That feeling of stress, the sweaty palms, the fast breathing, it comes from going back into the past in our minds, feeling the things that happened. Those feelings bring more thoughts, like magnets, and the spiral heads right down into anxiety and panic attacks. Have you ever asked yourself why you keep replaying memories in your head?
For me, there are three reasons I keep that memory wheel running in my head, and what I do to fix each one.
1. I am not being mindful of the present moment. This is a big one for me. I love just being, right here, right now. It takes practice. When I realize I am back replaying the memory movie, I can snap myself back into the present moment. It is a lot easier if you practice this when not being in that swamp of nasty memories. (Click here for my free 7 days to Mindfulness guide)
2. There is a trigger to the memory. This one happens when I see a horse rear or start to rear. It puts me right back in that moment of fear. This is a great one to fix, when you are sitting on the couch and all nice and relaxed. Reset the trigger. Google search horseback riding and look at images of great rides. Feel how good that feels and really set that feeling. I use an anchor too. I take a really good smelling essential oil, my favorites for this are Stress Away or Joy, and smell them while I am feeling how an amazing ride would feel. It can also be closing your eyes and remember amazing rides you have had. They key is to really put yourself in that moment and anchor it. Then think about the trigger, a horse rearing in my example, and see it getting smaller and smaller. See that trigger just disappearing. Go right back to the feeling of the amazing ride, smell the essential oils, feel that amazing feeling. Repeat this 5 - 10 times. You will notice your trigger isn't so much a trigger anymore.
3. I play the "What if" game. What if my horse lifts its head. What if my horse starts to rear. What if, what if, what if. This is another one that is fun to do while relaxing on your couch, at least at first. Pick better "what if's"! What if you have the best ride ever? What if it is a beautiful day and you just feel the rhythm with your horses footfall. What if you and your horse have an amazing adventure. See how many you can come up with. Write them down. Keep adding to the list. Read the list, over and over. Practice your what ifs. As you go to the barn, practice your what ifs!
Palms start to sweat. The feeling of the world closing in on you. Breathing becomes shallow and it seems so hard to breath. The heat rises to the top of the head and the feelings of being trapped overwhelm. That feeling comes from not being in control. It makes you mind for get to think and your entire focus is in a very small, tiny world right around you, trying to survive. There are so many feelings that go along with anxiety but the biggest one for me, is the feeling of "NOT" being in control.
This started when I was little. The dentist seemed like a GIANT Boogeyman. Having stitches and all the blood after being kicked in the head by my pony after I fell off. Motorcycles anywhere near after having one hit us head on. There were so many triggers for my anxiety, and they were all around not being in control.
After my horse accident in 2000, I knew I had to find a way out of the anxiety and there were several pieces that worked for me. First of all, I had to know I had done everything to be safe. Some was easy, dentist isn't going to kill me. Flying wasn't so easy, that is all out of my control. Even being a passenger in a car was challenging and led to me searching for something that would work. The mental focus on the "What If's" that served me, made me feel better, helped a LOT. We get to choose what our "what ifs" look like so choose wisely.
Secondly, I found Stress Away and Thieves Essential oils. I used a process I learned call "anchoring" to anchor Stress Away to calm on a bracelet on my right wrist, and Thieves for Courage on my left wrist. This allowed me to be in control of my calm and my courage. (To learn more about anchoring, I would be happy to help you, you can schedule 30 minutes with me here!)
The last thing that was the final piece of the puzzle is CBD under the tongue. Just one drop allowed my release of my anxiety. So much so, that the last time I went to the dentist, I fell asleep HUGE WIN. I can have a horse act up and I don't shake! It was just the final piece in that giant jigsaw puzzle of getting over anxiety and loving life again!
If you are ready to kick anxiety to the curb, you can check out the products on my wishlist! Click Here.
The horses were happily munching their breakfast today. The wind was swirling around, and a bunch of little dust devils were blowing through carrying the fall leaves for a ride. I was cleaning the three-sided shed as while I listened to them munching. Then I heard a crazy noise.
All around the horses' legs, feet, faces, etc, was a packaging pillow. One of those air-filled pillow sacks had blown off our porch and was dancing with the horses. I heard it first for a while and then I looked. The horses had not moved. They were happily munching away with it battering around beneath them. I started to panic but it was only a split second. I completely relaxed. In that split second, they all three lifted their heads, looked at me, and then because I had relaxed again, they all just went back to breakfast. I know if I had panicked, they would have too. I know because I was able to just forget about it and enjoy the show, they were fine.
There are so many times, when our emotions get in the way, and we are not even aware. Leading Michelle, a few weeks ago, and thinking she was going to run me over had her convinced something was chasing both of us. Playing with Michelle with the flag, she was in a panic. I set it down on the ground and walked away, she walked right up and played with it.
I have done this riding so many times too! It is so powerful to change our thoughts and feelings around to the positive. To the amazing rides, the amazing partnership with our horses, and truly step into that feeling of being the leader, the safe place for the horses, for our little herd.
How? We start by playing the what if game with amazing things that could happen. We fill ourselves up with amazing ride feelings until there is no room for fear to creep in. We can even pretend to be a trainer that we admire if we want! Whatever it takes, if we want to ride, we can make it happen.
If you would like to see a few more ideas I have for feeling better about our rides, Click here.
Watching the horses graze, soaking up the sun, sharing the calm all around them, I realized that calm and fear cannot exist in the space. There are of course exceptions but in general, this is true. So how does this calm scene turn into a place of fear? How does the fear spread and why is it important for riders?
We had a tree fall in our pasture and I didn't know directly since I couldn't see the tree, I knew from the horses' panic that something was wrong. I felt fear. I felt their fear and added my fear to it. All three horses were running, fleeing for their lives in their mind. There are so many examples of this and watching a herd can be a tremendous learning opportunity.
Let's back up and look at this closer. The tree probably cracked a bit, which would have had the horses looking. One horse may have lifted their head first, and then the others followed. Then, as the tree fell and made noise, they ran away from the noise. This is a great thing; it kept the tree from falling on them. It truly was a matter of life and death, and they chose life. When they no longer heard the noise, they stopped, turned and looked at the tree. Very quickly, their heads went down, and they returned to grazing. Nature at its finest.
I talked a little bit about the fear behind me, when I thought Michelle was going to run me over. She reacted by thinking something was behind "US" that was going to eat us, so she tried to run me over. Once I realized the nonsense and filled up with confidence, she walked along behind me quietly and looked to me to lead. There is so much of this in riding as well. If we are looking around for what might scare our horse, guess what they are looking around for? This is why the police clinic teaching was so important. FOCUS 100 feet ahead on where you are going and completely ignore everything else. They have to ignore all the rioting, bottles being thrown at them, etc and they never know what that thing is going to be so they can't desensitize to everything. They have to FOCUS on what they want, where they are going, and what they are doing and the horses feel that confidence.
It can be so hard at first to feel that confidence and have that focus. I had to use a few tools to help me out (you can check them out here if you would like), and that got me over the hump. Once I had a few confident rides, I had more confidence, and it was like an amazing snowball of becoming the leader I used to be.
If you enjoyed this, here are a few exercises to help build that confidence so our horses can feel it! Ghosts of Anxiety - Past, Present, Future
It was a really windy day. Tarps and boxes were blowing around and the noise from the leaves in the trees was like a freight train. I took Michelle for a walk because other than the wind, the day was gorgeous. I thought it would be good to practice walking behind me at the end of the lead rope.
Up the hill, she was so good. She stayed back and we had a great walk. Around the corner of the pasture, we kept walking and voila, the cardboard flew off the car trailer right next to us. It gave us a great opportunity to do some work and ignore the cardboard. She did very well but I could tell I was at her threshold.
We turned to walk back to the pasture gate. She was at the end of the lead rope behind me, but I could tell she was a powder keg by now. I kept checking over my shoulder to make sure she didn't run me over and she escalated some more. I checked more. Then, BAM, it hit me. Can horses sense fear? YES!
She didn't know I was worried about her running me over. She thought I was worried about what was behind us, the cardboard, attacking. When I had that realization, I immediately started walking confidently just like I had on the way out. It was a drastic difference for her. She immediately blew out and started to relax. She followed along at the end of the lead rope, and I knew she wasn't going to run me over. I was confident. I needed to be her leader, not the person afraid of being run over. As soon as I let go of the fear behind me, she let go of the fear behind her and we had a lovely walk back to the pasture.
As I was reviewing this later, I realized that the fear of what is behind us is far more than just in that moment. My fear of my accident in 2000 was a fear of what was behind me, in the past. There are so many fears that we carry along that are behind us. These fears are an anchor holding us back from living life to the fullest. Drop the anchors, raise the sails and become the captain of your life!
