Lifelong anxiety assuaged by trekking the Camino alone

Stephen Dowds was in his 60s when he suffered a severe mental breakdown. In his book, So That My Soul May Sing, he documents how he gradually overcame depression and anxiety after walking the Camino Way.

He describes his collapse as “a single devastating moment when all meaning and purpose drains suddenly from my life; the leaves fall off the trees, the colour drains from the picture, the music stops”.

A keen cyclist who regularly did tough cycles of up to 160km, it became a chore to even get out for an 16km cycle to the top of Eagle’s Rock in Kinvara where he lived.

He had set up a town planning consultancy 17 years previously, earning a good living. But he was crippled by panic attacks, suffering his first while sitting in the library while preparing for exams for a teaching qualification.

He continued to be rocked by “a screaming tension within”.

“It was like having my fingers caught in an electric socket with 220 volts passing through me. Except it was worse than that because the source of the voltage was internal; there was no prospect of running away from it.”

By 2017 he was beset by a moment of devastation.

“My spirit is dying as surely as an unwatered plant. There is nothing to live for, no love, no cause, no purpose, no ambition. The present has no joy, the past no satisfaction, the future no hope.”

His dog of 16 years and only companion Magsie died. He found himself unable to be at home where everything reminded him of his beloved border collie.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.