"I have a great many troubles, but most of them never happened"
- Mark Twain
Living in a world where there is much to be fearful of; wars, disease, poverty, technological advancement, floods and natural disasters we tend to have an un-healthy relationship with Fear. We live with too much of it, sometimes without real cause. Sometimes we don't even realise we are living with fear, or how much, until we experience something significant that gets our attention.
I have worked with many riders, trainers and horse dealers who have suddenly developed a fear of riding after a lifetime in the saddle. This sudden fear has often been brewing below the surface for some time, without their knowledge.
For many horse owners and riders the memory of past falls, kicks and other incidents haunt and taunt us to the point where people give up their passion and walk away. I've worked with many horse riders who have chosen to give up their love of horses due to fear, only to find out that their fear returns in other parts of their lives.
My message is - don't give up on horses - give up on Fear! Don't be afraid of your fear, get help! We all need someone to help us at some point and that's ok, what's not ok is to ignore this need and abandon the very thing that keeps us alive.
This week my "someone" was there for me when I needed his help. He has started me on a journey that we had begun together exactly one year ago. This time I have a new reason to stay true to the journey - it's called regaining my health. Now I will acknowledge, accept and release my own fears in order to conquer them and find better health and prosperity.
My fears are like yours; simple yet complex; real yet imaginary and working to keep me fearful and trapped. My fear does involve my horses and riding Grace but it is also more about my future, money, pursuing my passions, freedom and most importantly my health.
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| Photo I took in 2000 whilst visiting New York |
Last week marked the 13th anniversary of 9/11 and the attack on the Twin Towers and resulting massive loss of life.
The trauma of 9/11 was very real. The resulting levels of fear caused by expectation after the tragedy, for the most part did not happen. Thank goodness!
I was living in the USA at the time of 9/11, and remember every detail of that day, and the days that followed which became months of unbridled fear and mistrust.
The sense of anger and rage was only tempered by the abject fear in people's minds and faces. Air travel was in lock-down. Shops closed, restaurant life became quiet - the air filled with suspicion.
People felt safe only inside their own homes, (ironic as that was the one place being flooded with news images and reports of the collapsing towers, grieving families, and Presidential calls for retaliation).
For the next few years, Americans lived and travelled in fear of a repeat attack. Mercifully, 13 years on it has not happened. So what has happened to all that fear? Did it disappear? Is it still there but diluted? Has it been added to by other sources of threat to our survival?
Fear is an every day activity we chose to honour (without realising it) as we attentively watch life, society, people the news, because our survival requires us to learn about things that may hurt us. That's perhaps why we slow down at the scene of a terrible car accident. It is to learn.
Most times we reach a conclusion "the driver must have been on the phone", "those small sports cars are so dangerous" etc. We store this theory away perhaps to save our lives at a later date.
We learn what to fear, based on our perception of life and the world around us choosing to put our own interpretation on things, people and events. This interpretation is at times valid and real, and at other times made up, inflated or exaggerated. Sometimes we disregard the facts around a risk being actual versus simply perceived. This is the same with our work around horses.
We learn to suppress our fears, to bury them until they show up with health issues or other noticeable life changing events. We can easily end up living a 'half life' because our fears keep us doing the same thing with our lives year after year, despite our heart and soul craving something else. (If this sounds like a mid life crisis - good)!
This sort of fear strangles us and sits like a knot in our chest until we can't breath properly. This is how i've felt for most of this year. It's hit a crisis level just recently and it now has my total attention!
Fear can overwhelm us through everyday events not just major issues such as 9/11. Exposure to events broadcast via daily News, TV and Media - all reinforce our desire to survive against murderers, kidnappers, famine and disease. Rarely are we provided with a balanced perspective of stories about safety, hope, helping each other or healing.
So what can we do about 'fear overload'? How can we better manage fear especially to keep it in perspective when working alongside horses?
Below are some simple tips to implement right away and a summary at the end based on how our horses react to fear.
Fear Management!
Strategy 1 - Don't watch ( read, listen) to the news at bed time!
Don't absorb negative images, pain, suffering, fear and danger just before going to sleep. Allow your body and mind a peaceful fear free night's sleep.
The Media industry survives and thrives on repeating old stories and adding a new level of fear with strap lines such as "the people of Hungerford, UK still awaken at night, worried that it could all happen again". Really? I don't think so. These ridiculous statements are used to give old stories relevance today and like in the movies, allow for a sequel story at a later date.
To conquer the habit of living with fear we have to remove ourselves from the sensationalism of reporting fear based incidents. We can start by removing it from our conscious thoughts and daily data feeds.
Strategy 2 - Keep old injuries and falls a thing of the past
Horse people often find ourselves (or hear others) recounting and reliving stories of we fell off, had a scare, broke a bone, ended up in hospital etc. etc. Even if it happened years ago! We cling onto the memory keeping the feelings of fear very much alive.
Stop it!
Stop telling others about such moments and walk away from anyone else who insists on re-living their scary stories - don't listen!
Catch yourself thinking about them and change your thoughts! Think of something that makes you happy, relaxed not scared. Notice how quickly your feelings change from anxiety and worry to calm again.
Remember that being exposed to constant reminders of fear, shell-shocks us to the point that it becomes impossible to separate the survival signal from the sound bite. i.e. we get a distorted view of what actually poses as a hazard to us and react to the state of fear rather than the risk itself.
As an example, say a news report comes out that a Dolphin attacks a swimmer! Such a story would make a new connection in the minds of millions of us. Dolphins are dangerous to man (even though they are not).
Our survival brilliance is wasted when we focus on unlikely risks!
The same is true and happens often around horses. Imagine an incident where a Stallion bites a woman who is seriously injured as a result. Suddenly all stallions are dangerous for women to handle! We give them a wide birth without assessing the facts and likely risks - real not sensationalised!
Such stories give us another or a new reason to be fearful of horses and we start to live with high levels of fear as a constant companion. This is neither healthy nor fair to us or horses.
Strategy 3 - Shift your focus away from your fear and towards your desires!
The important question is not how might we be injured
or hurt by our horses
but how we want to live with them?
or hurt by our horses
but how we want to live with them?
It is a fact that most horses do not kick, bite us, gallop off with us or generally set out to make us scared to death. They are placid, easy going, mild natured, forgiving, patient, self sacrificing animals who would rather be with other horses and living a conflict free existence. Yet we chose to forget this replacing it with a few select scare mongering stores and our perspective alters.
To bring our perspective back into focus is a key skill to have at your finger tips. It involves active daily practise in remembering what you DO WANT in your riding, horsemanship and relationship with animals. Remembering and feeling are key here. We need both the thoughts and the feelings.
At times the feelings are so raw, so painful, that we avoid going there. This is where meditation, yoga, reiki and other approaches to well being have in my experience been utterly transformational. This is where I am in my journey this week, as I write. I am literally re-learning to breath again. I am cleansing and detoxing and living with the side effects - but more of that another day.
If you know you are suffering from fear, be honest and ask yourself if you actually WANT to live with less fear? Or are you used to this constant state of anxiety and find it comfortable and familiar?
The test is to figure out why you want less fear in your life? There has to be a compelling reason and we have to realise first, just how much fear we are holding onto. For some people, such as myself, until the fear manifests itself as health problems, we don't always ecognise it's time to let it go. For others it might be when we face a financial crisis or find ourselves at a career cross road that the light dawns!
We need to be able to get into the habit of replacing thoughts about how things have been with how you want things TO BE! We need mental space to do this, and freedom from the weight of fear. Releasing the fears with meditation, reiki etc are key in helping us to find that space.
This is a Highly TRANSFORMATIONAL STRATEGY
Strategy 4 - Live in the hear and now, not in the future!
Have you ever noticed how the mind of the beginner is empty,
free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, doubt,
and be open to all possibilities?
People even enjoy beginner's luck!
Re-create this air of open mindedness whenever you feel dread or fear. Change worried anxious thoughts into 'what if..' or 'maybe...' thoughts.
Find these 'windows of opportunity' to take back some control over the thousands of daily thoughts and feelings that flood our minds and body. React to only those that warrant a fear response.
Many young children (raised in unstable domestic environments) develop the art of worry and prediction as a survival tool. However, this has an undesirable knock on effect of putting us constantly in the future, because living in the present feels too dangerous and painful. Living in the future means we aren't really present in the hear and now and we need to be, if we are to learn when fear is appropriate or not.
Treat yourself with the same curiosity that you would a dog - suddenly roused from sleep who stares into space. What has he heard? What has he tuned into? Where is his attention? In other words be thoughtful, present and in the moment with fear, don't allow yourself to become it's slave!
Strategy 5 - "No" is a complete sentence!
Have you ever stopped to notice how obedient friends, family and strangers are to your use of the word NO?
Fear Management is largely about developing our awareness and perception of context. It is about reading the situation we are in, those around us and paying attention to the right signals.
Here is an example scenario:
- an unknown male stranger offers to help a female carry her shopping bags to her car late at night in the dark, she says no but he persists.
Is he being chivalrous not taking no for an answer or is he a threat?
Many readers will instantly consider him a threat and others will disagree and could even feel sorry for him! Yet make no mistake a man must respect a woman when she says no! It is the listener not the speaker who decides how powerful a threat will be!
It's dangerous when someone ignores the word no - it is not chivalrous!
If you watched someone lunging a young horse, minutes before you were supposed to mount and ride it in a lesson, yet this horse turned itself inside out and back again on the lunge - are you really going to get on board when asked to do so?
With our horses, especially riding or leading them, we have to look at the context, the behaviour and assess our options. NO is a valid option whether its about getting on at all, or riding out in a group hack. (See my article in Your Horse from 2009).
Remember "No" is a complete sentence!
This is a TRANSFORMATIONAL STRATEGY
Strategy 6 - Watch and wait!
Watch and wait is usually the wisest first step when our fear instinct is alerted (assuming we have some time and space to do so). Unfortunately, we usually 'engage or enrage' (i.e.lash out) instead!
My last 'painful fall' from Grace in May 2013 was a great example of how I 'engaged' when what I should have done was ' watched and waited'.
Just as I was about to mount, Grace went into high alert - tail up, ears pricked, body tense. Her eyes locked onto a young filly galloping around her paddock in the not too far away distance, screaming her head off as she galloped. Something had upset the youngster and this had Grace's full attention.
Instead of watching and waiting assessing the situation and my risks which would have let the situation (and Grace) calm down, I persisted and mounted. 45 seconds later I was on the floor in a heap. (To prove the value of Strategy 2 above, I won't re-live the details here).
As horse people we have these watch and wait moments every day with our horses. To go into the stable or not to settle a bucking rearing horse; to attempt to catch a horse galloping madly round their field; to erect the electric fencing in high winds and rain, threat of lightening and horses in the paddock!
Consider this: what is the worst thing that is going to happen if you apply the "watch and wait" strategy?
This is another great TRANSFORMATIONAL STRATEGY and easy to remember!
When we fear our own future, our success, our health, our identity we have many tools at hand to help us find peace. Our horses tend to have three tools at their disposal: fight, flight or freeze.
These strategies apply equally well for us too. So here is a short summary of lessons we can learn from our horses:-
We can learn how to fight our fears - with grace, intelligence, wisdom, kindness and acceptance.
We can discover when to metaphorically run (or turn away) from things that cause us fear like the TV, other people's stories, and replace them with peace, love and joy.
We can know when to 'freeze' and be fully present, in the moment, absorbed in an experience physical or mental, good or bad, to draw important learning to us.
Today, while I was discovering my own supressed fear, and blockages, Essy was 'gallopping round his field screaming his head off". Apparently he did this four times, then stopped, put his head down and carried on grazing as if nothing had happened.
Was he suddenly afraid, caught by surprise at something? Was he in pain? Was he happy? Was he running because he could in some kind of celebration?
When I cried tonight was it a sense of relief, inner joy or was it self pity or realisation of hidden fears?
Sometimes it takes time to know the answers. The journey is about having help asking the right questions and accepting we may not always know the answer for certain and that's ok, as long as we are moving forwards.
This evening is not the first time my horses and I tread a similar parallel life. I hope for Essy like me that today's gallop has released tension in his body. I hope, like me that it has freed his mind and given him a 'lightness' of spirit. I hope, like me that it has re-oxygenated his blood and cells.
I hope that both he and I will both enjoy a very restful nights sleep, free from any fear.
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