is defined as stress which, once endured and with some time allowed for recovery and restoration, strengthens us. Consider, for example, with respect to the body, weightlifting, or running, or hiking. Ultimately, these activities strenghten us. Similarly, other activities strengthen the mind and spirit.

Negative stress is defined as stress which, once we experience it, it tends to weaken or harm us. Consider, for example, with respect to the body, the stress of extreme cold, or starvation, or even an overextertion of some kind which causes a break or tear in a bone or muscle. The stress of disease also applies here. Similarly, other activities, or events, weaken the mind and spirit.

You get the idea, I’m sure.

With respect to mental stress, I think the place to start, is to realize where your mental stress is coming from, or what is causing it.

Once you know the cause, you have choices. You can either deal with the problem directly in order to rectify it (ie, change it); or remove yourself physically from the situation prompting it; or change how you think about it.

It is in the third category, changing how you think about it, where the concept of “letting it go” comes into play.

Now, assuming you are basically healthy in body, mind and spirit, all of the above options should be open to you.

Okay, so let us assume you are hiking, and experiencing mental stress. Where is it coming from? Answer that question, and employ one of your three strategies, as described above.

And, consider this, take it into consideration:

We’ve all grown up in a society which has bombarded and inculcated us with various values and beliefs. Many of them, if not most, have been, intentionally or otherwise, misleading, and generally not helpful or conducive to promoting a peaceful mind.

Rather, the societal environment, urges the minds of its citizens to be constantly busy, and concerned, in large part, with unimportant things.

Compounding the problem is that, not only does our society feed its members a set of values and beliefs which are primarily false (consider television, for example: consider what they are attempting to sell you; consider the plots of the stories, and the personal interactions of the characters–their manners, interactions, values, beliefs, what they consider important); but, for the most part, it fails to provide any meaningful, or useful ways and means for resolving problems and difficulties.

Rather, in endless, various, scenarios, the proposed analytical and assment methods, and the proposed solutions arrived at, are basically unrealistic and unworkable, with the values and reasonng behind them, or set forth in them, warped beyond all reason.

So, we enter the forest with all of this incorporated into our thinking. Or, at least, stored somewhere in the back of our minds of infinite capacity, as background information.

In view of all this, once realizing it, the individiual has a responsibilty, a duty, to his or her self, to adjust his or her thinking.

Again, where is the problem coming from?

And how can I resolve it? The answer, remains the same: Deal with it directly (ie, change it), remove myself from the situation, or change the way I think about it.

Is this easy?

Ultimately, yes, once the concepts are absorbed.

Does it take a long time?

No. Just let the ideas settle in. And discover that, in making the transition mentally and spiritually, there is often a great deal of relief experienced. This, in part, from the realization that there exists a clear path for positive resolution of nearly all life issues, concerns and problems.

And, if it gets really bad, and anxiety temporarily overwhelms, try this one.

Lie down, stretch out, extend your arms and legs out, take slow deep breaths, and focus on the wonder of your breathing.

And the wonder of yourself.

That you are alive.

And part of everything else that is alive.

Sincerely–Conan.

Conan…

#20

This thread is stressful. Most of you are dividers, not uniters.

We need someone to LEAD.:lol

Butt Volcano