Overcoming Anxiety: The Power of Relationships
It has been over 12 weeks now since my accident on my young horse Revel. While I am certain that we will face future challenges together, my hope is that this might be my last post about my physical and emotional recovery from that event. Since I last wrote about my recovery, I would like to say that I have been diligent about my recovery plan, riding and spending time with him. But, as is so often the case, life seems to have intervened and much of September was “lost” to other obligations. I continued riding other horses, fox hunting with my sons. And, when I could steal some time, I continued to play with Revel on the ground. As a result, I recovered both my general ease in the saddle and my joy in being with Revel. The dark cloud of the “event” largely faded to the background in my mind.
In October I recommitted to a plan and focused on riding Revel more consistently. Many things seemed to move forward quickly and positively. In a short period of time, we had regained any lost ground in our flat work. We started working on filling holes in his training and mine. Despite all of these positive gains and developments, I continued to experience a nagging low-level anxiety while riding him that ate away at my joy and sucked up a lot of my energy. I frequently felt really tired after a ride and, while I hate to admit it, I often felt relieved to dismount. I have written numerous times about the need for consistent exposure or engagement in an activity in order to overcome anxiety. I figured that it was just a matter time and things would get better. What I didn’t realize was that I was missing a key ingredient to my recovery.
Last weekend a good friend and talented horse trainer Michael Sparling was at my farm working with a delightfully challenging mustang mare to which he has committed himself to start under saddle. I saddled up Revel and kept him company while he worked with the mare. There was time for coaching, refinement, philosophizing and quiet conversation about life, horses and relationships. Over the course of three days I must have spent over twelve hours with or on Revel. Some of it standing and watching. Some of it working. Some of it playing. Some of it grooming. At some point in time during the second day, I had the awesome realization that my anxiety was gone. That I was feeling energized and refreshed by my time on Revel and the vague and draining feelings of dread had been banished to the farthest recesses of my mind.
The easiest way to explain how and why this change happened is to focus on the sheer amount of time I spent with my horse. It would certainly fit with most treatment models for anxiety where there is an appropriate level of exposure to the anxiety provoking stimulus that lasts long enough so that the initial surge of adrenaline with the accompanying angst has time to subside. I think that this is an important part of my experience last weekend but I feel certain it was not the whole picture.
If you have ever spent any time with young children, you will likely have had the experience of watching a toddler explore his or her universe. First comes the tentative steps away from mom, then they stop, turn and look back just to make sure someone is paying attention. Reassured that mom has “got their back” they turn away again to take more steps into the unknown. This process is a clear demonstration of the role that relationships play in our ability to take risks and confidently explore our world. The more consistent and trustworthy a caregiver is, the more comfortable and confident the child is likely to be in exploring their world. You might be asking what does this have to do with a middle-aged man recovering from a riding accident. The answer is everything.
It is an essential part of human nature to rely on relationships to provide a sense of safety and security. It is also an essential part of human nature to need to feel a basic sense of safety and security in order to challenge ourselves to step outside our comfort zone. If we are overly anxious, we tend to restrict our behavior to that which is comfortable and safe. We don’t need to feel completely safe to step out and explore, just safe enough. And, just as it was when we were children, relationships are the core source of this safety and comfort. I am convinced that it was the presence of a competent and trusted colleague and friend that provided the “safe enough” context for me to take the risk to step across those boundaries I had set for myself and recover my ease and confidence on Revel. Sure, the time and activity was essential, but none of it may have ever happened without the added support of a competent and trusted friend.
So, if you find yourself challenged with lingering worry or anxiety. Or, you feel stuck, unwilling or unable to take the next obvious steps forward. Rather than beating yourself up one more time for not being brave enough, ask yourself if you have the people who you need around you that will help you feel supported and safe enough to take the next step. Maybe this is a trusted friend that helps you to feel more emotionally safe, or a trusted trainer that you believe will help you to feel physically safe. Either way, take the responsibility to surround yourself with supportive relationships and you will more easily find the courage and motivation to challenge yourself and move forward.
Why Do You Take Riding Lessons? Don’t You Already Know How To Ride?
Recently, I have been following the reports about David O’Connor’s approach to the USEF Eventing High Performance training sessions. It got me thinking about coaching and mentorship and how it relates to attitudes about sport psychology. In every sport, athletes seek out and receive coaching regardless of the their level of accomplishment and their knowledge of the game. For the dedicated athlete there is always room for improvement. There is always room to hone skills, expand knowledge, and strive to get better.
At the highest levels, this is often less about being directly taught than it is about seeking out a different perspective. Having a skilled and respected colleague provide perspective and allow us to see ourselves through their eyes often leads to valuable insights and understandings that we might not otherwise come to on our own and improve our performance.
What puzzles me is that, so often, our attitudes toward the psychological side of our sport differ dramatically from our attitudes toward the physical side. While we actively and consistently strive for improvement in our riding skill and ability through lessons and regular clinics, my experience suggests that sport psychology consultation has been primarily relegated to the role of fixing problems. It is a lot like the way we deal with medical doctors. We go when we get sick and are far less likely to engage their help in developing and maintaining a wellness program, more less improving a wellness program that seems to be working “well enough”.
It is easy to question the riding community for using sport psychology in this way, but I have to wonder if sport psychologists and mental skills consultants carry a large part of the responsibility in the way they we promote what we offer. I looked at my library of sport psychology resources recently and took stock of what was offered. Most of what I found focused on presenting and explaining how to use one or more of the traditional sport psychology skills; goal setting, energy regulation, visualization, motivational strategies, etc. There is something about the way we present this information to the public which gives short shrift to the complexity of the human experience. Don’t get me wrong, these skills are very useful and helpful to people. They are an integral part of my professional arsenal and often provide almost immediate relief and assistance to clients struggling with a host of concerns. However, focusing so much on discrete mental skills shifts the attention away from exploring the rider as a whole person.
Who we are as a person is profoundly important in how we engage in equestrian sport. For example, how we deal with conflict has a direct impact on how we react when our horses have a different idea than we do about something that we are going to do. Our characteristic patterns in coping with stress will impact our behavior during competition. Our preferred emotional style will determine the nature of our responses to emotionally intense events. Our characteristic patterns of orienting our attention (inward vs outward) will impact the type and level of awareness we have as we ride. The nature of our self-concept will shape our evaluation and judgement of ourselves. These are just a few examples of how facets of our personality or broader psychology can impact our ride.
In dealing with riding concerns applying discrete mental skills can help, but at times it may feel that you are only chipping away at the edges of a problem. There have been many instances in my work with clients that helping a rider come to a deeper understanding of the themselves and who they are as a person has been instrumental in creating lasting change. I am also convinced that, in the absence of a crisis or significant riding problem, a rider’s commitment to personal growth and greater self-awareness will have a profoundly positive impact on their engagement in the sport.
My commitment in the coming years is to explore ways in which I can help riders can grow in their self-knowledge and awareness and actively use that awareness to improve their riding. I hope to provide a service that goes beyond “fixing problems” and, like riding lessons and clinics, ultimately support each rider’s personal growth in ways that help them grow as equestrians.
This weekend the good people at Sprout Therapeutic Riding and Education Center along with several of their friends have graciously volunteered to test out a new clinic format which combines experiential activities with horses and small group work sessions. The expressed goal of the clinic is that each participant will come away with new self-awareness and a plan for applying this awareness in their riding. I am grateful for the enthusiasm of my courageous volunteers and I hope they leave the day excited about what they have learned and hungry to learn even more.
Who Is Judging Whom?
How many times have you entered the arena to compete and found yourself obsessing about what someone else was thinking about you? Sure we worry about what the judges think, but we also worry about what almost everyone else thinks. We worry about the judgments of our trainers, other people’s trainers, family, friends, peers, as well as other competitors. Yet, at the end of the day, we have to wonder how many of those people, whose judgments we worry so much about, gave our performance more than a passing thought. The reality is that we are most often the only ones that are judging ourselves so harshly and ruthlessly.
In the world of equestrian competition, the people who are in the position to judge competitors have experience and training. The higher the level of competition, the higher the level of training and experience. Part of the reason for training judges is to assure that competitors are assessed fairly according to some agreed upon criterion. So here is my question. How much time have you dedicated to training your internal judge? Do you judge yourself fairly according to accepted and reasonable criteria that match your level of skill and experience, or do you judge yourself capriciously and harshly according to ever shifting criteria?
So many of the equestrian athletes I work with who suffer from performance or competition anxiety have an issue with their internal critic or judge. They might say they are worried about what others think, but at the end of the day they suffer most because of what they think of themselves. One of the most effective interventions for performance anxiety is to help athletes focus on judging themselves and their performance by their own internal measuring stick. However, this requires that our internal measuring stick is constructed carefully and fairly. In other words, we need to be sure that our internal judge is adequately trained and experienced so that we judge ourselves fairly and consistently according to reasonable and established criteria that are suitable to our level of skill and experience.
The next time you catch yourself being harshly self-critical try this exercise. Write down the criticisms that you are making of yourself. For each criticism, write down the specific criteria you are using to make that judgment. Ask yourself if the criteria you are using are objective and valid for competitors of your level of skill and experience in your discipline. If the answer is “yes”, set one or more specific goals to work toward before your next competition. If the answer is “no”, identify one or more reasonable, objective and valid criteria upon which competitors of your skill and experience could be fairly judged and set one or more specific goals which you can work toward before you next competition.
We can’t always control what others do to prepare themselves for the role and responsibility of being a judge. However, we can control our own training and in this way prepare ourselves to fairly and competently judge ourselves.
But, How Do I Change That?
One of my favorite weeks of the year is the time I spend at the Upperville Colt and Horse Show. This year was no exception. My tent sat near the entrance gate to Ring 2 and the Ring 2 warm-up ring. Between sessions I had the pleasure of watching riders warm-up and then watching their rounds in the Hunter Ring. As a sport psychologist, it is a luxury to work with clients and then spent the time between sessions pondering the challenges that my clients face while observing athletes in action.
As often happens in my work, a distinct theme has emerged in my work at the show this year. As my clients explored their concerns there have been several “light bulb” moments where they have become aware of what they do to sabotage their performance. Once they realize what is happening, they often ask the question, “How do I change that?”
Before offering some thoughts about the process and nature of change, I need to highlight the most important part. Before we seek to change we need to be aware (a) that there is a problem, (b) develop at least some small insight into the ways in which we get in our own way, and (c) discover our unequivocal desire to change. Without this kind of awareness we run into two different problems. The first is motivation. When we are blind to a problem, or in denial, we seldom feel any motivation to make a change. Secondly, when we know we have a problem but have no insight (or interest) in how we contribute to creating the problem we will be at high risk for blaming others. This might include blaming our horse, our trainers, judges, etc. Finally, we have to really want to change. Nothing will stymie attempts to change faster than reservations about changing. Reservations might include fear of failure, fear of success, fear of unintended consequences, or some other type of fear or ambivalence about change.
Once we have basic awareness of the problem, a guess at how we contribute to it, and a clear unequivocal desire to change; the process of change becomes simple (if not easy). The core of creating change is to know what we want to do to replace the behavior that is connected to the problem. It is incredibly easy to fall into the “I don’t want to do that” mode. Knowing what we don’t want to do is only important in helping us to identify what we want to change. After that, focusing on what we don’t want only serves to intensify or practice what we don’t want. Decide what you want to do instead and challenge yourself to do it.
Next, be specific. Focus the change you want to make on a specific behavior in a very specific context. Specificity leads to personal accountability and the ability to assess the impact of our changes. The more global and vague our ideas of what we are going to change, the more difficult it is to pin ourselves down and hold ourselves accountable for actually changing. We have to actually do something different. Furthermore, if we aren’t specific we never get to learn much about what actually makes a difference.
Finally, the changes we want to make need to be things that we can actually control. Changes have to be self-initiated and maintained. We have no power to change others and often very little ability to change contexts. We can’t make a horse show judge change or make our horses change. Change starts with us and is maintained by us. This is true whenever we want a relationship to change.
The next time you want to make a change try this strategy out:
– Describe the problem you are experiencing.
– Decide if REALLY want to change it.
– Identify one or more ways your behavior contributes to the problem.
– Be very specific about the behavior that contributes to the problem and specific about the context in which the problem occurs.
– Decide what your going to do differently.
– Make sure what you decide to do can be self-initiated and self-maintained.
– Observe the results. Is it what you want? If not, lather rinse repeat.
Creating Perceptive, Patient, Even-Tempered, Respectful and Relationship-Savvy Riders
A couple of weeks ago I posted an article on the Riding Far, LLC facebook page aboutcreating grittier kids for the future of eventing. The article made a very convincing argument that grit, defined as passion and perseverance in the attainment of one’s goals, is a commodity worth fostering in our young riders. While I am in whole-hearted agreement about the importance of grit as an individual quality, I have been thinking lately about the importance of nurturing an appreciation for relationships skills in our children. If we focus solely on grit in the service of our individual goals, it seems too me that we run the risk of reinforcing a view of those around us, including our horses, as tools to be used in the service of our personal goal attainment rather than as partners in our efforts. Partners who are worthy of our respect and gratitude. And, in the case of our equine partners, partners that deserve our best efforts in care, training and stewardship.
Last week I had the privilege of riding with my son in a Carol Coppinger clinic. Carol is a gifted horsewoman, teacher and an excellent communicator. One of her great talents is the ability to meet each horse and rider at their current level, and help them to find their next step forward. She is perceptive, patient, calm, and respectful as well as passionate and persistent. I am quite certain that Carol has grit. I am not as certain that, in and of itself, it is her grit that is solely responsible for making her a great horsewoman or a great teacher.
Watching Carol teach my son over those two days, I realized a number of things that seem important. The first, and perhaps most important, was that my son really wanted to ride with her. My son had previously ridden with Carol for only two days more than a year ago. Yet, somehow, in those two days she had made a lasting impression. So much so that, as soon as one clinic ends, my son is looking forward eagerly to the next opportunity to ride with her.
I marvel at how their connection was made. It was certainly not that Carol took it easy on him or that my son had an easy horse to ride in the clinic. In contrast, he had many difficult challenges to work through with his horse. So what was it about the way she worked with him that fostered his developing grit and left him feeling resourceful, enthusiastic, appreciative and committed to training and loving this very challenging horse?
I think the answer lies in her relationship skills. While these skills seem difficult to delineate or define, I think it is worth the attempt if only to raise our awareness and start the discussion. The skills that stood out for me included patience, a sense of calm, an attitude of respect, an ability to observe and listen, a quiet confidence, kindness, and compassion. I am sure that there are many more and I encourage all of us to reflect on what brings good things to our relationships, human and equine alike. When we bring skills like these to our relationships good things happen, but how do we learn these skills?
The simple answer to helping people learn relationship skills would be to teach them. We can teach people how to behave in specific interactions much in the way we teach many other skills. I suppose that might be part of the solution. However, the more I think about it, the more I realize that these positive relationship behaviors flow naturally from a person’s attitudes and values rather than from a mechanistic application of skills. The challenge that we face in the equestrian world is how to nurture the development of attitudes and values that naturally give rise to the behaviors or relationship skills which, in turn, lead to positive results.
So, as we search for ways to foster grit in our young riders, let’s also challenge ourselves to identify and foster the attitudes and values that might lead to the development of perceptive, patient, even-tempered, respectful, confident, grateful, kind and compassionate young riders that value the relationships they have with those that mentor and support them, including their horses.