field Notes: I Came Here to Ground Myself

I came to the woods today to ground myself.

My head has been sitting in a depressive place for most of the week. I had music playing at home and thought that, instead of sitting inside with everything going around in my head, I would come to the woods.

Trees, water and mud under my boots. Something slower than the world I am going back to tomorrow.

I live with Borderline Personality Disorder. For me, that can mean emotions do not always arrive gradually. They can come quickly, intensely and sometimes seemingly from nowhere. My mind can go from noise to calm, anger to sadness, confidence to complete emptiness faster than I can explain what happened in between.

That is one of the reasons nature helps me.

The woods do not ask anything from me. There is a rhythm here that does not change because my mood has. The water keeps moving. Branches move with the wind. Birds appear and disappear. Leaves move beneath people's feet somewhere in the distance.

When my own internal rhythm is all over the place, I can borrow the rhythm of the woods for a while.

Instead of desperately trying to control what is happening inside my head, I can concentrate on what is happening outside it. I can listen to the water, feel the ground underneath me, watch the movement of the trees and allow everything to slow down.

Today, it worked.

I became calm. I felt relaxed. The constant internal noise became quieter and I sat listening to the water moving past me.

Then, from somewhere inside that quiet, came a thought.

I'm ready to go.

For a moment, those words could have meant that I was ready to leave the woods, but I knew that was not what they meant.

My stomach dropped.

It felt as though the voice inside my head had spoken rather than it being something I had consciously decided to think. It almost brought me to tears, because suicide has not been completely absent from my thoughts lately.

Last week, I told a mental health nurse that a thought had been swirling around in my head. When she asked about intention, I could not give her a straightforward answer.

I still cannot.

Perhaps that is one of the things people do not always understand about mental health. There is not necessarily a clean dividing line between being fine and being suicidal. Sometimes there is uncertainty. Sometimes there is a thought that frightens you. Sometimes you recognise something happening inside your own mind without completely understanding where it is going.

For someone living with Borderline Personality Disorder, learning to recognise those changes matters.

I do not think the woods made things worse today. If anything, they made things quiet enough for me to hear what was already there.

That is an uncomfortable distinction, but an important one.

Nature is not a cure for mental illness. A walk will not cure BPD, and sitting beside running water is not a replacement for psychiatric treatment. What nature can give me, however, is something incredibly valuable: regulation.

When everything internally is moving too quickly, I can use the rhythm of the woods to slow myself down. I can concentrate on something that exists completely independently of whatever is happening inside my mind.

The water does not care what sort of week I have had. It just keeps moving.

Sometimes slowing down also means becoming aware of the things you have been carrying while everything else has been noisy.

That is what happened today.

I came here thinking that I needed to prepare myself for another working week. Instead, sitting beside the water made me realise just how difficult this week has actually been.

That is awareness too.

Not the polished version of mental health awareness where somebody goes for a walk through a forest, takes a photograph and suddenly everything is okay. I mean the real version. Knowing your own mind well enough to recognise when something has changed. Knowing when grounding is helping. Knowing when a thought needs to be taken seriously, and knowing when something has become bigger than trees, fresh air and trying to regulate yourself.

I am currently waiting for psychiatric support, and the professionals involved already know that these thoughts exist.

Until then, I will keep learning the rhythms that help me regulate.

Today, I am sitting beside the water, listening to the woods and listening to myself.

Sometimes looking after yourself is not about silencing what is happening inside your head.

Sometimes it is about becoming quiet enough to hear it.

If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, please tell somebody. In the UK, you can contact NHS 111 and select the mental health option, call Samaritans free on 116 123, or call 999 or go to A&E if you are in immediate danger.