How Birdwatching Helped Ease My Anxiety
By Emily Busse
Editor’s Note: This blog originally appeared in The Bold Italic and can be found here.
What I thought was a “grandmas-only” hobby has done more for my Sunday Scaries than anything else.
An old frenemy came back into my life this past year: anxiety disorder. I finally admitted to myself that this particular flare-up wasn’t going to just go away when my dentist said my gums were receding “due to stress-induced grinding.” If your dentist can guess your mental health, it’s time to get proactive.
I started looking for an in-network therapist (still working on that one five months later), and in the meantime, tried a slew of other self-treatments. I upped my workouts, paid $8 a month for a meditation app, and pulled out the adult coloring book I spent way too much on and never used. But the activity that’s done more for my worst weekend dread than anything else was something I never saw coming: birdwatching.

Birdwatching (or “birding” if you’re cool) is about observing birds in the wild. It started for me three months ago when my dad and stepmom gave me a pair of binoculars for my 28th birthday. They knew I liked hiking and camping, and figured I’d enjoy learning more about the wildlife around me. The first thing I did was watch a neighbor four houses away eat a banana through their kitchen window.
The second thing I did was find the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: Western Region my parents gifted me two years before (they clearly had a vision for me). I hadn’t used the book yet, in part because I associated birdwatching only with my grandparents who had binoculars and a guidebook handy by the back porch. Or with my dad, who will spend 45 minutes Googling facts about an Anna’s Hummingbird after seeing one from the window. But now that my own birding tools were staring at me from my dresser, I thought I should at least give it a try. Maybe Grandpa was onto something.
The following weekend I schlepped up to Tilden Regional Park and gave it my first go. I didn’t see many birds, and I felt a little creepy using binoculars within view of a playground. But once I got far enough from other people and tweaked the binoculars just right, a whole new world opened up.…