#WorldMentalHealthDay

My name is Gabby and I struggle with Anxiety and Depression.

I have for the past 2 years and during my time as a professional athlete I realised that I could not cope standing on the start line any longer; with anxiety sitting tightly on one side of me and depression numbing my competitive sensations. So that when I lined up on the start line I was a just a hollow shell of confusion.

I retired 2 years ago now part way through my season after realising that being an athlete was just enabling my little black clouds and demons to grow from strength to strength. Constantly doubting me and making my mind wonder whether I was actually capable of racing and generally being a confident society functioning person.

To begin with I did not know what was wrong with me. Why was I feeling insecure, not confident in my abilities? Why did I have little black clouds fogging my judgement? Why did I cry to myself? Why was I suddenly afraid to communicate and to go out into the world and face new experiences? I had always been so capable. Why now was this happening to me?

Depression to me is a dark, lost, lonely and unexplainable feeling that I like to think of as a dark cloud that can just creep up and weigh you down and take hold without you even giving much thought to it. And before you know it you are on some heavy weighted roller coaster, where some days you are higher and other days you are low and then very low in a hazy cloud of fog. And the days where you are in a cloud it is hard to even explain why and what you are even feeling aside from the fact that if someone asks you if you are ok then you feel like crying. Sometimes it just feels like you are in some self-pity cloud and you feel that you should punish yourself for feeling like this. My life is great in reality. I have the man of my dreams, a loving family and things are generally good in life. This is the tale of my wandering mind. Sometimes it will be lost and other days it will be found and on a happy path.

Well, from my experience I have to say depression and anxiety does not choose us or pick us out. It can just creep up and pull us down but it is the learning to accept it and talk about it that makes us strong and capable individuals. It makes us individuals that have so much experience and empathy for ourselves and other people. Talking about my struggle was one of the strongest things I ever did. Yes I was exceedingly anxious thinking about sharing my story but what I realise now is that I was not alone and am not alone. My story was able to help other people and in helping myself and other people we can create one big network that understands and can accept that this struggle is OK and that it can only make us stronger and more resilient. Sharing my feelings was one of the strongest things I did.

Having anxiety and depression allowed me to start appreciating that doing exactly what I want to in life is important. I realised that life is too short to question whether or not to do something or put things off. I now always try to live in the present. I choose to be mindful of the things around me and to appreciate even the simplest things like standing in an open space in nature just to be able to listen and feel and to forget those dark clouds that often drift away when I am mindful. The anxiety starts to dissipate and for that time I am again confident and capable when surrounded by nature or just by meditating or listening to music.

I have also accepted that no one is perfect and that it is all our imperfections that makes us unique and special and interesting. Our lives are about making mistakes and learning from them. Every mistake is ok because it allows our journey to grow and shapes the paths we choose to follow. Of course life does not always go to plan. Mine sure did not- it did not take me down the path I dreamed of. The path of ending my athletic career on a big Win and a high. The beauty of following an unknown path is that you can write your own story and follow that path that branches off towards an unknown but beautiful destination. Each new journey can be like a chapter in a book. You are not ending but instead just starting a new part of the journey a continued story in your book of life. A semi colon like my sports psychologist explained to me; not a full stop. So since my struggle 2 years ago I am very much the semi colon but that is OK. I am proud of this.

So, to end this piece I want to say that I believe that you should always follow your own path and be free to create your own story. Always be honest to yourself and love what you do. Never give in to other people’s expectations because only you can make the right changes and follow the right path for your own happiness. Every day I can choose to start writing a new chapter in my book of life!

And I always remember that what makes one person happy doesn’t make everyone happy. Always do what feels right for you. Life can be hard so we should learn to love ourselves and be kind to ourselves.

I am a big believer that things happen for a reason and that ultimately things will also work out for the best it’s just at the time it may not seem that way. But I believe things do get better and with belief, mindfulness and people to talk to life can be easier.

Just believe and follow your heart.

Retirement- From the athletes perspective

Retirement is a big word. Retirement is a huge decision. Retirement is a big life change.

I wanted to talk about my experience of ‘retiring’ from professional cycling. I feel that it is rather an untouched subject. You never hear of the genuine struggle. Most of the time you assume that the transition out of being a professional athlete is easy and simple and you just slot into a new life identity and can happily move on to a whole new chapter of life.
This is of course what I would hope but the reality is that retirement is very hard.

Making the decision to ‘retire’ was a challenge in itself and I feel that you really do need support around you. For the few months leading up to my decision I was very unsure of whether I was truly making the right decision. After all cycling was pretty much what I had known for the biggest part of life and it had been my passion and had driven me to become the person I am today. So the idea of creating a new identity was exceedingly scary. It is unknown and intimidating, especially coupled with my struggles with anxiety and depression. My mind likes to play tricks on me and tell me that I am making a big mistake and that I should just continue because that is all I know and it is ‘my identity’ and without that I am nothing. My mind would tell me that retiring will make me a worthless, insecure person.

In the days leading up to making my retirement public I became incredibly nervous and had a never ending voice in my head questioning me and confusing me. I knew that cycling as a career for me was over and that to continue to be a happy, confident person I needed to create a new path for my life to follow. What this path would be I did not know and that was for sure the scary part that made me so hesitant. Going into the unknown is always daunting and having a mind that constantly makes you feel unconfident and anxious is tough and creates a negative mindset that makes change and adventure hard.
My mind would tell me that I could just continue racing and that on the good days I could be on the podium and could still be one of the best women in the world and the days where I was struggling I could be average and that it would be ok and that I could continue to ride the emotional roller coaster and ignore the deep routed issues.

Once I made my decision public I felt a huge relief. Making the announcement meant there was no going back and that it was ‘official’. Writing my career story and sharing my struggles openly was extremely cathartic and therapeutic in a way. Going deep into my mind and remembering the good times, the struggles, the adventure, the wonderful people I had met and the journey gave me some pride and overall I was able to say I feel proud of what I achieved and the memories made me smile. Even though I may never have achieved my ultimate dreams I had worked hard and represented in the best way I could and got the best out of myself.

Finding your ‘identity’ and purpose again takes time and I for sure have not fully found mine. The journey to finding this takes time and when I finally find mine I will write about it! I am each day becoming more comfortable with myself and my new journey which is going to be very different to my past!

I think the biggest change is my lifestyle. Being a professional athlete allows for a more relaxed approach. Your main job is to get your training for the day completed. When you decide to complete your workout is up to you. Diet is a big part of being a professional- when to eat and what to eat to keep lean, fuelled and fit. Food consumed was a huge part of my mind. Some days food could be an evil presence and other days it would be a happy place. The mind of an athlete surrounding food can be strange. Food can become a strong variable to control, and having that control over it can feel good. That hungry feeling before bed can feel rewarding in the strangest of ways. Now that I am no longer a professional athlete I can become less strict on my foods however with not exercising strenuously to a plan everyday I feel that I only need to eat if I have done something to deserve it. My mind tells me that if I have not done a big training session then I do not deserve to indulge in food. I am trying hard to remove this negative thought so that I can have a more normal relationship with food- because ultimately I love food!

Leaving the athlete lifestyle and moving towards a more 9-5 lifestyle is also something that will take me a lot to get used to. Not having the huge flexibility of an athletes schedule is also daunting! I imagine the feeling like being a free bird and then being caged and restricted! I am of course excited to follow a new path and am looking forward to new challenges and new ways of feeling accomplished and fulfilled. Ways of feeling good about myself without the pressure of results and podiums.

One thing I have realised now that I have stepped away is that it really does not matter where you finish in a race. As long as you have given it your all. I realise that most people who are fans of the riders and sport are just excited to see the rider in the race. And that finishing 6th in a UCI Belgium race for example is great and not something to be discouraged or disappointed by; the fact that you are there competing at that level is an achievement in itself! I have much more perspective now that I am out of the competitive side of the sport. I wish that I had this when I was competing. It is so easy to get carried away by all the pressures and punish yourself for under-performing in your eyes.
One moment I will always remember is my sheer dissappointment in placing 6th position in Superprestige Cyclocross race in Belgium. The races are so tough in Belgium and the competition is high and so now when I look back I realise how good that performance was on that day and I wonder why I was so upset and down on myself. Of course you can always strive to be better and faster but the reality is that the performance to the onlooker was respectable and nothing to be ashamed of! I wish I had that perspective in the last few seasons of my career.

I still of course have moments when I wish I was still racing and my mind will tell me that I could still be at the top. And when I watch the races I would have been in I still have weird feelings and sometimes I can’t always watch the race because it is too hard for me at this moment. I know that the process of ‘transitioning’ out of the sport will take time and the athlete that will always be inside me will always try and push me. And I endeavour to continue to push myself and feed my inner athlete!

I am still at the beginning of my new chapter and am not going to pretend that retirement is a glorious easy thing to do and that you just slip into a new identity because from my experience you don’t and it is a struggle and it is meant to be a search for the new ‘you’ because ultimately a new adventure is meant to be a process and discovering the new path is a journey of its own and one that should hopefully be rewarding and lead to new happiness.

‘Cheers’ to my new chapter and finding my way along a new path of adventure!

“Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing whats going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity…” Gilda Radner

Life is a challenge its not meant to be easy

Our lives are full challenges and choices and as we get older and wiser we learn what stress is and we learn about worrying. Life becomes more of an uncertain journey that can start to way heavier on our minds. We have more expectations of what we think life should be and what we should achieve before a certain time. The path we are following can sometimes be bumpy and unexpected.

But really life is one huge adventure and really is what we make it to be. It can be whatever adventure we want it to be. I like to think of life as chapters of a book. I also visualise life as a back packing journey. In my mind it is very vivid. I am trekking through lush plantations, hiking up mountains, wandering through jungles and discovering magical hidden islands in tropical surroundings. Each new adventure I encounter is a new challenge and a new opportunity. It is a new chapter for my book of life and it is a new experience that will forever shape me. The backpack in my daydream contains all my life skills and will often get weighed down by stress and everyday expectations.

Not everything in my mind is a tropical paradise however and as I have become a more mature wiser version of myself I have found that I have been struggling with anxiety and depression. Some days this can become rather crushing. In this blog post I wanted to talk about living with anxiety and depression.

I think the hardest part I find about suffering with anxiety and depression is that I cant really explain exactly why I feel like this. Sometimes it makes me angry. I don’t want to feel like this. I never used to feel like this. My life in general is great. I am happy, I have a loving family, lovely friends and the best husband. So why cant I control these feelings? I understand how my mind likes to make me feel and so I really try to make a concerted effort to feed my mind with things that I know will not feed the anxiety and depression. Some days I feel I have to attain a certain level to be able to feel accomplished in myself and not useless and if I don’t then I put so much pressure on the next day being better and then this pressure just feeds my negative feelings.

In the last 6 months I have progressively felt more and more anxious about doing everyday tasks. Some days just going out of the house and going to the store has felt like a win to me. These feelings of anxiety can be so consuming that they make me feel like I am not a capable person. I know that I am but my mind tries to play games with me and in so doing makes me lack so much confidence. I am a social person and always have been but recently I find I shy away from being so. I have to really make an effort to get myself out there. Once I am with friends I am ok and can let the ‘old Gabby’ appear and it feels like my dark cloud has dispersed above me.

Recently everyday has weighed me down a little more. Everyday I feel like I am on the start line of a race waiting for the gun to go off except it never does. The anxiety just lingers and churns in my stomach and there has been little release from it. It means that a lot of my day is spent daydreaming in a haze and that I am slower to think.

Some days I have not wanted to get out of bed and some days I have wished I was sick so that I had an excuse to actually stay in bed. I know this is wrong. I know this is the depression talking and I am determined not to allow it to consume me.

 

It upsets me that I feel like this. I don’t want to and I am making positive steps to make sure that I can feel free again. I am not choosing to feel like this. I am definitely making head way in how I feel and I know that my new life change is a huge step in the right direction. It is something I look forward to and am proud of myself for doing. I know I will get through this and come out the other side even better for this. This will make me a stronger person. And I won’t eventually have to conceal my feelings so much and try to pretend that most days everything is Ok because one day they will become less and less. And one day I will be able to be free of excessive anxiety and be able to leave my dark cloud behind.

 

“Happiness is a journey not a destination”

 

Choose to be Happy

Why do we get up everyday and face the same routine daily?

The monotonous daily grind that can slowly wear us down until it is just a habit and never ending cycle that we can’t even seek to change.

Why do we settle? When all settling does is not allow us to grow and diversify and grow our minds and allow us to dream big.

Where am I going with this rambling piece?

Over the past 2 years I have truly realised that you really should always do what really makes you happy. Life is too short to question whether or not to do something or put things off for another day. How long do we all really have on this world? We will never know. But one thing I do know is that living your life with passion and desire to do or be something is important. Always following a path that makes you happy and fulfilled is key. Life is about making mistakes and learning from them. No one is perfect and it is the imperfections that makes that person unique and special. Sometimes life does not go the way we planned. It may not take you down the path you imagined but the beauty of following an unknown path is that you can write your own story and follow that path that branches off towards an unknown but beautiful destination. Each new journey can be like a chapter in a book. You are not ending but instead just starting a new part of the journey a continued story in your book of life. A semi colon like my sports psychologist explained to me; not a full stop.

Quite often it is not until you find yourself in a uncomfortable place in which you are not used to feeling and a place where you can’t even explain why you feel this way that you start to re-evaluate life and what truly makes you happy and that life is too short to not change your path to make these feelings become a small shadow in the distance.

Depression is one of these feelings. This dark, lost, lonely and unexplainable feeling that I like to think of as a dark cloud can just creep up and weigh you down and take hold without you even giving much thought to it. And before you know it you are on some heavy weighted roller coaster, where some days you are higher and other days you are low and then very low in a hazy cloud of fog. And the days where you are in a cloud it is hard to even explain why and what you are even feeling aside from the fact that if someone asks you if you are ok then you feel like crying. Sometimes it just feels like you are in some self pity cloud and you feel that you should punish yourself for feeling like this. My life is great in reality. I have the man of my dreams, a loving family and things are generally good in life. This is the tale of my wandering mind. Sometimes it will be lost and other days it will be found and on a happy path.

Unfortunately trying to explain depression to most people is hard. Because it is not something physical and people can’t see it so therefore if you can’t see it then you must be ok. Because in most people’s minds if it’s not initially visible then it is not something worth worrying about. That is why mental health issues are so hard to open up about. It is a very taboo subject because it is so hard for people to understand or even want to understand.

I am not ashamed to express or talk about my feelings of depression. I want to speak out about it so there is more awareness about it especially in professional sport. It is more common than you think. It can creep up in many forms. Disappointment can trigger the feelings and being in an environment where it feels like everything you do is judged and watched can just exaggerate the feelings and sometimes make it harder to escape.

I have learnt that most of the time it really does not matter what you do in your life there will always be people who judge or disagree. But I realise now that as long as you live your life the way you want and the way that makes you happy then it really does not matter what anyone else thinks. Surrounding yourself with positive people and staying away from negative people is important. Negative people are just a drain.

You should always follow your own path and be free to create your own story. Always be honest to yourself and love what you do. Never give in to other people’s expectations because only you can make the right changes and follow the right path for your own happiness.

And after all what is life without true happiness? What is life without a story and new chapters to create?

What makes one person happy doesn’t make everyone happy. Always do what feels right for you. Life can be hard so we should learn to love ourselves and be kind to ourselves.

I am a big believer that things happen for a reason and that ultimately things will also work out for the best it’s just at the time it may not seem that way.

Just believe and follow your heart.

I saw this on a coffee shop wall in Austin, Texas and I thought it was rather fitting. I had just finished my phone call with my sports psychologist and my life has made some big changes recently and a lot of it has felt a little scary and unknown and just seeing this made me smile. I am a big believer in the thought that things will always work out they way they are meant to. Life is a big journey of change and adventure.

Follow Your Heart.

During my career as a professional athlete I learnt many things from my journey and experiences…

A few things I learnt along the way:

• Always stay true to yourself. Be yourself.

• Stay humble and remember the early days of racing.

• Smile and be happy.

• Give the time to chat to people. Be approachable.

• Inspire.

• Be an encourager.

• Don’t judge.

• You don’t have to Win everything to be successful.

• Selfishness and self-interest are 2 different things.

• Life will change. Don’t obsess too much about what is happening right now.

• Get over control issues about your life direction. Follow your own path.

• Believe in yourself and dream big!

• Life can be hard so learn to love yourself and be kind to yourself.

• Follow your heart.

Live Your Dream…Journey, Advenure, Explore. 

 

Closing a chapter and starting a new. Into the unknown.

Life changes, new stories are written and challenges are faced.

I recently retired from professional cycling.

I have been suffering with depression over the past 2 seasons. In this retirement piece that I wrote I wanted to share my journey in sport, tell my story and also talk about my struggles. I wanted to be honest and real. I wanted to bring awareness of mental health and that it exists in professional sports people. And I wanted inspire.

Read my blog here:

http://www.team-awesome.cc/neon-velo/closing-a-chapter-and-starting-a-new/