Seeking advice on returning to climbing after long haitus
Hello lovely climber ladies! Im having a really tough relationship with climbing right now and I’m wondering if anyone else has gone through something similar to me and can offer some advice.
I’ve been climbing for a long-ish time (12+ years) and have always considered myself a very recreational climber. My hardest outdoor leads are 5.10 for both trad and sport, I generally have never really been into grade chasing, and have often in the past been a proud top-rope champion. I love climbing primarily for the adventure aspect of it - getting out in the alpine with 1-2 close friends for a long day of mellow adventure alpine climbing.
Basically the last couple years I haven’t really been climbing much due to a variety of reasons. Work stress, really intense and toxic schooling, a serious depressive episode, injury, and my main climbing partner turned out to be a big ole POS and I dumped his ass as a friend. It’s just been a tough and shitty couple years but I finally feel like I’m on the other side of things, am generally feeling very good mentally, and WANT to get back into it.
Now as I’m trying to get back into it I’m running into some serious mental blockage and it SUCKS! I’ve gained like 30lbs since I was in decent climbing shape last and everything feels so so so hard. Also my climber friends have all kept on training pretty hard and are kinda out of my league now in terms of what they are wanting to get on.
My husband is a climber too and a super supportive, great guy, but he’s kinda at a loss of how to help me. The last several times we’ve gone out I’ve had a full on breakdown on the wall. Like uncontrollable sobbing, hate everything, I’m done take me home.
I want to want to climb. I miss it. But every time I get out and try to do it I’m just consumed with frustration and it 100% ruins my time. I’ve tried to be very conscientious of only getting on mellow ‘fun’ climbs but even then I just feel like a big ass baby and I hate it.
Has anyone experienced this??? How did you overcome letting your own damn self get in the way of having a good time???
Any input is appreciated 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻