What if protecting ourselves from stress ends up sheltering us from life
In a nutshell: A Saturday morning zipline with my daughter got me thinking about fear, excitement and stress. Sometimes the physical sensations are remarkably similar. Perhaps we don’t always need to avoid discomfort. Sometimes we can reframe what we’re experiencing — and enjoy the ride.
I recently became alarmed by what social media was recommending to my daughter.
Skin care. Weight-loss. Guys rating girls. FFS, she’s eleven!
Meanwhile, my son gets Minecraft zombies and Grand Theft Auto.
Right.
Rather than deliver another lecture about algorithms, misogyny, and why a ten-step skincare routine is ridiculous, let’s do something fun.
Something real.
So, on a cool, sunlit Saturday morning, we went for a little drive.
A beautiful day, a horrifying adventure
It was a gorgeous morning in the mountains. Clear air, sunshine through the trees, the road winding down towards the rainforest.
It wasn’t until I flipped through the multi-page waiver, that I realised what I’d gotten myself into.
I mean, I went skydiving once, decades ago. I don’t think I have a problem with heights.
We watched a safety video. My breath was rather shallow.
Then we stepped into harnesses, carabiners, and clipped on orange helmets. And walked up to the cloud platform. Cloud platform.
The small wire platform was suspended above the canopy of the Minnamurra rainforest. It held our small group of about seven.
It was magnificent.
The air was clear. The sky was blue. The forest stretched below us and all around.
My palms were slick.
Looks a lot higher than that!
I edged around the narrow platform. I placed a gloved, loving hand on the enormous brown barrel tree supporting our platform.
Our guide, a man with a sparse moustache, pointed to a hole in the mesh. You know you’re getting older when safety instructors look very young.
“How high do you think we are?”
“Thirty metres,” I said.
Someone else guessed 50.
“Sixteen metres,” said our guide.
Sixteen?
It looked considerably higher from up there.
My daughter, meanwhile, volunteered to go first.
“Are you sure? You don’t have to.”
I watched her disappear through the trees.
Then it was my turn.
Stand at the edge.
Don’t think about it.
Just step off.
WOOOOOOSH.
My heart raced as I flew through the trees.
I landed in the scoop at the other end, grinning like an idiot.
What a rush!
Then came the suspension bridge
Oddly, the zipline wasn’t the scariest bit.
The suspension bridges!
I followed my daughter across wobbling steps while the ropes on either side swayed backwards and forwards.
Halfway across, she started to panic.
“You can do it, Suz! Just a walk in the park!”
She made it.
Then I reached the middle.
I stopped and clung to the ropes, with barely suppressed panic.
“Go, Mummy!” She called from the other side.
Oh, excellent.
Now the child was coaching me.
I kept going.
The next zipline was longer and faster. My stomach plummeted just looking at it.
Took a deep breath.
And off we went.
*
An hour later, we’d done the whole course.
What a buzz for a Saturday morning.
I know, I know, Mel Robbins says fear and excitement are the same thing.
Now I’m saying it too.
Same butterflies. Different story.
My heart was racing. My palms were sweating. My stomach was doing somersaults.
Standing on the platform, I called it fear.
Flying through the trees, I called it exhilaration.
The sensations hadn’t changed.
The story had.
That interests me enormously as someone living with MS, because we’re constantly told to reduce stress. Like that’s even possible.
And yes, chronic, relentless stress matters.
But a stress-free life doesn’t exist.
We’d have to stop working, parenting, travelling, falling in love, caring about people, trying new things—and occasionally standing 16 metres above a rainforest wondering why we signed a waiver without reading it.
Sometimes we can reframe stress.
This feels frightening might become this also feels exciting.
Or, this is really stressful can become, this is exhilarating.
I’m scared, but I’m gonna do it anyway
Sometimes I think it’s better to do something and hate it than to chicken out. That makes you feel the pain of regret that you didn’t take the chance.
Even if you hate it, you’ve done it. That’s a reward in itself: Pain avoidance.
Takeaways
- Don’t aim for zero stress. Life doesn’t work that way.
- Ask: am I unsafe, overwhelmed—or simply activated?
- Try reframing the feeling. Fear and excitement can share some of the same physical sensations.
- Come back down afterwards. Walk, breathe, stretch, laugh, rest, meditate or spend time in nature.
- Don’t let MS make your world unnecessarily smaller. Respect your limits, but leave room for challenge, novelty and joy.
The goal isn’t a stress-free life.
We can’t control everything, but we can choose how we respond.
We did the Zipline Tour at Illawarra Fly Treetop Adventures, Knights Hill Road, Jamberoo Mountain, NSW.
Oh, what fun!
