ARTICLE AND PHOTOS:
SIMON WYNDHAM

Simon Wyndham

Bio

Simon Wyndham is Deputy Editor of RedShark News. When he isn’t trying to mention kayaking in his day-to-day writing, he can be found on the Slightly White Water Kayaking Facebook group, where likeminded paddlers support each other’s development in a relaxed, encouraging environment. https://www.facebook.com/groups/566085703545526/

Getting to grips with fear and anxiety

I’ve dealt with head games since I began white water kayaking. I’ve never been one of those people who could just stick themselves into a hole or feature and laugh as I discover what happens if I try it. It most likely stems from the fact that I am not a natural in the water, having spent most of my adult life unable to swim. I had to teach myself to do so to fulfil my ambition to be able to go kayaking.

Fast forward from my initial kayaking beginnings, and I have become much more confident. I was pushing myself more on rivers and embraced the freestyle world despite being about as useful as a chocolate teapot at it. The important thing was that I lost much of my fear of going into features, and I had an excellent roll that I had complete confidence in.

I enjoyed the sensation of being upside down, and I could fully relax when it happened, confident that I could roll up. Fast forward a bit further, and those head games crept in again. This was around 2018 when my partner and I went on what was the trip of a lifetime to Uganda. Something clicked within me that meant I couldn’t fully take advantage of the opportunities I was given on that river. Since then, particularly after the global pandemic hit, my confidence declined even further.

When my partner passed away from sarcoma, it became even worse. It reached the point where I couldn’t even get on the river. I’d turn up to places like HPP and have a full-on meltdown inside, meaning I’d travelled there for no reason other than to watch others having fun on the water while getting increasingly frustrated with myself. So bad did the head games become that I have come close to hanging up my paddles several times in the past couple of years. But, I know in my heart that I still love kayaking and want to be on the water, and I eventually decided that enough was enough and sought out the help of a sports psychologist.

I’m still battling with my head now, but I want to share with you some of the things that were suggested to me that may help anyone reading this who is going through similar problems. My advice is no substitute for going to a sports psychologist to find out your individual factors, but I want to share a few key points with you. This will not be a thorough deep dive, but I hope that I can give some advice, to help some of you move forward or take things further. Selfishly, it’s also a recap for me.

Anyone who is going through psychological games with their boating knows that they appear irrational. Those who don’t have such problems can’t understand why someone could be scared of a small feature somewhere when that same person has also successfully paddled on much bigger and more powerful white water in the past. This also means that a lot of other paddlers, usually with the best intentions, offer advice that isn’t helpful at all.

Much of the advice is suited to generally confident people who might need a little nudge with particular rapids or features, not those who are going through chronic issues.

What causes your individual anxieties?
One of the first things to do is to write down what individual things cause your river anxiety on paper. It’s amazing what can cause our anxiety levels to rise. It could be simple things like delays getting onto the river by people taking ages to get changed or to run the shuttle. It can be fear of making mistakes in front of people because you hold yourself to a high standard or you believe people think you should be better than you are. You might feel worse during cold, cloudy weather rather than sunny conditions.

Note all these individual factors. Think about them carefully and be honest with yourself. Think about specific times when you have felt fear and anxiety, whether it’s on the drive to the river or on the river itself, and do a deep dive into the details of what you were thinking at the time.

Understanding why
One of the next things to do is to understand what fear is. Fear forms part of our fight or flight response, but it’s also connected to something else: the general human mindset. Guess how many negative thoughts versus positive ones the average person has per day?­ I bet you think those thoughts will be mostly positive with a generally positive person, right? Wrong. On average, a human thinks around 60k to 70k thoughts daily, and around 80% are negative.

Humans are naturally predisposed to think the worst. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. As it was put to me, when we were hunter-gatherers, we wouldn’t just pick up any fruit or berry, for example, and eat it. To survive, we must presuppose that whatever we are dealing with might harm us. In other words, when we enter a white water environment, our basic instinct is often to think the worst; for some, those thoughts become overriding.

The important thing is to understand that fear is normal for everyone. Fear comes about because we don’t know what the outcome might be, so to avoid that possible negative outcome, we are programmed simply to avoid it altogether if we can.

Our minds lie to us
Another key thing to understand is that our minds lie to us constantly. When we go through head games in kayaking, our minds often tell us that we will very likely swim, or won’t be able to roll, or any other things. Sometimes, it might be a simple case of not wanting to look silly, and other times, it might be genuine concern about something terrible happening. The trouble is that our minds are not psychic and can’t predict the future. But who do we trust most in our lives? Yep, you’ve guessed it… ourselves! As a result, we give a huge amount of weight to the advice we give ourselves when deciding whether to go into a feature or down a particular rapid, which is very often completely wrong.

Beating ourselves up
Another contributing factor is being too hard on ourselves. We say, “I should have been able to do that!” Or “I needed to do that move.” As you can imagine, this type of language can occur if we fail at something or when setting up expectations before we’ve even got onto the water. Such words as ‘should’, need’, ‘have to’, etc., were described to me as psychological swear words that effectively set us up to feel negative thoughts towards ourselves when we can’t meet particular expectations.

There are more factors at work than those above, but they are some of the main ones contributing to what we call ‘head games’. So, how do we go about changing things? From the outset, I have to say that there’s no quick fix and that the methods for overcoming things require practice, not just when you’re on the way to the river or on the water but also in things you do every day or when you have moments of reflection.

Detaching yourself from thoughts
One of the most powerful ways to help deal with negative thoughts is to detach yourself from them. Doing this takes practice, but it is one of the most powerful ways to help. Effectively, this is like letting your negative thoughts float past you on imaginary clouds. Or, imagine sitting in a coffee shop watching the world go by outside. You see a blue car drive past. In your head, you acknowledge that a blue car has driven by, but you don’t focus on it. You acknowledge it and move on.

Applying the same method to negative thoughts works as well. We acknowledge that the thought has taken place and say a virtual “Thank you brain for bringing this to my attention,” and then move on. We don’t try to pretend that the negative thoughts don’t exist. We acknowledge it as a genuine concern, accept it and move on. Another method is to give your nagging negative mind a name. In other words, deal with it with humour.

For example, you might call your inner nagger by the same name as someone you find irritating at work or give it a comedy name like Farty Face. Then, when negative thoughts come, you treat them in the same way that you might treat someone you know who might tell tall tales all the time. You just roll your eyes, say, “Thank you, Farty Face, for bringing the thought to my attention; your concern is noted,” and move on.

It’s extremely important not to argue with this inner voice. Don’t get angry with it, tell it to get lost, or otherwise interact with it negatively. The idea is to acknowledge that the thoughts are there, say thank you, and move on. It’s not always easy because sometimes the fear levels can be high, so it takes practice. Remember, it’s normal and OK to be fearful.

Accept mistakes and embrace play.
Another tool we can use is to accept we will make mistakes. If we swim, so what? If we don’t make a line on a rapid, so what? If we accept that we will make mistakes from the outset and tell ourselves that it’s OK to do so, then this can take a lot of pressure off us.

This brings me to play. A lot of us have the necessary skills inside us to perform well when boating, but those skills get suppressed by constant thinking. “I need to put the paddle there,” “Where does my edging need to be?”or “What if I have to roll there?” A lot of the time, particularly if we’ve been paddling for a fair few years, a lot of skills we still think about if we’re going through psychological head games are ready to come out naturally; we just don’t allow them to do so.

This goes for elite athletes, too, who might be telling themselves off on any given day for not performing as they think they should be. Their continuing frustration and focusing on individual elements while trying to perform often curtails their performance rather than helping it. Most of the time, well, all of the time, we perform at our best when we aren’t thinking about how to do things. We just do them.

This is sometimes referred to as the flow state. I simply refer to it as doing what you already know how to do! One way to help bring out our best is to treat our paddling like play and go out and see what happens. An example might be if you are going to paddle a rapid and you are entering from the right and want to hit the bottom left at the end. We might have the temptation to overthink things by looking at the rapid and thinking we need a particular paddle stroke in particular places, or that rock over there has the potential to make us go upside down, or that you need to flare boof at a certain point. Instead, make it simple. Just think, “I need to paddle to that point, then to that point, then to that point.” Once you’re in the rapid, that’s all you need.

You will prevent yourself from bringing out your inner skills once you start thinking about individual paddle strokes and timings. Once more, accept that you will make mistakes. This type of mentality requires constant practice and isn’t something that will happen overnight. For some people, accepting that mistakes will be made can feel like an acceptance of lower standards. The reality is that the opposite is true. The more we can detach ourselves from an emotional connection to the outcome, the better we can perform, and strangely, the fewer mistakes we’ll make.

This can help us finally enjoy what we’re doing, and the more we enjoy being in the environment, the better we will perform and the more confident we’ll be. There is a lot more to this subject that a sports psychologist professional will be able to provide details and help with. But I hope this has given some of you an idea of a roadmap to understanding our fears and sometimes paralysing head games that white water kayaking can throw up. These methods have helped me on my journey, although much more practice is required.