The Single Most Important Thing I Do for My Mental Health
and it’s NOT therapy (I know, sacrilege)
Welcome to this tiny corner of the internet where an off-duty psychotherapist keeps the conversation going on how to make sense of this life thing we’re all doing. If you ever wondered what your therapist does off the clock—which, who among us hasn’t?—this is like that. Think of it as the adult equivalent of seeing your elementary school teacher at the grocery store picking out lemons. 🍋 I typically oscillate between long-form psychoeducation pieces and narrative essays—sometimes I smush them together. I also do a biweekly podcast with my husband, advice-adjacent pieces, roundups and most recently started a segment of brisk thoughts on music, TV, and film. Today is a smush job.
I rustle awake to the familiar sound of a door swinging open with gusto.
I wait for the inevitable bang of the door meeting the door stop.
(BANG. reverberating BANg, BAng, Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang)
Pitter-patter of running feet. Urgent with information to share.
“MOMMA, THE SUN IS AWAKE!!”
(checks phone)
It reads, 5:45AM.
I whisper “Christ” under my breath.
“That’s right bud. Your alarm hasn’t gone off yet. You’re welcome to play quietly in your room until then.”
While the delivery of this message felt like a cold plunge I didn’t agree to, the information itself was actually quite welcome news.
Last year I started doing something I never thought I’d do, other than becoming sober: I started going on morning walks.
In order to bring this habit to life, I had to do it before the rising of the aforementioned announcer of the sun’s activity that lives with us. The idea that I would voluntarily get up one second before I had to was entirely incomprehensible to me. It was almost offensive to my identity to even consider it. I’m not one of those people.
Howeverrrrr, being woken up startled awake by screaming, regardless how jovial the messenger, was becoming too much for my nervous system.
So, late last summer I started getting up early a few mornings a week and going on a lil’ walk. I don’t want to be dramatic, but it can’t be overstated how much this drastically changed my mood, energy, and outlook. Added bonus, it cost me zero dollars and zero cents.
When winter came and stole the morning light from me, I acquiesced for the season. But between Archie’s proclamation,
’s recent newsletter about the essential nature of movement for creativity, and ’s inquiry about daily rituals we can’t do without, the message from the universe was clear: Morning walks are back, baby.And so it went. I had my first morning walk last week. It wasn’t before Archie woke up, because that time doesn’t seem to exist this week, but it happened nevertheless. He even joined me for a quick loop until it became too cold for his little toesies. This seven minute jaunt was kind of sweet—noticing bunnies, flowers, and birds. “Birds like garbage,” he announced.
It was also incredible, after depositing child back at home, to just walk. Brisk morning air. Birds, who apparently like garbage, chirping. Spring forcing itself into my face with purples, reds, and yellows.
Walking: Friend or Foe?
I haven’t always held such glowing sentiments toward walking. In fact, I used to fucking hate walking. I interpreted any suggestion of a walk to be a veiled attempt to get me to exercise because whoever was suggesting said walk must have felt my body was unacceptable as it was.
This may seem like an extreme interpretation, however it was all baked up in me for years. Even if, time after time, I felt reinvigorated, calm, and capable after a walk, I vowed to deny it’s impact until my dying day. I wasn’t gonna go down like that. YOU’RE NOT GONNA TRICK MEEEE. The hypervigilance was real.
Anyway, years of living in Chicago began the reorg on how I viewed walking. For one, it was a free way to get around. It was also the best way to get a sense of the city. It became a necessity and a tool. In some ways, that was good for my relationship with it because I realized how much walking I could do, but it also often made walking a means to an end. It was the thing between me and the next thing. It wasn’t it’s own thing. That was, until COVID.
Our daily walks during the spring and summer of 2020 were everything. They were the thing I looked forward to the most. Fresh air, space, movement. At times, the hunger I felt for that walk each day was unnerving.
During that initial period of COVID my husband and I, like many, were working from home—I took sessions from our bedroom while he worked from our dining room table. We also had an infant tagging along on this quarantine, concurrent with my attempts at coming up for air amidst some postpartum anxiety. We were, shocker, having many more moments of tension than usual. I can’t imagine why we were at each other’s throats. Lolz.
What I noticed, however, is that if we argued while we were on a walk it was as if we were grownups with full access to our brains and not stubborn, defensive children (No offense kiddos, it’s just your still developing brains. Like, you do your best, but facts are facts).
Turns out there are a few scientific reasons to explain this…
Data, data 📉
There are lots of physical benefits to walking, many you likely already know. I’m not going to get into those because that’s less of what I concern myself with here.
Now, the mind-body connection? Sure. The mental benies? Sign me up! Creativity stimulating? Tell me when and where and I’m there.
I’m always curious why things feel the way they do. Here is a little bit of the why…
The EMDR Connection
EMDR (or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)1 2 is a psychotherapy treatment often used to address symptoms of PTSD (but can be used for any type of painful memory, regardless of the meeting of diagnostic criteria). If you’ve never heard of EMDR, it may sound very strange to hear how it works.
A description from 30,000 feet, by someone who has never done this with clients nor received the treatment herself, is that a client will recall a distressing event in their mind in brief snippets while focusing on external stimuli–sometimes that is eye movements directed by the clinician (it evokes very optometrist vibes for me when I see it demonstrated), tapping, or audio tones.
This method, as bizarre as it may sound, is thought to help work through unprocessed emotions and beliefs about one’s self that got stuck during the painful event by triggering bilateral stimulation—basically alternating between our right and left part of our brains allowing for fuller access to our ability to integrate information. I’m not going to get into the neurobiology here, but you can click right here to read about the limbic system and the neocortex of it all, if you so choose.
—What does this have to do with walking?
Great question. I’m so glad you asked.
Because EMDR’s powers were discovered on a walk.
In 1987, the founder of EMDR, Francine Shapiro, Ph.D., noticed her emotional distress became less distressy when she thought about it while walking. Through further curiosity about this observation, she found this was likely due to the eye movements we make while walking–back and forth—effectively bilaterally stimulating our brain.3 From this, EMDR was born.
Completing the Stress Cycle
This is a phrase I came to know through Dr. Emily4 and Dr. Amelia Nagoski, who wrote Burnout: The secret to solving the stress cycle5.
Completing the stress cycle works a lot like it sounds: after a period of stress/danger/crisis, our bodies need to move all the way through the experience, often physically, releasing and realizing that we are safe again—or at least more so than we were amidst the stressor. When we are in a stressful situation—and let’s zoom out to define that more specifically for us here as any sort of exerted effort or pressure–so like, life, basically—our body responds with hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline in order to prepare us to respond. Enabling fight, flight, freeze or fawn—the 4 F’s of trauma responses.
The problem is that we often experience stress, along a spectrum, in our bodies, then go on to the next stressful thing and at the end of the day we drag our bag of bones home and plop them on the couch. All that tension, still living in our bodies, teeming with unexpressed energy and our brains left unsure how we are really doing. We may appear to be resting, but oftentimes our bodies are still buzzing.
I remember reading about how this shows up in animals which helped crystallize this concept for me. Think of when a dog gets freaked out, slips, or freezes in fear. Once the moment has passed, they will quite literally shake it off with their body. It’s not just a Taylor Swift song. It’s a trauma-informed coping mechanism.
I’ve kept this in mind if I have a close call in traffic. Now that I know what’s happening–my body is being inundated with hormones–I can even sense it in my body. I feel cold and hot at the same time. I can almost feel liquid, like raindrops down a window–except it’s more like a downpour. After the threat passes, which in Colorado is almost never (WHY DOES EVERYONE SUCK AT DRIVING HERE?!!), I’ll shake my head and hands or throw on an Olivia Rodrigo song and scream the lyrics.
I should note, walking certainly isn’t the only way to complete the stress cycle, there is conscious breathing, laughing, talking, crying, being creative (which is why writing can be so damn cathartic), etc.
Ways to Approach This Habit
My son's new word of the month is any iteration of “bored.” This is boring. I’m bored, etc.
He doesn’t want to finish cleaning up the water he spilled all over the floor because it’s boring.
I’m not sure about you, but my first instinct when he says the word “boring” is to correct him in such a manner that it would somehow result in it never having been said at all. CTRL-ALT-DEL, plz.
Some form of “It’s not boring, don’t say that.” Or “I don’t care if it’s boring.” This is making me realize boredom has SUCH a negative connotation in my head. That it’s somehow morally wrong to be bored and/or say you’re bored.
But you know what? It IS boring to clean up water off the floor. By embracing it’s boring nature, maybe it can evolve.
The Child Mind Institute6 talks about ways to engage children around boredom:
proactively create a list of things they like to do
beware of attention-seeking
encourage creativity
be realistic
embrace failure
respond to boredom with excitement.
I’d like to use this list for us with building a walking habit. A lot of people don’t do it because it’s boring. If you’re anything like me, being bored is not something you often come across these days. So much stimulation at our fingertips. I honestly can’t remember the last time I was bored. However, I do wonder if sometimes I subconsciously steer clear of things that could lead to boredom. As if it’s something to avoid, rather than something really rare, and maybe even a wellspring of healing and expansion.
Proactivity
Being proactive with the task at hand could look like making a list of places you’ve been wanting to walk or times of day where you thought it could fit in. At first, even scheduling it can be helpful—like, in your Google Cal scheduled, not a “we should really get together sometime” type-commitment.
It could also look like what sorts of things you would want to do during a walk.
Now, I was literally just talking about how over-stimulated we are, but and I personally think it’s OK to meet yourself where you’re at. If walking in silence is a non-starter, think of a carrot to dangle for yourself. When I first started my morning walks, I absolutely needed a big ass carrot. I would save a podcast I’d been wanting to listen to. Or Marco Polo with a long-distance friend. Now, I play it by ear (pun intended) about what I need. Silence, music, meditation, podcast, or just today, I started my first audiobook on a walk.7
This is the stage where I allow myself to dream a bit…
“If I were a person who walked just to walk, what would that look like, feel like. What would I need to make that happen?”
Encourage Creativity
This could come in the form of what you wear on your walks or where you go on them. Is it in a new park? To a coffee shop? To see a certain naturally occurring beauty?
Also, as previously discussed here just the simple act of going on a walk (or doing anything other than trying to be creative) will likely result in some form of creativity.
Be Aware of Attention Seeking
With the example of boredom with kids, the Child Mind Institute talks about how if you stay engaged in a power struggle over how much they don’t want to do anything on the very list they created, you may be reinforcing a feedback loop. It can be almost too validating, staying in conversation about how much they don’t want to do something.
We can sometimes do this with ourselves, right? We talk about how, on the one hand we really want to walk more, but on the other hand we don’t want to wake up early or bring walking shoes to work. We can kind of get off on talking about how much something won’t work or how much we don’t want to do it, so much so that we lose the plot and ourselves as the main character in our story.
Those who have been with me for a bit may hear that this sounds like what in Internal Family Systems (IFS) we’d call polarized parts (one part that wants to do something and one that doesn’t), which I would agree. It can be helpful to hear out both sides, but not ad nauseam. Eventually we have to step in, with some Self-energy, and make a decision both parts are willing to get on board with, even when they won’t fully get their way.
Be Realistic
When I started flirting with the idea of making walking a part of my dailyish life, I started veryyyyyyy slow. I just let myself think about it for a while. Until I got annoyed by just thinking. I wanted to DO, dammit. Then I set my alarm for 5:30a and snoozed it for a few weeks. Eventually, I got annoyed by that and started getting up early a few times a week.
Often the worst thing we can do in creating a new habit is go big. Slow, steady, gradual. Building off each baby step is typically what works for the sustainability of a behavior.8
Embrace Failure
You’re gonna miss days. You just are. Probably several days. Kewl, no biggie.
Respond to Boredom with Excitement
The advice with this one from the Child Mind Institute is, “The next time your child says, ‘I’m bored,’ respond with, ‘That’s great! I can’t wait to see what you’ll do!’”
This feels both deranged and amazing. I know this could work really well, but and it feels so far from my instinct.9
But for our purposes, if you start feeling bored, see if you can respond with unhinged enthusiasm, “Wonderful, OK. What are we going to do with this feeling?”
One thing I would add…
Label It
This is something I learned from my Chicago days. I walked miles nearly every day. To and from the train to get to work, to a restaurant or a friend’s place. Basically the only time we used our car was to go grocery shopping. As I mentioned earlier, this was both advantageous and detrimental to my relationship to walking.
For it’s mental health benefits though, I find it’s best to let walking be its own thing: I’m going on a walk, just so I can walk.
Sometimes that freedom is unavailable—a walk for walk’s sake. If that is the case for you and you do walk, but mostly to and from places or in relation to a responsibility there can still be room for a reframe.10 “I’m going on a walk on the way to work” rather than “I’m walking to work.” “I have to walk the dog” becomes “I’m going on a walk with the dog.” I know it may seem like the same thing, but it’s not to our brains. 🧠11
How I Fit It In
I consider myself very fortunate that I love my day job the way I do. Can you feel the but coming?
But, it’s very sedentary and I’m cooped up inside most of the day. Thus, a walk out in the elements is a necessary offset to the rest of my day.
As I already mentioned, I do morning walks a few days a week when the weather is amenable and I can factor it in and still get enough sleep. I also walk most days over my lunch hour. This has been such a game changer for me in curbing the afternoon slump. I usually have a few more clients in the afternoon than I do in the AM, so this was a pleasant discovery.
Let me be clear, these walks over my lunch hour are often 10 minutes and very slow. I’m not bringing power walking at the mall energy here.
There is so much about mental health care that is inaccessible and I’m not saying this replaces treatment, because it really doesn’t. And at the same time, it’s not nothing.
This is where you come in…
I thought it’d be fun to connect in real time as we go on our walks. So look out for a message through the Chat feature soon (depending when you read this, it may already be waiting for you…). This is not an accountability task nor a fitness group, it will be a space to share about what walks do for us and what we do with them.
Note:
There likely won’t be a newsletter next week as we are going on a little family vacation. We are taking Arch man to Disneyland for the first time and seeing some family! Please send thoughts, prayers and tips.
Questions for you:
Where you do stand on walking—Boring? Mental health-sustaining? A chore?
What does walking look like for you—Morning? Lunch hour? Evening?
What are you doing while you walk?
Unrelated to walking—Any Disneyland tips? Am I going to be OK?
Any L.A. tips for parents traveling with a toddler? and even more specifically if you got ‘em, in the Los Feliz area?
You can find more info and my full disclaimer on my about page here (I recently updated it, so check her out and tell me what you think). Abridged version: I’m a therapist, but not your therapist—even if you are a client of mine ~hi, dear one!~ this isn’t a session. dialoguing is an educational and informational newsletter only, not a substitute for mental health treatment.
Also, if you’re interested in submitting a question for the dialogue league, recent example here, please email me at dialoguingsubstack@gmail.com—or if you’re reading this via email you can just hit reply and send me a message. Love hearing from you for any and all reasons!
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Dr. Emily Nagoski also wrote the entirely necessary, should be required reading, Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life–a future newsletter, for sure
BJ Fogg has a really practical book about this, aptly titled, Tiny Habits.
I did use this phrase this weekend with Archie and he laughed and said, “Me too!” and then figured something out to do.
There are also other reasons walking may be inaccessible, for instance if you have a disability or chronic health condition. The CDC has a resource bay of information on alternative ways to engage the body here. That link specifically addresses some of the barriers to walking.
This is a version of a skill, cognitive defusion, that I wrote about in my first ever newsletter here.
I LOVE walking. Like you, I try to walk for at least 10 minutes in my lunch break every day. Like you, this has been a game changer for my afternoon energy levels. I always include a hill in mine to get my heart pumping and blood circulating, to shift stagnation and help process and release what I'm holding from the morning. Human bodies were not made for sitting down all day! I also started noticing that many of my best writing ideas come to me while walking, and I often talk to clients about the overlaps between walking and EMDR, how walking helps access the right hemisphere of the brain which opens us to emotional processing and creativity. Great post.
Looooooove to walk, besides yoga it’s the only "exercise" I’m down with and I consider both to be mostly for my mental health. I have a rule that I have to "lay eyes on the ocean once a day," you know just to make sure it’s still there, which lucky for me can be accomplished with a quick walk from my house. Sometimes I walk with friends but usually by myself. I’ve tried walking in silence to meditate or appreciate nature or whatnot but it’s not for me. I’ll either listen to a podcast (usually Armchair Expert or We Can Do Hard Things), or music, or phone a friend. I stop to take at least 5-10 photos, always. I don’t have the official data, but I’d estimate walking boosts my mood close to 100% of the time.