Green, imposing, crowned by snow. The Alps, my Eden, filled my eyes after long years of absence dictated by anxiety and panic.
It was time to climb them. A path along the ridge to a mountain refuge, a night close to the stars, and the next day a frozen lake that the mountains jealously hide from anyone who hasn't earned it with their legs. I had dreamed of this for months. The joy of a child coming home.
That joy faded during the hours of driving. When we arrived at the foot of the Vilsalpsee, the joy had turned to torment. Doubts. Fear. A trail of sensations that slowly left the ether to become physical, real, urgent.
We decided to take the cable car instead of walking, to take the gentle path along the ridge. But as we approached the chair, I felt a stab in my chest. That intensified. That became impossible to ignore.
I froze. There was no choice but to turn back. That pain would be a heart attack if we kept going up. I needed to go home. To see my daughter again.
We went back to the car.
As the alpine peaks receded and shrank in the rearview mirror, two white clouds formed what I swear was a mocking smile at my retreat. Tears began to stream down my face.
The most important place in my life, the Alps, was being denied to me by anxiety. I thought I had improved. But no. The mountain was putting me in my place.
Maybe you recognise something in that scene. Not the Alps necessarily, but the mechanics. The moment when something that should be normal — a trip, a meeting, a walk, the supermarket at rush hour — suddenly becomes hostile territory. The palpitations that appear without warning. The chest that tightens. The dizziness that arrives from nowhere and fills everything. The visceral certainty, irrational but absolutely real, that something terrible is about to happen.
Maybe you also recognise what comes after. The constant vigilance: pulse checked a hundred times a day, left arm monitored for signs, every bodily sensation interpreted as evidence of imminent catastrophe. The architecture of excuses, always perfectly reasonable, for not going places, not doing things, not straying too far from safety. The map of your life shrinking, so slowly that you take a while to notice that you no longer fit in it.
Or maybe what you recognise is the exhaustion. Of pretending you're fine. Of fighting your own brain every day. Of not understanding why, if there's no real danger, everything feels so absolutely dangerous.
If any of this resonates, this blog is written for you.
That was two years ago. And it wasn't the beginning of the story but, as I would very soon discover, the beginning of a relapse that would take me even lower than when all this started, more than five years ago. But I have now finally navigated that storm and found my way back.
I tell you this because it's the kind of voice I would have wanted to find when I was searching for references I could recognise myself in. I found clinical manuals. I found light testimonials. I found a lot of "you can do it" without much "this is exactly how it feels when you can't." What I didn't find was someone who combined raw lived experience with the science that explains why all of this happens, and with practical guidance on what to do about it.
So I decided to write it myself.
This blog accompanies Morgenrot, a book I am finishing, which is, among other things, the most honest document I have been able to write about what it is like to live inside an anxious mind at its worst moments. Here, on the blog, I write from the other side of the trail. I will share what has worked for me, what hasn't, the mistakes I made so you can avoid them, and the things that nobody says about recovering from anxiety because they don't fit in a five-paragraph post or because the rawness loses followers.
What this blog is not — and I want to be clear about this from the start — is a substitute for professional help. If you are in a moment of crisis, if panic governs your life, find a therapist specialised in cognitive-behavioural therapy. It is the best investment you can make. This space can be a travel companion, but it cannot replace that support. I will be glad to read your testimony and share it here 📨, even to help if I can, but remember that a professional is always the best help.
Morgenrot is a German word that means morning red: that glow that appears in the east just before dawn. It is not yet the light. It is the herald that the light is coming. It appears at the darkest, coldest hour.
That is exactly where this trail begins.
The trail exists. I am walking it. And if the Alps smile at me again, this time I won't be the one who leaves.
Welcome.