The Thing About Fear

Fear is a funny thing. An emotion programmed into humans as a survival mechanism, fear helps to heighten our perception to danger and keep us safe. But fear is not always a rational emotion and irrational fears can keep us from doing things we want or need to do. I once had a roommate who was so afraid of spiders that she would become completely immobilized if she saw one. It seemed to me to be a completely unreasonable reaction to a non-existent threat, but to her, the fear was very real. Now I consider myself to be a pretty sensible person but I have an irrational fear that has been getting in the way of my riding for a long time. I’m afraid that every horse I get on will run off with me.
When I was young, before I had ever had any riding instruction, I did have a horse run off with me. She was a mean little bay mare that belonged to Carol Ann Worrier, who was a grade ahead of me in grammar school. The minute I climbed up on her back, she could tell that I didn’t know what I was doing and she took immediate advantage, running back to the barn, dumping me in the process. I ended up with a broken wrist and a bruised pride. The event resulted in no permanent physical damage but buried deep in my psyche is an irrational fear, a little voice that whispers to me whenever I mount up, “You better watch out or this horse is out of here!”
The last time I heard that voice, Sonny and I were out for a trail ride. It was a beautiful day and we were riding in the hay fields that boarder the rescue property. My horse Sonny is a big, lovable quarter horse that definitely has more ‘whoa’ than ‘go’ in his nature. His idea of a good trail ride is one where at least as much time is spent eating as moving, so he is probably the last horse in the world who would actually “run off” with me.
But on this day the weather was brisk and Sonny was feeling friskily. We trotted along tree line until we reached the river. By that time, Sonny and I had worked up a sweat and I wanted to cool him out so I turned him toward home, expecting to have a leisurely stroll back to the barn. Sonny had other ideas. He was headed back to his buddies and anxious to get there as quickly as possible he started to jig and pick up the pace. I sat down and asked him to walk. He walked for a few steps and then started to trot. I trotted him in a circle headed away from home until he settled down into a walk, then turned him toward home again, whereupon he started to trot again.
At this point, the little voice in my head began to whisper. “Better watch out, he’s going to take off with you” the voice said. Feeling a little anxious, I took up on the reins. Sonny shook his head in annoyance and started to jig harder. I held him tighter in response. Pretty soon we were in a full blown argument and I could feel the tension in my arms and the knot in my stomach growing with each contested step. What had started out as a pleasant afternoon ride was turning into Armageddon and although I knew I was making things worse by taking a stranglehold on my easygoing horse, I couldn’t seem to stop myself. The voice in my head was winning.
At this point I should probably confess that while I am a reasonably competent rider, I am not the most confident rider. I was a lot more confident where I was younger and would often ride my horse, Max, in from the field with only a halter and lead line but when Max died, I adopted a 12 year old thoroughbred from a horse rescue. He was a RBE and way too much horse for me. The nine months that I had him delivered a serious blow to my confidence and by the time I got Sonny, I was pretty much of a basket case.
It didn’t help that in the first few months that I had Sonny, I fell off of him twice. Both times I was riding him along a hedge row and we scared up a deer that must have been bedded down. With the sudden, loud noise, Sonny jumped sideways and I didn’t go with him. Sonny’s reaction to seeing me suddenly on the ground was to come over and put his head down to me as if to say, “What are you doing down there?” And since then, he has been an absolute rock when trail riding. We’ve had deer jump right out in front of us and he has hardly flinched, but that little voice in my head still whispers occasionally, “You can’t trust him. You never know what he is going to do next.”
Sonny and I have been studying Parelli Natural Horsemanship™ for a little over two years. We’ve achieved level 2 freestyle skills and are working on level 3. He’s soft and responsive to my leg and seat and I can ride him with a loose rein in a hackamore. I know in my rational mind that this horse is not going to run off with me and that I have the skill to control him without putting him in a strangle hold. So why did I let the little voice in my head get the best of me? Why did I over react to a situation that wasn’t really all that big a deal? I’ve been asking myself that question and while I don’t have a really good answer I think I did gain some insight.
I think the thing about dealing with an irrational fear, particularly one that is rooted in a childhood incident, is first recognizing and acknowledging the underlying cause of the fear. It was only when I asked myself why I felt like I needed to restrain Sonny, rather than use some other correction method for his jigging that it occurred me I was worried that he would run off with me. As soon as the thought popped into my mind I started to chuckle at the idea. Sonny just isn’t the running off kind. It was in trying to figure out where that idea had come from that I remembered being run off with by Carol Ann’s little mare. All of a sudden I could almost taste the helpless, out of control feeling I’d had as that mare dashed back to the barn and how I’d tried to stop her by hauling back on the reins before finally losing my balance and coming off. So there it was, the source of that nagging little voice in my head.
Now that I see the fear, I know I am a long way from that helpless little girl clinging to the back of a runaway mare. I know it will be easier for me to recognize and acknowledge the voice in my head without giving into it. I’ve been visualizing the situation over again and visualizing having a different reaction. I think I will feel, if not more confident, at least less anxious and I know Sonny will thank me.