How aware are we when we pull on a persona? We’re usually aware when we tidy one up to make an impression at a job interview. We might notice that we’re different at church than at Walmart. It isn’t deception; it’s just a good idea to use a different persona when pulled over by the police for speeding, (Good evening, Officer) than you use with your dog (Who’s a good boy?) Most of us have personas that use entirely different vocabularies that are more repetitive and “colorful” that we only bring out on special occasions and apologize for later.
Persona is defined as the aspect of someone’s character that is presented to or perceived by others. (Oxford dictionary.) It’s not lying exactly. I like to think of a persona as an affirmation of who I am on a good day. I’ve seen some amazing mom personas; women who’d like to scream, strike a match, and burn the whole thing to the ground, but instead smile at their toddler and ask in a calm voice, “Can I help you with that?”
Do you have a persona at the barn? I used to act more polite than normal to my vet, even when he came to treat other people’s horses. I was sucking up, hoping he’d like me and come fast for emergencies. My friend always complained to the vet about his charges and I was a little scared for her horses.
Some folks act tough, dramatically jerking their horses around like they learned to ride from western movies because they think they’re supposed to show all of us who’s boss, too. Others tickle and baby talk to their horse, so we know how bonded they are to their horses. Some of us strut around with bravado so no one will know we’re scared. Some of us have been acting scared for so long, it’s become a habit that doesn’t quite fit. Some of us are so sick of personas that we use the barn as a persona-free zone and let others deal with the consequences.
On top of the usual human insecurities, women usually learn to have tightrope personas. We need to be smart, but not too smart. Nice, but not too nice. Be friendly, but not that kind of friendly. Having been raised to be people-pleasers, some of us hide our feelings and smile until our gums ache. Some of us develop wicked senses of humor and red wine stains. Others mope around, keeping saintly quiet, and being unfailingly, unnaturally polite. We build a pink persona to hide our darker parts.
Do horses have personas? No. They don’t pretend to be something they aren’t. That’s frontal lobe behavior and human territory. Horses are considered a motor-sensory animal. They have a small prefrontal cortex, so they must react differently than humans by definition. Horses are involuntarily concerned with their survival and their environment is a potential predatory threat until they know they are safe. In other words, they are too busy staying alive to make up personas. Besides, the other horses wouldn’t be fooled.
But our horses watch us. They read our body language, our calming signals, and intelligently search us for our intent. Humans can be a mass of contradictions. We cuddle and cry into their manes and the next moment, correct them for being in our space. We ask them to go forward while we’re pulling back on the reins. We overthink things in our big fat frontal lobes instead of listening to them.
It’s commonly said that horses feel our fear, but I wonder if nebulous anxiety isn’t more like it. Humans are more complicated than plain old fear. Can they tell the difference between frustration from work and frustration with them? If they are very capable of understanding praise, what do they feel when we’re sad? Or impatient? Can they tell if we’re afraid of being late or afraid of something they don’t see?
Sometimes we give horses the persona of being our therapist, not that they have a choice. They might have compassion fatigue from carrying our troubles, not that they know what that means either. We love to think horses are supporting our emotions when they have emotions of their own to deal with. What if what we call compassion from them is actually confusion? Are we reading their calming signals truthfully?
And yet another contradiction: we buy horses for our own needs and wishes, but horses come with history and emotion and stoic secrets, and soon they start to unravel their secrets a bit. In a perfect world, it’s at the same point that we’re aging and starting to shed, one by one, our self-limiting, people-pleasing personas as they become boring and lose their elastic. When the personas fall down around our ankles, we can replace them with a deep belly laugh a bit like the nicker of an old lead mare. If we’re lucky, we get more interested in what horses have to say than what they can do for us.
For all the chatter about leadership, and partnership, and lah-de-dah, our horses need something better from us. Maybe it’s time that the ones who can make up personas get to work. Would it be possible to build a persona that would help our horses?
This new persona would need to be one of authenticity, defined as “talking, feeling, doing” all in alignment. We’d pretend to be better than we are, working to convince our horses that humans can become reliable. The best reason to pull on an ill-fitting persona is that a horse may need it from us. When we say horses make us better people, it isn’t something they do. It’s that we change for them. We design a persona that we want to grow into for a horse; a way to make our shoulders broader to benefit some half-lame old gelding. A way to hone our energy to balance a spitfire chestnut mare.
Partnership is a persona that we fall into not when we are succeeding, but when it dawns on us that life with horses is necessarily imperfect. That both sides will make mistakes and sometimes fail, but rather than making us adversaries, it can draw us closer. In a strange way, moments of failure make horses and humans more nakedly honest. We like who we are with horses and that self-awareness persona becomes real and stays at the forefront of our minds. It turns into confidence.
Then one day, you’re riding along, when you see a hang glider with rainbow ribbons flapping in from the south, just as a small herd of elderly Harley riders towing baby strollers pulls up behind you, and you can’t even remember the last time you checked your girth. Another rider might scream at the very top of her lungs, “Oh my gawd, we’re all gonna die!” but instead you relax your legs and slack the rein with a sweet bit of praise in your exhale, gifts for a horse who can trust you.
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Next week: Human Calming Signals: Authenticity
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Anna Blake for Relaxed & Forward
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Anna,
This article resonates with me. Since retirement I have been able to put some of my personas in the closet along with my suits. I can more consistently be a more authentic me like the jeans I pull on every morning.
It is interesting that an acting opportunity gave me the chance to align movement, speech and feelings because to be true to a character all of these must match. I read Constantin Stanislavski father of method acting who talks about purposeful movement vs pantomime, the audience can feel the difference. Good acting is not pretending. In our day to day lives we are often inconsistent and not aligned. Your article leads to better self awarness and permission to be true and real to ourselves or to find out what parts of ourselves to draw on for synchronous relationships. I will read this a couple of times. Thanks!
Congrats on retirement! The comparison to acting is good, the difference you explain is a way that we experience daily. Still, sorry to miss your stage debut!! Thanks, Dr. Steve.
I love that you have mentioned Stanislavski – I have used and read his books as part of my work for many years and yes, it is absolutely this….
Anna- As always thank you for words and your heart which you share so generously. As I reflect, my persona does change from who it is at home and then when in lesson or clinic down the road. One of my considerations in taking her off property was that she was more forward and it made sense to me to use her increased forward (which I read as more interesting) to the realization that my internal energy was much more in play. So now my goal is a bit different given this blog. Thank you
Thanks, Kathleen. Great comment.
“gifts for a horse who can trust you”-loved this, Anna! So true & I think we’re all guilty of trying to fit a persona onto however we’re feeling at that moment. Maybe, as we get a little older, we become truer to our ‘real’ selves? That it becomes more important to be who & what we need to be?
Thanks, Susan. I do think horses grow to trust us more…
AND “dropping the persona around our ankles” applies to pretty much all of our lives!! Really good one, Anna.
Hehehe. Thanks, Maggie
“Dropping the persona around our ankles” is not a problem when one has already gotten a little bit older! Thanks, Anna. This one’s another goodie.
Yup – I agree – should have added the “older” part!!
Amen. Nothing to lose.
Wow! Anna are you peeking into our barn and my life from ZOOM??? So very perceptive. Why do we (meaning me) need a barn door to hit me on my head? Why can’t I use more crystal-like eyes to see how I interact, and put on my bid girl pants??
Lee, I swear… I’m not stalking you!
This sentence kinda sums up where i am on my journey..esp in my interactions with my somewhat “challenging” relationship with my OTTB. “If we’re lucky, we get more interested in what horses have to say than what they can do for us.”
Thanks Anna!
Bless all OTTBs, best teachers ever. They have so much to say. Thanks, Tammy. Keep on breathing along.
Seems there are many opportunities for working on acting skills lately. Politics were brought up during a conversation with clients just yesterday. A tightrope indeed. *sigh*
Lol – that last paragraph. The way I remember it was my ottb on our second ever beach ride. Kite surfing gear swooping down ferociously out of the sky and a herd of long boarders trotting by from behind… let go of everything and we lived to tell the tale.
You don’t think I exaggerate then?? This whole year has been a tightrope of “unprecedented” extremes. I am so sick of that word!! Thanks, great comment.
Anna – Very nice piece. Will give me much to think about!
Thanks, Tori
Deep sigh…you’ve given me reason to smile this morning Anna. 🙂
Thanks, Lorie
You know I love all your writing, and so much of this post hits home, but that last paragraph! Perfection.
My first two mares were OTTB, the first a chestnut. She never failed to amaze me at her ability to ignore kites, flags, and loud vehicles (one of which deliberately swerved and took my stirrup off my foot and saddle) but she’d spook at leaves and stacked firewood and the neighbor’s llamas and emus which she was turned out across the fence from EVERY SINGLE day without a care. Apparently they only turned in to horse eating, fire-breathing dragon kin when I was aboard. LOL.
Snort. the traitors!! Thanks, Shelley
Oh yes, my part Arab mare was like that!?
Hehehehe….
Just when I thought the brilliance would have to stop at some point, you deliver this! Because of my readings of you and other liked-minded horse people this past year, I strive to have my barn persona be one of calm and connection with my new mare. She has gotten used to that and we both enjoy it. I get to be the person I want to (always) be, and she gets a quiet human in control of herself. Win-Win. Then yesterday, I did something unusual while I was grooming her. It was a minor thing, most would say, but she jumped sideways and looked at me as if I had just landed from outer space. This incident just reinforces that, I think you said in one of your books, you have to show up at the barn the same everyday (paraphrasing) and I find it’s so true. I let someone at the barn change my ‘normal’ way for just those few seconds and she immediately wondered what happened to her human! I exhaled, apologized to her, and all was well, but it really demonstrated that they do trust you to be a certain way, and when that changes to drastically, at least for my mare, it upset her. Have a wonderful weekend and thanks for continually delivering thought and conversation-provoking posts. You truly have changed my horsing life — and my mare thanks you, lol!
I second Tammy’s comments above about your sentence “If we’re lucky, we get more interested in what horses have to say than what they can do for us.” Seems when you get to this point, all those “you have to do…s” fly out the window and your relationships with all your animals improves dramatically! Is that wisdom with age????? 🙂
There has to be some reward for living so long! Thanks Suzanne
Just realized that I never went back & read the 10/23 blog : Covid 19 How are we doing. Such a really great conversation, Anna. Also found someone new to read – thanks to Lynell!
Thanks, Maggie. Hope her letters help you as they have me!
It’s so nice to have “older” (I use that term with much respect and loosely because Im “older” in other’s eyes) horse folk to look up to. Id like to think with so many fine examples I’ll learn to drop the personas earlier rather than later. Thanks to you, Bex and some mindful breathing Im getting much better with my “spitfire chestnut mare”. She sends her thanks!
You know I’m going to say I love this one… partly because of my own pursuit of authenticity.. to grow into that persona as well as seeking out others who value and embody it. Like yourself.
As we know, the horse is the master of discerning when we are not authentic, thus making them such valuable therapy assistants and partners.
Looking forward to the class where I assume we will be exploring these matters more ! Thank you for this blog ! Well done.
Loved this! Every, single, word!!
I smiled, laughed and nodded my way thru:))
Thank you, Ana
Teehee, thanks Annette. Hi to the herd.