Jitters: Overcoming Riding Anxiety Resulting From a Traumatic Event
by Brittany A. Probst (Brittany)
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Your legs tremble, your breath is short, and your stomach is doing flip-flops. You’re in the process of mounting Old Dobbin, who happens to be standing and waiting patiently, nearly asleep. You finally swing your leg over, find your off-stirrup, and nudge Dobbin into a slow plodding walk. You wonder why you have to be so nervous on such a quiet horse, and try to calm yourself. However, with each step your horse takes, your heart races and you become unnerved once again. It is a frustrating situation, but what can you do? Riding anxiety is a very common dilemma amongst horse people. This is because most riders with some experience under their belts have had a bad incident in the past, whether it was major and life-threatening to the horse or rider, or just a minor accident. Fear and anxiety are often the products of these incidents, and can be so powerful that they can even drive people away from the sport of riding. Then, there is the population of horse people who, instead of discontinuing riding because of their fears, choose to rehabilitate their riding confidence. This task, as many know, is harder than it sounds. It often means revamping a rider’s whole perspective on their riding goals and abilities. Also, for some riders, it means swallowing their own pride so they can effectively improve their riding skills. In the case of confidence issues, overactive pride only gets in the way of success. STAGE 1- Confront Your Emotions First and foremost, the emotional root of the rider’s post-traumatic anxiety must be addressed and explored. The first step toward confident riding is recognition of your fears. In order to accomplish this, you must think back to the incident that provoked your anxiety. What exactly happened? Could this event have been prevented or avoided? Don’t play the blame game with your horse, but also ask yourself if the incident was caused by rider error or your horse’s instinctive behavior, or maybe even both combined? Think the initial incident over clearly and visualize it in your mind. What could you, the rider/handler, have done to avoid this event, if anything? Once you have answered these questions, begin using the method known as “positive visualization.” Play the traumatic event over in your head again, but this time, visualize things going the way they should have gone or the way you intended. For example, visualize your horse reacting calmly to that deer running across the trail instead of rearing and bolting. This thought, for now, should be considered a long-term goal. This positive visualization will prepare a rider to deal with similar situations in a more secure manner. Focus on how you would rather deal with the initial incident if it were to arise in the future, and most importantly, be REALISTIC. If you are a nervous, inexperienced rider who has an unsuitable horse, you are limiting your potential confidence before you have a chance to develop it at all. There are two types of confidence- true confidence, and gutsy confidence. True confidence is gained through education and experience, while gutsy confidence is gained when a rider has a lot of “guts” but doesn’t use their brain nearly enough when dealing with horses. To gain true confidence, which is the ultimate goal, you must know where you originally stood between these two types. Put pride aside and be honest with yourself. Are you advanced enough to handle what you were practicing before the initial incident? STAGE 2- Back In the Saddle The next step in bringing back your confidence is to find your comfort zone on a suitable mount and begin riding your way back to confidence. In dealing with confidence problems in riders, it is often found that the rider has ridden or is riding a horse that needs a more advanced rider. Think this idea through clearly with your own current horse. Are you “overhorsed”? If your answer is yes, your current horse really isn’t worth keeping. Try to sell/lease the horse to someone with the skill level to successfully handle it until your skill levels match the skill levels of a that type of horse. Keeping a horse that needs more advanced handling than you can offer would limit your potential confidence greatly, and through this whole confidence gaining experience, the main goal should be to ride to the best of your ability without being anxious. Try to find a calm, even-tempered mount to gain your confidence on, or better yet take lessons on one. Either way, just don’t try to regain confidence on a horse that has a strong potential of reacting violently to different stimuli. Try to find something that is as close to being “bombproof” as possible. You need a mount with minimal complications so you can focus on your feelings and skills while riding. In a controlled environment, saddle your horse and stand beside him or mount him and just stand quietly for a few minutes. Breathe deeply and relax your muscles. Think of the goal you would like to accomplish during this ride, and be sure to start with small goals. This goal can even be as small as just sitting on your horse for a few minutes until your heart rate slows. You are not on a set schedule, so take your time in building a foundation for true confidence. Visualize yourself accomplishing your goal before you begin your ride. When you begin riding your horse, try to accomplish your short-term goal for the lesson. You should be able to reach this goal if you were being realistic and planning in baby-steps before the ride. If you hit the end of your comfort zone, take yourself back to basics well within your comfort zone and start over again. Push yourself as far as you can without feeling extremely uncomfortable. Keep your lesson goal in mind and remain focused on reaching it in a calm, collected manner. Riding to boost your confidence isn’t always a comfortable experience. To become more confident, you must stretch your confidence zone and feel uncomfortable for a while until you realize that it’s not all that terrible. Start slow and things will improve. Once you have reached your goal and tried your best, end the session on a positive and simple note for both you and your horse. Every time you ride, make a conscious effort to push your comfort zone farther. Make your goals a little more challenging as your progress. As a guideline, you can keep a riding log and describe what you accomplished in each lesson. Also keep a separate list of the goals you would like to accomplish in future lessons. Continue visualizing positive rides, and not only just before riding. You can visualize rides before you go to bed, when you wake up, on your lunch break at work- basically whenever you want. Also replay in your mind positive rides that you have already completed. Feel again the feeling that you had during those wonderful rides, and tell yourself that you will have that feeling during many rides to come. STAGE 3- Dealing With the Traumatic Incident Again So, you have gained all of these tools to help you boost your confidence and you feel in a more confident frame of mind while riding your horse. You have worked on your own skills and have developed as a rider mentally and physically. Now what? Many riders never deal with their initial anxiety-causing event again. Much of the time, this is because they choose not to. Many traumatic experiences in a rider’s life are caused by rider error, and by developing true confidence they learn how to prevent themselves from making their errors over again. Sometimes the initial incident was a “freak accident” that the rider will likely never be faced with again, but these types of events can still deeply scar a rider’s confidence. If the traumatic event was caused by a horse’s instinctive behavior, a rider will usually have to deal with an incident similar to it again. When they come upon this, they have given themselves the time to develop a good foundation of true confidence and are able to effectively and calmly deal with the situation in a positive manner. Some riders do redevelop confidence issues in their lives, even after rebuilding their confidence on a foundation. Going back to basics and stage 1 is the best method of defeating the confidence issue, even if the rider has already gone through the program. Don’t be discouraged if you develop confidence problems again. Just give yourself time to redevelop your skills again. The human psyche uses fear as a survival instinct, so having this emotion is usually a trait to a persons benefit. A bit of fear is okay when dealing with horses. They are 1000-pound animals with teeth and four hard hooves, but when treated with sensibility and respect, horses are no reason for huge amounts of anxiety. People must use their brains when handling horses and make safe decisions. True confidence is a valuable tool that can take a rider very far in the horse world as a career or a leisure activity. Riding horses is supposed to be fun, so take the time to develop yourself as a confident and knowledgeable rider to try to preserve the joy you get from riding horses. Be safe, and have fun. Copyright Turn N' Barrels Magazine 2004 |