Half Dome and Yosemite Valley as seen from Clouds Rest, photo taken by RWO Coordinator Aileen on a run
Rob Krar, a professional ultrarunner from Hamilton, Ontario, discusses the challenges he faces as he manages depression with his professional running career. He shares how frustrating it can be to work relentlessly towards a goal with setbacks such as major depressive episodes. He says that rather than fighting the feeling of falling into a dark hole, he accepts the depressive feelings even if this is the last thing he might want to feel at that time.
This skill of radical acceptance stems from Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which stresses that sometimes events happen in life that you cannot control. Accepting reality as it is isn’t the same as agreeing with it; it is about accepting things that you cannot control to mitigate the suffering that you feel when you are in pain. Radical acceptance can be an important tool in managing challenging things that happen in life, whether adverse events or moods and feelings.
