Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Taking Steps

Last grain with bute on Monday!!
I don’t necessarily want or need to share intimate details around the mental health stuff I’ve been working on for the past year or so but this post is about some high level mental health stuff that impacts pony things. I do want to share this level because not only is this a journal for myself about horse stuff and this plays into it but also because maybe someone else out there will gain something from this.

Feel free to skip or read.

I’ve always had pretty high anxiety, ok like really high anxiety. My mom does as well so I’m sure that’s probably part of it. It doesn’t have a hugely visible impact on my day to day in that it’s never negatively impacted my performance at work, I rarely (if ever), make decision based on my anxiety, however, it plays into everything, every day of my life. My way of dealing with it, for lack of having any other answer, has typically been to just force it down and ignore it. For most of my life I’ve thought it was just normal nerves of the type that everyone deals with but it’s come to my attention over the past year that it’s way more than what many people deal with. This led me to seek out therapy. The particular therapist that I was seeing wasn’t a great fit so I’m in the process of finding a different therapist right now but I’m looking forward to learning more about how to manage this.

So, anyone may know the answer to this but how does this relate to pony stuff? I’ve never thought of it as an issue with horse stuff. I’ve never had an issue with fear in the bigger ways that some of my friends have. I’ve had lesson anxiety but that normally goes away once I’m in the saddle so I never really worried about it, and I’ve always thought I was managing it pretty well. Two things happened this past week though that made me take a big step back and realize that I’m just not ok continuing on as is.
Today, snow...

First, on Thursday when the vet was out I was having massive anxiety. I felt almost light headed and definitely nauseous (both normal for me with stuff like the vet visit). If I could have curled up in a tiny ball and let someone else deal with the vet I would have done so. Of course it ended up being ok but I was FREAKING out. I had it tamped down pretty well by the time I got to the barn and brought Katai into the cross ties. I wasn’t thinking about it but Katai was escalating, and escalating. I was standing and talking to someone about the weather (or something else inconsequential) and I looked over to Katai trying to alternate rearing in the cross ties and spinning. Her muscles were all tight and her eyes were huge. There was NO reason for her to do so that day, like any other day where she’s falling asleep in the crossties, other than my anxiety. Plus, then when I handed her off to the assistant (and Katai doesn't like strangers) she was back to being her calm, normal self.

Suddenly I realized that if, in a place that both of us feel safe. A place where Katai is normally quiet and half asleep, she was hose show level escalated, it was entirely related to my anxiety. That means that at shows, where I’ve thought I’ve had a training problem I’ve actually had an anxiety problem. I’ve been walking around thinking that Katai has poor training and poor ground handling at shows and confused because she’s SOOOO good at home and feeling sort of powerless to work on it. I’m sure we’ll have some work to do anyway since new environments do that but the silliness that makes her so tough to handle at shows? Entirely my anxiety. Trailering? Same thing. I know some people say that it’s almost always the person that’s the problem, in this case that is absolutely 100% true. Of course, upon more thought, it may feel like I have it tamped down but Katai and I are very connected and of course when I feel internally like I’m going to die Katai picks that up and also feels like she’s going to die. It’s sort of wonderful in a tragic sort of way.


Second, this weekend I was listening to the Oliva Towers podcast with Jane Pike on cultivating a resilient mindset. I’ll be honest that after my recent therapy experience I was wondering if there was anything to be gained by doing therapy. Then I listened to this podcast and learned more than I ever had from my therapist and decided it wasn’t me, and was more of a mismatch between the two of us. I’m going to be working on some of the things that Jane Pike talked about, and, also working hard to find a therapist that works well for me because I want to improve and help Katai feel better so that we can both have fun at shows.

It’s empowering because it means that by working on that anxiety and finding solutions to that I’ll be solving probably 80% of the handling issue we have at shows where Katai seems to revert to being feral. Then we’ll just have 20% of true training to work on to get her used to calmly following directions in strange places. I know it’s going to be hard work but I’m looking forward to it.

7 comments:

  1. Hugs hugs hugs hugs, and thank you for sharing. You know you're a truly good horsewoman when you're able to see your horse's behavior as a reflection of yourself and not just blame the animal. It's a good lesson for any of us to remember, anxiety or no. Fingers crossed you're able to find a therapist you click with.

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  2. thank you so much for your bravery in sharing this. Like you I struggled with anxiety for years. I thought I was normal and tamped it all down (also a family history and I can see how both genetics and environment contributed to this). Losing Steele required me to confront this and become aware. Like K, Carmen is very very aware of others emotions- particularly mine. It has taught me to become more aware and work on myself. It's not easy and never done but awareness is so key. Here's an interesting video I found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsJhzGGmhdA.

    I guess it makes sense that they mirror. individual survival probably was helped by picking up on the anxiety of other herd members and reacting.

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    1. Thank you Teresa. I know I'll want to be able to look back at this stuff and have been trying to be more mindful of sharing both the bad and good. Unfortunately there hasn't been a bunch of easy good recently.

      It's so crazy you shared that link actually. I had watched the video he references at the beginning about two weeks ago and just thought, huh that's cool maybe I should meditate more. Now, after having realized this big thing with the vet visit I watched it back and saw how close this was to what happened to me. Just goes to show that different messages work for different people :)

      Now I'm going to curl up on the couch and watch the rest of this video!

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  3. Thank you for sharing. I have had my quite sensitive mare for seven years, and I'm still realising how much my anxious emotions (that I'm often not even aware of) affect her. It can be something as simple as hard elbows as I lead her, and she will respond by being more pushy and bracy. As I can get better work out of her on the ground and in the saddle I can see that when it breaks down, it is often a mirror to what is happening in my mind. It's a constant struggle :-)

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    1. It is so interesting how our emotional state is so transparent to them. I feel like that's one of the amazing thing about horses, they able to show clearly what energy you're bringing to their space :)

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  4. I also have bad anxiety, but I have gotten help and I don't think anyone who knows me now that didn't know me 10 years ago would ever think it! I highly recommend Cognitive Behavioral Therapy if you can find a practitioner in your area.

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    1. Oh my gosh this gives me so much hope I can't even tell you. Thank you so much for sharing. I did actually find someone that I have a first appointment with and she does CBT. Luckily with my work in Mental health I had a guess that it might be a good option for me so it was something I looked for. I'm really glad to hear from you that it was something that helped you.

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