In school, I used to hate locker rooms and I used to hate the genderedness of everything. Around the age of 13, I stopped doing physical education at school, which was sad because I enjoyed the movement. But I couldn't really overcome the gender and social difficulties that came with it.

With the organisation I’m working with now, we’re trying to create a chance for young trans and nonbinary people to get another go at having a physical education – learning how to race each other, learning how to endure, learning how to pace oneself and practice breath control.

It’s really helped with anxiety for a lot of young people and for myself as well. I found that running stimulated a similar response to anxiety for me, where it would increase my breathing and make me feel really uncomfortable. When I was anxious, I would not be able to breathe, make eye contact, and would struggle to communicate. All these things happen when I’m running too, but I’m in control of it.

I can run until I feel those things and then I can stop, or I can push through it, and keep running and see where it goes and realise that I'm not going to die.

Nothing is actually triggering my anxiety, nothing is triggering my brain to release these responses other than the physical activity of running, and that is in my control.

That really helps my brain by giving it a good reset. I've continued with the strength and conditioning stuff, and that's been great as well.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta — continued]