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Talk About Mental Health & Well-Being… Why Not? Mark ‘Charlie’ Valentine suffered life changing mental illness, before beginning a journey to recovery and wellness; the darkness of PTSD transformed by the light atop mountains and beyond. Mark is now joining forces with Seb Budniak, to make up the ‘White Fox Talking’ team. Through a series of Podcasts and Vlogs, ‘White Fox Talking’ will be bringing you a variety of guests, topics, and inspirational stories relating to improving mental well-being. Find your way back to you! Expect conversation, information, serious discussion and a healthy dose of Yorkshire humour!
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E57: [Adventure Mind Series] Climbing Through Grief - Richard Chapman's Transformative Journey to Mental Health Recovery
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Could climbing hold the key to overcoming grief and mental health challenges? Join us for an inspiring episode featuring Richard Chapman from Climbing Matters, who shares his transformative journey through the loss of his son Archie and how climbing became his lifeline. Growing up in Cornwall with a deep-rooted passion for climbing, Richard found solace and support within the climbing community, offering a heartfelt perspective on how outdoor activities can be a powerful catalyst for mental health support and healing.
Explore the therapeutic potential of climbing as a tool for trauma recovery with us. Richard recounts his personal experiences and highlights the collaboration between climbing programs and organizations like Turning Point. With support from the NHS and DEFRA, these initiatives are expanding to support a wider range of mental health challenges through social prescribing. Our conversation underscores how setting goals and embracing challenges in climbing can lead to personal growth, resilience, and a shift from negativity to positivity.
In the final segments, we advocate for the integration of climbing programs within mental health services and the exciting prospects of expanding these successful initiatives to various locations. Richard shares his vision for training local instructors to support individuals with mental health conditions, ultimately fostering community building and well-being. This episode not only sheds light on the transformative impact of climbing therapy but also calls for a unified effort to enhance mental health support through outdoor adventures.
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hello and welcome to the white fox talking podcast. I'm mark charlie valentine and we are online. And are you there, seb coming over? I am yeah over.
Speaker 2:You sound a little bit distant. I'll fix it in the edit afterwards. I'm just a bit sweaty. I've the the tube it's a bit hot at the minute and been running around after a couple dogs, so yes, I'm locked in the studio which I call, which is actually not a studio, it's the back bedroom.
Speaker 1:Sat here sweating as the sun's been glaring in all day, but it's all cool, so lovely. Who's here with us today? Well, I was just going to say that but you butted in. So today I'm delighted that we will be speaking to richard chapman of climbing matters. So I've met richard a couple of times now, at adventure mind and also at the u-Lan Nature Mind conferences, and we're going to be talking. Yeah, is another climbing one or climbing related? Yeah, because there are lots of associated information and tips that can come out of this. So welcome, richard Chapman. The White Fox Talking podcast is sponsored by Energy Impact.
Speaker 3:Thanks very much. It's great to be here. Thanks for the invitation.
Speaker 1:You were on my hit list anyway, because we've met a couple of times and I'll tell you now you are great speaking, it's good listening to you and passionate about what you're doing, but then we're doing this adventure mind series. So this is part of the adventure mind series and belinda suggested yourself, which is great because that's like a pat on the back from belinda as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it was lovely. I met her first time, obviously last year. Actually, sometime in the summer, she asked me to come and speak at the Adventure Mind conference back in November, which was pretty daunting. It was the first time I've really spoken in public about what we were doing, what we were trying to do, and at that stage I think we weren't quite clear how it was going to go. But you know, we're here six, nine months down the line, been going really well. As I say, we spoke at the UCLan conference the other week and, yeah, things keep growing, things keep coming back and I'll be back at VentureMind this year. So yeah, it'll be good. It's been great fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I'll see you there. So just for the listeners, I know it's going to be possibly difficult and it might be difficult listening for some, but would it be okay to talk about some of your background and experience with mental health, just to give this some context, and then we'll move through that into climbing matters and adventure mind. Is that okay?
Speaker 3:yes, of course, yeah, and, and, and. I appreciate the sort of the heads up, I mean the the the content of my story. I do sometimes have to just check myself because it's easy to misunderstand not misunderstand, but sort of underestimate the impact it can have on other people when you tell people. So if it does come with a content warning, then my story is about child loss. So my background is I was born and bred in Cornwall so occasionally you can just hear in my accent it comes out a little bit, but I haven't lived in Cornwall since I was about 19, 20, moved away.
Speaker 3:One of the great things about growing up in Cornwall right down the far end, past Penzance, you're in an area called West Penwith and the cliffs there are enormous, huge granite cliffs. My favourite is Bersigran, sort of 300 foot, 100 metre granite cliff, and I learned to climb there when I was about 11, 12. I started climbing with the Lanzang Climbing Club and absolutely fell in love with the sport. The idea of going to these incredible cliffs just above the sea and sort of wrestling with the granite and the seagulls and the lichen was absolutely fantastic. So then when I left home I moved north and moved up to Leeds to study and obviously climbed loads around there, started going to North Wales a lot, scotland a lot, did a couple of trips to the Alps and I just sort of really got into mountaineering proper I guess you'd call it.
Speaker 3:And then, when I sort of started in my mid-twenties, I started a family and my first child was born back in 1997, a young lad called Archie, and when he was about six months old it was clear there was something wrong with him. He had developed a squint and he couldn't sit very well and there was sort of all sorts of interesting and odd things which took me quite a while to accept what was going on. There was a bit of, I guess, denial from me and eventually we got to Great Ormond Street and he was diagnosed with a very rare and it turns out to be a terminal brain tumour. So we had an operation and the pathology of what it was came back and they said well, this type of tumour which was called an atypical rhabdoid teratoid tumor, which I don't know what it means, but that's what it was and it was in a thing called the posterior fossa, which is somewhere in your brain, and the oncologist said well, look, children under two, this pretty much has a 100% mortality rate. So at that point and he's about nine months old we knew we were going to lose him. We were offered a experimental treatment regime but we were told we didn't have to take it because of the diagnosis. So we chose not to treat, we just took him home and we cared for him through the summer and we got to his first birthday, which was a major, major milestone for us.
Speaker 3:And then as the sort of tumor grew back and he grew poorly and interestingly there's an association with me now with the nights getting shorter and, yeah, the day's getting shorter, shorter, the night's getting longer, the weather changing, because as we moved into September, into October and November, he grew very poorly again and then he died on the 14th of November in 1998 at home. We cared for him at home and then you know, we sort of struggled, I guess, with that immediate aftermath, when there's a lot of care and a lot of people wanting to support and help and and a lot of people wanting to support and help. And then afterwards, the next year our daughter was born. So I've just told her my oldest child now, and it's kind of not a lot for you really when you're struggling with things like the traumatic effects of bereavement and grief. And we sort of remember reaching out for help once and it didn't really go very well and we just sort of got on with life and you don't really know how it affects you for a long, long time, because it's your normal and my normal was, you know, I bottled things up and would just have enormous outbursts of emotional kind of terror, just rage, just anger, and, you know, throwing furniture and punching walls and things Didn't sleep very well for a long time. And I still to this day, have what you probably recognize as things called intrusive thoughts, sort of sudden horrid visions of stuff, but normally featuring kind of horrible injuries to my children and things. So it's, you know, and and it the kind of thing where you catch your breath and it almost like a tick. You sort of just almost react to it. Now that's been going on for 20, 25 years and and I didn't know what that was. It was just my normal until I started looking into this area of trauma and post-traumatic stress and actually I started to make some connections in my brain.
Speaker 3:I'd always managed to keep climbing and I would also do adventure racing and mountain biking and canoeing and surfing and whatever else I could, and particularly the climbing, I think, at the time in the mountains, just let me reset.
Speaker 3:It would always cause a kind of neurological resetting and I felt better. And if I didn't go for a while I'd start to feel really antsy and a bit kind of unsettled and that's kind of how I've been for a long time and actually the climbing has always been there for something for me, but there was always since it was just me, you know, just kind of. You know I happen to, I happen to have access to the mountains, I happen to be able to climb, I happen to, you know, have enough money to, you know, pay for the petrol and a bit of accommodation and have, you know, a good pair of climbing boots. You know there's a load of things about access to climbing that I just happen to have and thought, well, that's just isn't that lucky me kind of thing really. And and that's where I was for a for a, yeah, quite a long time actually I'll be honest, that's a lot to listen to, let alone go through yourself.
Speaker 1:And I totally understand you. You know this. The thing with ptsd and then making them connections later on, do you think you know you've discovered that you've sort of discovered making them connections at this time or a few years ago and you're noticing traits. Where did you find all that? Where did you get that information?
Speaker 3:well it was. Actually I read a book called the body keeps the score. It's by a us psychiatrist called bessel van der kolk and it's pretty technical, pretty, pretty heavy going in places. But what he was describing in his book and obviously this guy's a, you know, very world-renowned psychiatrist works a lot with combat veterans and people with you know domestic sexual violence survivors and things. So you know people, you know who I would consider to be really you know, at the high end, high need end of the spectrum and he does things like yoga and theater groups and singing and stuff like that and and and he he was explaining in his book about how these experiences create a genuine emotional response in the body which you can then practice responding to right in the right supportive environment.
Speaker 3:And what I had noticed is that I steered away from my emotions for a long time. My emotions were quite scary and I didn't really want to feel too much. There was a sense of, you know, kind of shutting things down and actually I could come across quite often as quite cold because it didn't look like I felt anything. But what's happening is I was feeling I just wasn't acknowledging it and then obviously we burst through and he, and when I was reading this book, that's exactly what he was describing as as what's happening to me. So I thought, well, okay, well, I said this I'm not very good at yoga, I've never done drama and I can't sing very well, but I can climb, and actually climbing causes this emotional release. And you know, when it comes to singing, I do love going to live concerts and I go to people like there's a guy called Frank Turney, sort of English punk folk singer. Go to his gigs and I'll sing my heart out at these gigs with like several hundred other people, and so I recognise that cathartic kind of feel from the singing. So that, well, you know, I think climbing does something similar and that's really where it started. Now, at the same time so this is going back to about 2019, something like that you started to see and and you probably noticed as well, did this term social prescribing appearing in like newspapers and magazines, people just talking about it a bit and it again not being a healthcare professional or anything like that.
Speaker 3:You kind of have social prescribing. What's that? Let's have a look. Oh, it's something to do with non-medical interventions and non-medical routes to caring for people with, you know, either physical, mental health problems and so well, that's, that's kind of interesting. Well, what? What should I do about that? Is there something I should be trying to understand? What's going on here? And I came it was actually a friend of a friend. So there's a local guy I know around where I live, called Jamie, and I was chatting to him about it one day and he said, well, you should go and speak to my mate, james, who was setting up this thing to do with social prescribing in the NHS, and James pointed me in the direction of a thing called the Peer Leadership Development Programme.
Speaker 3:So that was a still is an NHS England online training course. It takes about six months to do so. It's quite a commitment, but it's specifically for people who have lived experience of a long-term health condition or are carers for people with long-term health conditions and complex needs. They're trained by the NHS to understand a bit about how it works. So you can use your story to effect change, to make the system work in a way that would work for you and for people like you. And part of that course is it gives you an opportunity to tell your story, and that's the first time when I actually wrote down, literally the first time I've ever written down what happened and allowed me the opportunity to make that connection between, well, actually trauma recovery and the use of climbing, in that trauma recovery is a form of social prescribing. So what should I do about that is? Can I, can I? Can I create something that people would be interested to see if it works for other people because, again, I was just a sample of one is is the use of climbing in the treatment of trauma and mental mental illness a thing that was kind of where I was probably two years ago and that, and so it again.
Speaker 3:It was a bit of a coming together of two or three different worlds with, with a little bit of a little bit of luck and a little bit of space to reflect, because one thing that's happened in the last sort of four or five years is my children got older. So I've got four children my eldest, my daughter, then my eldest son and then twin boys. So, as they've got older, you just have a bit more space to think when you're in that, when you're in the trenches of getting people to school on time and getting the laundry done and who's got packed lunches and you know what time swimming lessons. Then it's hard to think about your own self really. You're just. You're just up to your eyes in it. So that's kind of. That's kind of how it was really it was. It was happenstance at the end of the day yeah, just want to go back to that book.
Speaker 1:The body keeps the score because it was recommended to me a couple of years ago. We have mentioned it a fair few times on here and anyone sort of listening to this and relating and thinking, well, there may be a layer of ptsd be honest, I don't think I could have got through that during the depths of my ptsd. You know, it took me. It was like 20 years after when I read that. Can I ask you when you read it? I'll be honest, I I read it and I thought actually this means what I'm going through. I am actually normal for going through this. This is the way that my brain is going through this. I am not what's the word, you know. It's not that I'm out of sync or anything or I've lost something. It's the fact that my brain has done what other people's brains do. So I'm not really alone and it gave me a little bit of support, internal support, after going through that and keep internalising a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I totally recognise that. And again, when you're really caught in it, unless you're getting really high levels of expert help, it's very difficult. You can't self-help your way out of this stuff when you're in the midst of it. And yeah, that time and space gave me the opportunity to read it and then, yeah, totally, I mean my, I'm a scientist by background, I got a biological sciences degree, so I kind of like to understand how stuff works. And actually, when he started talking about these different bits of the brain and where, where emotions come from, and then the emotions sort of processed and transferred up to another bit of the brain and which then decides what to do about those emotions, and in and in the traumatized brain, that connection doesn't work. It just it just shuts it down. So the emotions are there deep in your brain, but you just refuse to engage in your brain, which kind of creates a self-protection mechanism, to, to, to, to sort of protect yourself from your emotions.
Speaker 3:When I saw red, I said what exactly?
Speaker 3:Like you said, it's kind of oh, that's what's going on, oh, okay, and then. And then the really interesting thing for me was okay, what does that mean if I then deliberately create an emotional response and reaction in my body, like going, climbing, going up high, looking at something beautiful, scaring myself shitless. That's a real emotion that I can, then my brain can, then it has to process, it has to front into it, otherwise you're, you're going to be crag fast and you'll never, you know, you'll just jibber your way, you know, and won't ever go climbing again. And that's not what's happened. What's happened is I've continued to climb and I've continued to kind of appreciate those emotional kind of opportunities, because that's what my brain likes to do and how it gets better, how it heals itself by feeling those genuine emotions. So, yeah, reading, reading it, understanding there was a thing and actually, like you said, you weren't just a tragic, tragic tale of woe, you're actually a, you know, you're a medical condition, oh okay. Well, maybe there's something I can do about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've totally recognized that yeah, I know, as we mentioned earlier, it's like 24 years since mine and I'm, you know, back into treatment with this emdr which is bloody fascinating, groundbreaking for me, which we're going to talk about another time now when I started doing the mountain stuff, outdoors, climbing, etc. I think I was using it as an escapism from my original escapism of golf, but maybe I wasn't and it. But what I've tried to do lately is dissect what was going on, because I was getting all these this things from climbing and walking and hiking. But I was just thought you know, I'm going for a hike, I'm going for a few days in scotland, so what, what were you getting from that? Or what do we get from that from just being out girls?
Speaker 3:yeah, again, I've tried to think about this a bit, like you also said. Well, there is a sense of escapism, escape from daily life. There's a sense of, maybe there's a sense of self-punishment, you know, going out and making yourself feel really, really uncomfortable and enduring stuff, kind of personal, kind of challenge. And I absolutely, you know, I think all that stuff does definitely happen and is there a case for that? I also think that there is the physical demands of it. You know, you've got to be fairly fit and strong to do some of this stuff, not outrageously, but exercise makes you feel better. So if you, if you go out in a long day and I had a long day in the hills in southern slovenia, or nearly a couple weeks ago, 25k in big loop, got back to the car absolutely shattered, drove home, you feel immense, you just feel immense.
Speaker 3:So there's there's the response to the exercise, there's the sort of the metaphor of personal challenge and escapism. There's also the the emotional sort of joy and awe and, you know, just sudden resonance with your environment. It's quite spiritual in a way. I'm not a religious person, but those spiritual moments, those are very genuine emotional things that you get out of it. So that there's. There's three, right, there's a sort of the metaphorical thing, there's the physical exercise thing, there's the emotional thing and then the bit that I sort of plugged in or a bit I've been exploring in the last couple of years with, with climbing matters. It's the psychological thing.
Speaker 3:So this is about overcoming fear and anxiety and having the right mindset and curiosity and trust and all these sort of kind of exercises and things we can play with our brains and play with our minds, which sense of community, all those sorts of psychological things.
Speaker 3:And I think those are the things that I've started to learn more and more about in the last year or so. And certainly you know when you're going to go to things like a like adventure mind, that's what people are talking about as well, as well as all the sort of physical stuff and emotional stuff. There's a lot of psychologists, a lot of very, very clever people talking about stuff and thinking actually that makes so much sense, and so that's actually where I'm starting to lean on some clinical psychologists I know and some other experts who know their mustard to sort of say, actually what you're doing does work and it works like this, or try and make it more robust, because at the moment, you know, I've created this approach based on what I think and how it works. And yeah, it's going to be. You know, I'm trying to make it as robust as I can by putting in all the sort of the credibility in behind it as we go along.
Speaker 1:So if we move to Climbing Matters, let's discuss this if you could tell us, firstly, who do you get on board, and then we'll look at how it works, I think, yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker 3:So climate matters is for people who live with severe mental illness currently. So we deliver it in partnership with a social enterprise, nationwide social enterprise called turning point and a turning point provide community and residential care for people with lots of challenging life circumstances. That could be substance abuse, criminal behavior, learning difficulties, whatever. But particularly in people I deal with, they all live with severe mental illness. So nottingham, where I live, has got four or five different turning point locations and each one, you know, caters to a slightly different, a slightly different audience, slightly different set of needs. There are peer support workers within each of the centers and it was again a bit of a bit of good luck.
Speaker 3:I happened to meet a lady who was the title right. She's the regional director of operations for turning point, so for the east, midlands and north, or I don't know what her patch is, but and I was telling her that I'd done this course, the peer leadership development program, and I was interested in the use of climbing to help people with mental health problems, and she said well, we look after people with severe mental illness. Do you want to have a go at doing something for them Laterally. So that's how we started and we're still doing that now. But we've also now got some funding from the NHS and DEFRA's Green Social Prescribing Programme Board, which was a big two-year study that ran from April 21 to March 23. So it ran for two years and now there's an extension sort of going in and we're getting some money for that.
Speaker 3:So that will be for people with more mild to moderate mental health challenges through again through a social prescribing pathway. So somebody would go to their GP and say I'm feeling a bit low or suffering with anxiety or what have you? And the social prescribing say well, look this, there's this climbing course. You can go on. Is that something? It's. It's run by somebody with lived experience. You'll get some coaching, you'll get some support and you'll get structured to the way, and we found it's been very effective for people like myself.
Speaker 1:So that's that's kind of where we're going how does that work if, um, I don't, I don't want to think of an example. So somebody is do that, are they prescribed to you? Are they prescribed to you? Are they sent to you? And then they just start a process.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So the way it works at the moment is I contact, I work with the peer support workers at Turning Point and I've got a little poster and stuff that they put up in the centres and we say, right, we're going to run a course from like, we've just done week three. The course is five weeks long. We've just done week three this week, this morning in fact, and we say, right between, you know, start a five-week course starting on the one of the 10th of july, every wednesday, 10 to 12 at the nottingham climbing centre, come along and you know if you're interested and the peer support worker will then go with that person and accompany them to the centre and then we'll run this, we'll run the sessions, and so there are sort of structured two hour, two hours a week for five weeks and then at the end of the five week we do a little graduation, we get a little certificate and stuff, and then we do it a day out in the peak district as well.
Speaker 3:So the moment we're getting, we're getting people interested via their peer support worker, which is a really important step because they know the individual personally, they know you know what they're motivated by, what their backgrounds are. I don't know anything like that. I don't really need to know. All I'm interested in is are they getting into a session and as the session working for them in the? When we move to a more open social prescribing model, it will be slightly different. So a social prescribing link worker will refer them to me and then I will sort of coordinate with the people who are coming in and say, okay, well, when can you come? When you know when when is suitable for for you, and we can sort of work with the climbing centre who have been absolutely brilliant, by the way, to find a slot that works for them With the guys from Turning Point, because it's 10 until 12 every Wednesday the centre's actually shut to the public, so we have it to ourselves and that's a really good way of managing the environment for particularly people who might feel quite isolated and a bit bit distant from sort of normal society, if you like.
Speaker 3:Having a center to ourselves is a really positive step, particularly the first two weeks as people get used to it. Of course, by week three, four and five they're very comfortable environment. They're just sort of you know, you've been swan in whatever, I think with the people who've got sort of more mild, to moderate. What we'll try and do is we will do it privately if they need to, but actually might not not need to. So we'll just go when it's a bit quieter, like on a Tuesday afternoon when there's no school groups in or something. They just kind of do it that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I suppose the people that come to you, I mean it'll be a big step, or could be a big step, potentially a big step for some of them because, first of all, they're admitting in public that they've got a mental health issue. Do you find people actually grow, get some personal growth, just by joining the group, without actually doing anything?
Speaker 3:yeah, I mean, we have a couple of people who I mean if you think about it.
Speaker 3:Right, you're asking someone to go somewhere they've never been before, to meet someone they've never met before and do something you've never done before. Right, it's quite a big ask, isn't it really? Yeah, and you're just going to wander off the street in nottingham. It's quite well served by the buses and trams. Wander off the street into thistingham, it's quite well served by the buses and trams. Wander off the street into this building, used to be a swimming pool, into this really weird environment which is a climbing wall. Right. So it is. Yeah, it has this enormous sort of number of bridges to cross, even before you've got in the door. So, anybody who comes in that door, the first thing we always do and I say to them, you know, at the very beginning of session one is you know, I acknowledge that, I say thank you. You have demonstrated already two things One, courage to overcome those bridges and step through this door and sit with us in this little cafe, because we always do it in the cafe. And the second thing they've got is curiosity, because if they thought, oh, that's not for me, I'm not interested, no, they're shut down, they're not going to come in, but they thought, well, that's interesting, know, they're shut down, they're not going to come in. But they thought, well, that's interesting, what's that about? So they're going to, they've come in. So they've got this open-mindedness and people call that growth mindsets and stuff but they've, they've got it and I tell them because you're here, you've got this curiosity that you need to just see, just to ask the question, what it's like and and, and I don't. I don't kind of ask anybody to talk about their challenges. They have the coaching, coaching element of it, the lived experience coaching element is always. This is what I found. I'm interested to see if it works for you. I'm curious about what it means for you. I'm going to talk about some things and we're going to ask some questions and we're going to see what it might mean for you.
Speaker 3:So one of the questions I ask at the beginning is beginning of session one. Before they've even gone in the climbing room, I asked them what do you think of climbing? Just, you know, just whatever. You know whatever comes to your mind and you get the normal kind of you know, oh, it's really hard and it's really it's for thrill seekers and it's really, you know, kind of it's. You get the normal spectrum you'd get and then, after a sort of session two, you ask him what do you think about climbing now? And you get a completely different set of responses. And actually by asking those two questions I reflect and say, well, look, what you've just done, you've changed your mind. And changing your mind in everyday kind of terms is kind of normal. I didn't used to like baked beans but I do now. I've changed my mind on them. It's kind of normal.
Speaker 3:But actually, when you're talking about trauma recovery and you're talking about severe mental illness, changing your mind is a very powerful idea. And if I can get people to recognize that they have the potential to change their mind, you know you're making quite, you're making some quite interesting connections and without talking about the fact that they might have, you know, personality disorder or high levels of depression or whatever it is, we don't, we don't ever need to talk about any of that stuff. They're feeling in this session and what they can do about those feelings, how you can respond to them. And then we ask them well, what does that mean about out in everyday life? Because you're doing it here in a really weird intense environment. That means you can do it elsewhere.
Speaker 3:And the other thing about the sessions I'm really conscious about and again, I picked this up from one of the speakers at adventure mind last year the idea of the transition moment.
Speaker 3:So when you've come off the street into the climbing center, you sit, we sit in a cafe and we chat and then we go into the climbing area and at the end of the climbing sessions we go back to the cafe and you decompress a little bit and you take the harness off and you just have a chat and then you leave and those transition points I think I've come to recognize is so important because otherwise you're just dragging people off the street, put them in a harness and shoving them up the wall and it's quite a shock.
Speaker 3:It's quite a shock. So you need that, you need that sort of nice transition, one of them. So I've never found people have really cowered away from it. I'm quite open and I saw. This is why it's been good for me and and and I'm interested to see if it helps you and when you're giving them the support to actually try this stuff and they suddenly realize they're nine meters in the air and you know, they've told me're from the heights. Were you from the heights or did you just think you were because it didn't look at me like you are, and those are the connections that.
Speaker 1:Those are the moments, I guess that people really remember yeah, I think from personal, my own personal experience and with what I'm doing now with the emdr, um, yeah, we're going through living with a mental illness or a mental health condition. You do have this. It's like a fixed mindset and when you get deep into it, like the emdr allows me to do, it's actually it's you know, when you get behind it it's not actually. That's, that's false, it's a thought that has been stuck and it's just stuck there and needs and needs moving. Yeah, which then allows, you know, allows someone to go on to experiment with these stuff or try these stuff, and it might not be for them, but they can go try something else because they start moving that block.
Speaker 2:It's moving that block, it's gaining confidence. And then also they become resilient to anything that gets thrown at them in the outside world.
Speaker 3:That's certainly what we hope, yeah, that you can make them realise that exactly what you said that the fact that they thought they couldn't do something was just the key word in that sentence is you thought you couldn't do something and actually so it's just change your thought because suddenly you find you can do it and you can take some of those things out into the real life and you do hope that people can kind of take those lessons elsewhere. And and there's all sorts of you know, I try and have nice little things that people can remember, like what you look at determines what you see. So if I'm at the top of the climbing wall and I'm looking down and I'm looking at the height, you know you could get scared. If I'm at the top of the climbing wall and I'm looking how far I've come, you're just looking at a different thing or seeing it a different way. And the other one I use is if you're trying to cross a road, right, there's all these cars flying past you. You could be looking at the cars. You look at the gaps between the cars because that's the opportunity to cross and actually you're so comfortable with crossing the road because you've done it loads and loads of times you don't even think about it. Really, you're just waiting to cross the road.
Speaker 3:But as soon as you do something you've never done before, your brain goes, oh, what's that? And it gets really kind of. So we talk about expanding comfort zones and exactly said the fact that you have they. Everybody who comes on my course has a growth mindset. Otherwise they wouldn't be there because they and they might not know it. That's why I need to remind them of it. But as soon as they start to realize that, they think wow and and yeah, the reactions people get, you know, this is sort of sometimes it's a bit of stunned silence. Sometimes there's this like massive cheshire grin, you know smiles across people's faces. Some, you know, you see people sitting there kind of shaking after done their first climb with the adrenaline, thinking I can, I can't believe I've just done that, and then five minutes later they're doing it again. So you just yeah, you see it and experience it real in life and kind of real time. So it's inarguable at that point.
Speaker 2:Do you feel like the people who join your course? Do you feel like they open up after the first session, after the second session or by the end when you finish with them? Do they become? Do you feel like they're slightly a different person than they were when they came? There must be a huge transformation in their confidence.
Speaker 3:I've definitely seen remarkable transformation. So if I think of a young lady who came on the course back in the spring session one, she came in, she's just literally quivering and literally gripping onto the sleeve of the lady she came with and was, you know, genuine, because she was terrified. And after the first couple of you know sessions, going on on the low wall to the to the higher wall to start on the ease and stuff she was, she was a brilliant climber. She just threw herself up with him, including onto the auto belay, which of course you have to throw yourself off at the top, and she had forgotten that. She was scared completely. She was totally, totally transformed. It was, it was remarkable.
Speaker 3:And then on the session we had three weeks ago, a chap sat next to me, session one, while we're having that introductory talk he said, oh, it'd be interesting, but it's not for me this. You know, that's literally what it's not for me this. Get him in the wall, get him up and again, grinning like a cheshire cat at the end and a fantastic quote from a lady who did the course last year. She said because the course is 10 o'clock in the morning, so you've got to get up, get changed. You know, get. You know, get dressed, get over the city for 10 o'clock in the morning. Even that can be a challenge. This lady said to me that my family tell me make sure you get up and go climbing, because you're like a different person when you come back and you think, okay, that's, that's, that's amazing, that's remarkable. So I can show. I can definitely show and and capture those anecdotes.
Speaker 3:What I'm looking for now and I'm interested in and this is some of the work that I'm doing with with my local integrated care board and under the national, the national green social prescribing board is what's happened to these people's long-term trajectory. So they've gone on a course for five weeks brilliant. Then we take them out to the peak district into a day on real rock, birch and edge or the roaches, something like that brilliant. What happens then? You know what? Does anything significant change? And so we try and find ways of monitoring that difference.
Speaker 3:But again, anecdotally, there's a. There's a guy who's on the course, who would just happen, which happened, I think, is in them, is in the forensic step down, wants to carry on. We're going to fund him to get a climbing harness, pair of boots, a helmet, probably do a development course at the local climbing ward, he could become a climbing ward instructor. He's got it. You can just see. So when I can show and evidence that kind of change in life trajectory, in potential, in employability, in whatever you want to use as a metric, suddenly again you've made the case and people should be paying attention.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if we just went back to that example you were saying about the lady getting up and crossing the city and her family saying how different it is. I mean, that's just it's introducing purpose, isn't it? And we don't know what's going on with people's stories the day before. And from my own example, which I can keep relying on because, yeah, I lived it, I was there partially then that's that meant that when I'm going out and doing a mountain or going climbing, then that affected my whole mindset the day before. It's not just that two-hour session or just getting there and, like you said, there's so much around that you know a point of going somewhere. So I wouldn't, you know, get into bed early. But if I'm getting to bed early to go somewhere, I'm probably getting insufficient sleep, which if I'm in a nightclub till four in morning, I'm probably not getting sufficient sleep, and then looking after diet, and you know I want to be there, I want to succeed in what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:So yeah yeah, and it's all. I do find it fascinating. You know, we've got this one target of getting up, getting out of bed sorry and going for a two-hour climbing session, but look at everything that's all around it, you know, including, you know, nutrition and hydration and physical exercise and community, and you know, and then that stepping forward, and yeah, I have got a mental health condition, but I can do this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and a couple of really interesting points there, one of which is that idea of the people you meet on the course. So they tend not to know each other because they might come from different services around the city and we've got ages from sort of early 20 up to probably 60-ish, different ethnic backgrounds, different genders, different body sizes, different shapes, different heights, everything, and some people with physical mobility issues as well. Everybody's there, everyone's doing, everyone's supporting each other. By the time you get to weeks two and three, the sense of support within the group, just a little sense, a little sense of community, and that people, if somebody doesn't know, oh, where's so-and-so this week, oh, they couldn't make it this week because of x, y and z, they're showing kind of care and and yeah, that that I don't think I'd appreciated how strong an effect that would be, just this sense of identity and community. And I asked. The one of the questions I asked, I think, in week four is what are you a part of now? And and you get people going well, we're part of, you know, part turning point. We're part of this little climbing group climbing matters. Yeah, yeah, you are, you're part of nottingham's climbing community. Everybody here knows you all this. All the instructors know you. You could come to any climbing wall in the country now, really, and do this, because it's the same thing. You're part of the british climbing community and suddenly people just go really, am I? Yeah, you are, this is. This is what this community is like. It's very accepting, it's very open. Those sorts of things are really interesting.
Speaker 3:And then when you go back to what are you saying, saying about preparation and I think that was again, I didn't know it at the time, I don't think it was only after quite a lot of reflection, having something to look forward to is a hugely powerful thing has been for me. It's pretty obvious to say it really, but for a long time I couldn't look past about a month in time. I just didn't have any future. I just didn't work on that time scale. I was on this week, today and maybe two or three weeks time. I could never understand people who were booking their summer holidays for next year. How do you know what you're going to be doing next? That's just like bizarre to me. When I was doing things like okay, well, I did mont blanc back in 2009.
Speaker 3:And when I was doing adventure, racing and stuff like this you've got this big thing you're aiming for and it creates that purpose. It really gives you that stuff and I think I think the climbing rat is, of course, in a very micro way does that. It gives you something to get up for, gives you people to go and see and say hello to, gives you. You know, one of the climbing walls has got a tree painted on it and it's great because you can see how high you've got up each time. And there's a lady that's.
Speaker 3:You know, each week she comes, she's getting slightly higher up the tree and we're taking pictures of her to show where she's got to and that kind of thing, and she can see, like this week she was basically a foot off the top, which was fantastic, but it's giving her that sense of well, next week I'm gonna really do it, next week I'm gonna really do it. And yeah, that that goes back to that sort of psychological thing of motivation, of having something to work toward and all that good stuff which I'm sure is is well covered ground. But yeah, it's so obvious in retrospect but I didn't.
Speaker 1:I don't think I knew what's happening to me at the time yeah, I think reflection's vitally important for well, for anyone, not just anyone with a mental health condition, because you tend to focus on how bad things are and, you know, maybe stuck in a negative feedback loop, rather than looking how far, how far, you've actually come. You know, and you know, maybe stuck in a negative feedback loop, rather than looking how far, how far you've actually come you know, and I've you know, it's like in a, in a mountain context, if somebody's out walking.
Speaker 1:You know the summit may look a long, long way away. Um, but you know, look how far you've come from the car park yeah, yeah, and and that again, that's a.
Speaker 3:It's a really interesting idea of this sort of sense of perspective and what you're thinking about in the timescales and giving yourself an opportunity to reflect isn't something that we do very often and, again, the coaching that I try and do in the course is we try and give people that opportunity to just reflect back on what you've done and and and and how you felt last time and how you're feeling now and and all those sorts of so yeah. Then those those little moments of conversation, particularly the end, when people can sit back and relax and they can have a cup of tea and a bit of cake and just decompress a little bit, yeah, no, I. I think those moments are, again, invaluable.
Speaker 1:I suppose that seeing people move from session one or session two, I've had it myself with um young people that we take to climbing walls and they're sort of impressed that they've moved two, three metres off the floor. And then, by session two and three, they're sort of a bit disappointed because they haven't made the top and they're not thinking. You know what I mean, and that mindset changes that I can do this rather than dare I do this or can I do this, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And the other thing again, just looking into the some of the, some of the, the neuroscience of it again, I'm not a neuroscientist but I've, you know, I've read into some of this stuff and the idea that your brain is more susceptible and more sensitive to negative things than positive things as a survival mechanism. Right, it's looking for danger because it wants to keep you safe. So it's looking for stuff and it's remembering bad stuff because it really doesn't want you to experience it again. So anything that reminds you that they have bad stuff, it, you know, kind of triggers you in the way you go. But because your brain naturally is looking for the negative stuff, kind of subconsciously, to keep you safe, you have to, you have to actively put positive stuff in. You have to actively say, you know, think of all the good things you've done today, or actively say how well did you do, look, how far you've got. We get people belaying people by sort of weeks, four or five, not not four, but bell ringing sort of you know, because we say to look, this is the most responsible thing you'll probably ever do, because you are literally you've got this person's life in your hands. So that level of trust, you suddenly think, wow, okay, you know I'm looking at this person, so again giving them the opportunity to do it and then reflecting on it. This is what you've just done to pause the positivity into the brain and just trying to make counter that it's natural negativity. I'm not saying you know that this kind of you'll never feel negative again, but you just have to recognize that you have done well and you have done. And if? If you didn't get to the top again growth mindset it's not like you're never going to get to the top or you're never going to climb again. Just try again next week. It's not one of those interesting things about climbing.
Speaker 3:I ask people, why do people climb? And you get all this sort of you know, or to conquer the mountain, that sort of stuff. And I think it was Edmund Hillary who said you don't conquer the mountain, you conquer yourself. The challenge is always inside. It's never out there. The mountain will be there tomorrow, it'll be there next year, it'll be there long after you're gone. All you're doing is sharing some time with it and sharing a moment with it, just to see you know what it's like. And that's kind of why people can't To find out that they can to sort of get to a certain level of honesty with themselves and a certain sense of clarity of what they can and can't do, and that's a pretty powerful place to be. If you can be honest with yourself, I think that's quite a strong start.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. I would definitely say that the biggest mountains I've climbed or will ever climb have been in my mind, you know, and to conquer them and the rest is just fun, really, yeah. So how does this fit with what Belinda's doing at Adventure Mind?
Speaker 3:So the interesting thing I found about all the conversations I had when I go to Adventure. Mind you think there is all these people that are trying this stuff. So there's obviously something really interesting about the outdoors, about challenge, about health and mental well-being and all those sorts of things. So it was obviously very fertile ground. But when it was, when I read her book adventure revolution, some of the the very specific things around why climbing and I do talk specifically about climbing, that's my, my sort of passion and experience is good for mental health is about the challenge. It's about the pressure that you have to endure if you're going to grow.
Speaker 3:And that idea that by creating an opportunity for people to experience that pressure and experience that challenge in a supportive environment, you can create some incredible care outcomes. You can change people's trajectories. That suddenly gets really, really rich in terms of what people can do and how people can do it. And you have to learn from each other, because you know I'm just a punter, I'm making it up as I go along, really, but it's only by plugging into people who know a lot more than me, or doing things different ways and all those sorts of things, you suddenly think, okay, this, this could work. Am I thinking about accessibility enough? Okay, I do have people with mobility issues. Am I got, have I have we got, people from all the different ethnic backgrounds coming? Are they happy in these environments? You're you talking to people who are doing things in different ways in different parts of the country, challenges myself to say, okay, well, I could do better. What, how could this work? What have I learned that you could might find out about?
Speaker 3:So that that sense of people really engaging with this as a really powerful idea, making you know the use of adventure in the outdoors for people's health and well-being, particularly mental health, but then actually learning from each other and having these opportunities to to find out what's going on, it's very. It has in the past, I think, been very fragmented as a landscape because everyone's trying to do their own little thing. And actually the more I speak with you know people. You know some of the bodies that spoke to adventure mind, bmc, british mountain hearing council, mountain training association, all these sort of these groups that have skin in the game, even even department health, social care and my local icbs, and they're kind of they have skin in the game.
Speaker 3:So if we want to create genuine change, we have to have a really powerful story for people to believe. You have to have the right not political support, but political small p, but the right, the right people in your boat with you, helping and moving you forward. And you have to have a system that allows things to work. So you know, I need to be able to get the climbing center to be paid, okay, well, it's very difficult for the nhs to pay the climbing center because they're not a supplier, but the nhs is is a relationship with turning point and turning point suppliers in nhs. So actually, why don't turning point pay the climbing center?
Speaker 3:it's it's those kind of sort of plumbing issues which, where you're getting, you know where the system has to happen, it has to be, it has to allow it to happen. And I think that that idea that you're trying to create a story, you're trying to create will and you're trying to get a system that allows this to happen, that that's for me what something like Adventure Mind is trying to. You know, push forward and make real, because it's blooming hard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's extremely encouraging. You know, when we go to like Nature Mind and Adventure Mind, to say I'll be honest, I was quite daunted because of all these academics and you know people with power and they're absolutely listening to what you say, and I think it was people with power and they're actually listening to what you say and I think richard wall that said to me at nature mind you know, you can't, we can't, buy experience. So even you know people like us, survivors. I've got a lot to a lot to offer because we're still here so we can, so we can tell our story.
Speaker 3:So you will be at adventure mind this year, I take it yes, yeah, I I'm going to be hopefully doing the um, the little impact session, so know, an hour's session a couple of times a day where people can come along and experience some of the coaching sort of styles of things that I do. Last year, you know, I was lucky enough to have a big keynote speaker spot which allowed me to get right into some of the guts of the story, if you like and just as you kind of. There is a really important role of people lived experience and and survivors, as you call. I've always really struggled with it because of that sense of what happened to me was just revolting and you don't want people to have to know what that was about and understand it and I don't particularly want to go rummaging around those memories. So I have to be very careful how I do it.
Speaker 3:But if I go back to that fact, the story drives the political will and and the guys with the money and the groups who have got clout to say, ok, well, we should change stuff.
Speaker 3:So I just have to keep that link in mind, that I'm doing it and I am leaning quite heavily on some very difficult ground because the people with power need to be slapped around the face a little bit sometimes and say, right, actually, why can't that system talk to that system? Because system, because it's stupid, and actually the fact that you won't let these people go and do this is just ridiculous, you know, pull the socks up and so, yeah, I mean I really enjoyed the opportunity to speak with some of the people like um, like jim burr who was at the nature mind conference he's a pretty senior dude right running national academy of social prescribing to have his ear and have you know, five minutes with him was. It was amazing and again those sorts of conversations that you get things like Adventure Mind and Nature Mind, where you have got some people who have got a little bit of clout and grasp the opportunity to beat them up a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'm not going to go ranty about the political thing, but some people do need to listen up really. So can I ask you, where do you see climbing matters going from here?
Speaker 3:Yeah, big question. I's a. There's a short, medium and long-term answer. I guess a short term. We've got some really interesting opportunities to partake in the the extension of the green social prescribing fund where we're going to be looking at the actual effect it has on people's health system usage. So you look at people's service history before the course. You run the course, then you look at people's service history before the course, run the course, then you look at people's service history after the course Didn't make any difference, because that is a way of creating what's called a value for money argument. The bean counters need to know that if they spend 600 quid putting 10 people through this course, half of them will not go to A&E for the next six months and save you 12 grand or whatever the number is. It's that sort of stuff. So that's the very short term.
Speaker 3:Medium term we're in discussion with turning point about. Okay, well, we do it in nottingham. Why can't we do it wherever there's a turning point site near climbing wall? And so we're good, there's a big one in preston, there's a really good preston fine wall and there's a turning point site up there. So couldn't we just lift it and drop it somewhere else and actually train local climbing instructors to deliver the coaching materials to, to set this, to set the program up well, it's not rocket science, right? None of this is particularly difficult, difficult set and our supportive environment and wherever turning. So it becomes almost like a standard part of turning points service offer for the people that they support. That would be awesome.
Speaker 3:And then I guess the bigger question is okay, well, how do you support the wider climbing instructor communities through either the bmc or, you know, the mountain training association or mountain training to, to give those people the confidence to be able to work with people with mental health challenges? So there's a lady I'm working with and she's down. She's down in they're running a trial called climb for climbing, for well-being, with the bmc, which is a one-day coaching course for climbing instructors to be able to work with people with mental health challenges. It's quite introductory level but it's brilliant. It's got all the kit a bit you need.
Speaker 3:I think some of the stuff we do in in climate matters is the level ups. It was all about a foundation and then a, you know, advanced level. So I'm working with with this vehicle, yasmin, about okay, if you've done that fantastic kind of foundation level, is there a level above it which any climbing instructor or mountaineer instructor you know in the country could book themselves on and get all the skills and confidence they need to be able to go and support people with severe mental illness, trauma, mild to moderate and any other sort of condition that we think we can, we can support? That would be, that would be awesome. If, if everybody could access this type of this type of program through a supported organization like the bmc or mountain training, then, um yeah, we are cooking on gas at that point excellent.
Speaker 1:Thank you for coming on. I think it's brilliant what you're doing. Honestly, as someone that's gone through, you know my own issues and then got into climbing and then wanting to speak about mental health along with Seb. But then you know there's just so much to it with climbing. I've been saying for a few years now that I think if climbing was included in the school curriculum we'd have less of social isolation and social problems. You know, because you do not care who's holding that belay plate, that rope through their belay plate, as long as they're holding it. You know what I mean. Just one final question, and I don't want to be too light-hearted about mental health issues, but did you not get a level of trauma from climbing at Elmscliff?
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a little bit of sandbagging with the grades. There isn't there, Jeez, yeah. Yeah, I've been to Elmscliff a couple of times. We used to go to Cayley quite a bit.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:And then over to Ilkley. So I did quite a bit in the quarry there at Ilkley. Yeah, elmscliff is one of those ones where all the locals were like what VS, give me a break.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was there recently. But I mean, if you go into at Oakley and I remember it was when I first got into rock climbing and I was climbing up and you know you find one of the old bolts in, you know one of the old nooks coming into the rock and then all you could hear from my climbing was this zipping, zipping, and then my belayer saying don't come off, because all your gear's falling out and you're like, oh my God, yeah, I heard someone talk about gear popping the other day and they said like, if my gear comes out, don't tell me.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes, just let me go, yeah, no, I mean, I haven't been to a tomscliff or oakley for a long, long time. But you know, I, I, my favorite crag, probably my three favorite crags besegren in cornwall, multi-pitch granite, glory, the roaches, yeah, in staffordshire, beautiful, beautiful crag, fantastic views, amazing routes, got two of the I think I've only led four E2s in my life and two of them were the Roaches and probably Baggy Point in North Devon. And if you haven't been to Baggy Point, it is a slab climber's dream, it's just fabulous, fabulous. So that'd be my arms.
Speaker 1:Cliff did not make the list, yeah, I was there, except that we'd done McKinley and I was getting pulled up. Really, yeah, it's, we call it character building, all these parts and nice views though, isn't it Lovely yeah. Full of red cat. So, yes, thanks again, richard, for joining us.
Speaker 3:Thank you, richard, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on. I've loved it.
Speaker 1:Brilliant. All the best with Climbing Matters, mate. Keep up the good work.
Speaker 3:Take care.
Speaker 1:Bye, thanks, and if you'd like to support us and help us keep the podcast going, then you can go to Buy Us A Coffee, or you can click that on our website, whitefoxtalkingcom, and look for the little cup. Thank you.
