Affirmative Anxiety

For as often as we’ve watched horses run and thought them the most beautiful of all creatures, we should know better. For as often as we have pretended to be horses, you’d think we’d be honest. For as often as we’ve sat in the saddle with a dream and a wide open heart, you think we could remember this very simple thing. Control is not an option.

Even hearing the word control sends us back into fantasy land. The place where we make up stories where horses act like humans. Where we make excuses for them behaving in dangerous ways. We all keep the secret that the horses that exist in our minds are not actual horses. For us to truly love a horse, we have to love the things we don’t like. The things that scare us.

How to get on the good side of that.

In order to understand horses, we must grasp what it truly means to be a flight animal. No matter how many generations of horses have lived in captivity, their survival instinct does not change. It’s their reality that at any moment, danger could surround them and they must be prepared to run and save their own lives. There has to be an innate quality of pessimism in a prey animal. Everything is life and death. Including complacency. And the gene pool is constantly being corrected. The wolves in the shadows have eaten the horses who thought those moving shadows were nothing to worry about.

Here is the oversimplified version: When a horse becomes frightened, their amygdala (part of their limbic system) takes over. It’s a neural network in the brain that regulates emotions and behaviors. It quickly releases stress hormones to prepare their bodies to take immediate action. Flight, fight, or freeze. That’s what being a prey animal means, and it’s fantastic news. That mental wiring in our horses makes them survivors.

It also means the challenge of working with horses is that they are hard-wired to escalate tension. Since we have a very similar Autonomic Nervous System, our reaction can act like throwing gasoline on a fire. Sometimes it’s called amygdala hijack when a human panics. But humans can prevent a mental runaway by remaining aware of our emotions during potentially triggering events. Our brains can access the situation and choose to not take the bait to panic. We can make peace out of fear and chaos. It’s a miracle.

Definitions of stress or anxiety: 

“People under stress experience mental and physical symptoms, such as irritability, anger, fatigue, muscle pain, digestive troubles, and difficulty sleeping. Anxiety, on the other hand, is defined by persistent, excessive worries that don’t go away even in the absence of a stressor.” From the American Psychological Association. (Doesn’t sound good at first.)

They continue: “Stress helps you meet your daily challenges and motivates you to reach your goals, ultimately making you a smarter, happier and healthier person. Long-term stress can suppress the immune system, which may lead to the development of diseases. Stress can be positive or negative, depending on the situation.” (Italics mine, because really!)

Hans Selye coined the term eustress. “Eu” is the Greek prefix for good, so eustress means good stress. The moderate or normal psychological stress, interpreted as being beneficial.

Okay, I felt anxiety when I fell into a rabbit hole trying to balance the words anxiety with stress. It got complicated when the psychologists chimed in. Some said stress and anxiety are different, while others seem to say it as a continuum, but it wasn’t all bad. Too fussy? My definition of stress (or anxiety) is more simple: Call it being alive. And if you have horses, you’re swimming in it.

Besides, what’s so bad about a small spook? Call it a calming signal because after spooking, horses usually soften and relax. It’s a release of tension, just a bit more expressive than a lick and chew. We don’t need to hold it like a grudge. Breathe through it and let it be over. Say good boy to remind both of you it’s okay.

When we demonize anxiety, we cripple a coping mechanism. It’s also our will to survive and we should hold it close to our hearts. And then let anxiety help us more than it limits us. Besides, horses use stress as a primary calming signal language. They have it, bring it, and share it. With some practice, we could short circuit the horse’s panic by short circuiting our own. We could reframe anxiety into the thing that keeps us all safe. Let’s put a pink sundress on it.

Anxiety is butterflies in your stomach as your leg goes over the back of a horse you’re trying out; the spark and lift of his canter. It’s the impossible wait for your new horse to arrive, followed by the buyer’s remorse when he first feels confident enough to question you. It’s the wave that knocks us down the day we say goodbye to that old horse, years later and always too soon. Then, it’s the strength that picks us up to start again because not having a horse is a different and sometimes more unbearable stress.

Rather than fighting it or denying it, could we just accept that stress without judgment? Maybe even say thank you in appreciation of its hard work, along with a promise to work together going forward. Stress will deflate by half, if we just acknowledge it. Then reclaim those unsettled emotions. There’s nothing to see here.

Smile in a way that makes your body soften and the railbirds tweet. Stand tall, breathe deep into your belly. Knowing stress is on your side, choose to translate it into confidence. Then let it hang in the air like fresh hay and cool water. Give horses the calming signal they need from us most of all.

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Relaxed and Forward Training by Anna Blake is no longer on Facebook because of repeated hacking. If you or your horse appreciate my writing, please share, subscribe to this blog, or join us at The Barn School.

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Affirmative training is the fine art of saying yes.

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