Of Barrels and Comfort Zones
As I stood on the first barrel in a row of five in a high-ropes obstacle course this past week, all I could think of was something Dad likes to say to me when I’m afraid of getting hurt in an adventurous activity:
“The people who run this place don’t want you to get hurt. They don’t want the liability, the paperwork, the lawsuits. They don’t want you to get hurt any more than you want to get hurt.”
His words cycled through my head again and again as I shifted my weight on the barrel. The one I stood on was arranged horizontally on some ropes and couldn’t move, but the one that was next up was a vertical one that pitched forward unless you stepped exactly in the middle. The third and fifth barrels were horizontal too, but the fourth was vertical. It seemed like my best bet was to move quickly, not give myself time to sway and slip on the moving ones.
That is, if I could convince my feet to move.
Since this was a work “team bonding” experience, I was surrounded by coworkers. Many of them were on the larger towers or higher up on the one I was on. They were moving quickly, not holding on so tightly, excited about the big zipline over the lake we kayaked over earlier.
I felt very comfortable kayaking. I’ve done it several times with Dad, and it was even easier when I was paddling the boat myself. I made my way around the whole lake, found a bluegill swimming around, and tried my best to calm down before going anywhere near the ropes course.
As someone who is very afraid of heights and prefers my feet to be on the ground where they belong, I was very anxious ever since my team’s manager announced that we were going to a ropes course to bond as a team. I immediately pictured myself as the team freak, unable to do things other people could. That thought has been bothering me lately, that I have limitations even though I do enjoy the strengths my condition also brings me, so I was dreading the day.
The sticking point: we were being heavily encouraged to “step out of your comfort zone,” but my comfort zone was leaving the ground in any way. The little tutorial ropes made me anxious, and just thinking about the tower called “The Skyscraper” made me want to run back to the kayaks and paddle away so fast that no one could find me.
All week, I’d comforted myself by telling myself that I wouldn’t try any of the rope activities. Even just thinking about it was making me immensely uncomfortable, and even though my coworkers couldn’t see that, I was technically pushing myself out of my comfort zone. But when I got there, I decided that I needed to take back a little of the power I felt I’d lost when thinking about things I couldn’t do.
And so, I reminded myself that the park didn’t want lawsuits or injuries for their own sake in addition to mine, and I decided to do one obstacle on the lowest level of the very first tower. The choice was between a teeter-totter where everything moved and the barrels where only two moved, so my choice in that was easy.
Everyone else was far ahead of me, except for a few coworkers who stayed on the ground taking photos. One stood by me, encouraging me as I stood on the first barrel for what felt like forever, swaying ever so slightly back and forth, trying so hard to not look down, thinking about how to make the moving barrels stay still long enough to not freak me out. A few times, I came close to lifting up a foot, not knowing which one I should do, overthinking whether I should use my stronger right foot to get a strong hold on the new barrel or keep my stronger foot on the steadier barrel.
At some point, I realized I could stand there all day. I was already well out of my comfort zone, far from the relaxation of the kayaks on the calm lake. I could have turned around, known that I challenged myself, and only been a little sheepish if anyone saw me climbing down without doing any obstacles at all.
But I needed to prove something to myself. I stood there on that barrel, looking down at the gray rocks below me, knowing that I’d tested the strength of the ropes and the hooks, knowing that there was someone below me to catch me in case those failed too. The park didn’t want me to fail, and I needed to know that there were some ways in which I could challenge myself and succeed. This might sound like a small challenge in the grand scheme of things, but as a kid, I always believed physical challenges like ropes courses indicated bravery in participants, and this week, I needed to feel brave.
And so, I lifted my foot off the horizontal barrel.
My idea for minimizing the movement worked. The vertical barrel tipped forward only a little as I found my footing on the next horizontal one, and then before I could lose my nerve, I rushed across the last two barrels, clinging onto the post on the other end as I found myself on a small platform in a tree.
“You’ve done it once! You can do it again,” my coworker shouted at me from beneath the barrels once I got brave enough to turn around. I looked over to the ladder, setting my sights on getting back on the ground. Focused on the sensation of the plastic-coated wire under my hands, the ladder down that really wasn’t too far away, the employee standing underneath me, the sound of my phone clicking as my coworker took photos, the approaching clouds.
I went back as swiftly as I could, clipped and unclipped myself into the ladder, and breathed my way down, not stopping until my feet were on the ground. And it was good I was able to muster my courage so quickly - as soon as I’d hurriedly shucked my equipment, I noticed several of my coworkers being pulled down on the rappelling lines after a thunderstorm warning made the park close early.
Even though I couldn’t participate in the discussion about being excited to zipline (it would have been almost impossible to get me to ride this zipline), I could feel like I was part of the group by talking about the obstacle I’d done. Even though most people did many more obstacles, I still did enough of the activity to get the feel of it (and a pretty good workout, according to my Fitbit), and I got to avoid that feeling of not being able to do things other people find easy.
I really needed to know, especially after making the difficult choice to postpone my dream of owning a dog, that I could do this thing that other people could do. And it didn’t matter to me, in that moment, that some of my coworkers were on the taller towers or rappelling down the sides instead of clinging to a metal ladder like it was their only chance of survival. It didn’t matter to me that some people were able to have fun instead of panic, or that they were excited about this trip instead of dreading it since the moment it was announced.
All that mattered was the everything that worried me so much in the first place - stepping out of my comfort zone - and that this was something I was, in fact, able to do.
Ellie, a writer in the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.