controlling your emotional tone

Emotion Tone Control & Why We Need to Talk About it

Emotional tone is the expression of your current mental and emotional state in your actions and thoughts.  We tend to be aware of the tone of our voice and cognisant of the emotional tone of other people’s body language.  We are very good at observing people and even horses and being about to judge their emotional state. But when you work with horses it can drop off your awareness radar and it can have profound negative effects on your horse.

Firstly, why can it have negative effects?

It is because horses are very sensitive to our emotions, movements and the various direct and indirect pressures we apply to them.  Our emotional state expressed through the way me move can trigger a horse to feel concerned, confused or uncomfortable.  The emotional tone impacts the speed, smoothness, rhythm, lightness of our movements.

Why can our awareness of our emotional tone drop off our radar when we work with horses?

There are many reasons.  Mostly, because we are used to communication via speaking, so we are better at controlling our emotional expression of our speech.  We are less practiced at communicating with movement, touch and pressure which is the main forms of communication we use with horses.

But there are more reasons and it becomes very significant with people that have suffered a blow to their confidence or are struggling with nervousness and anxiety with their horse.

In these situations fear is being triggered and when this happens the thinking part of your brain can get overshadowed and the parts of your brain connected to the fear response and high stress arousal can take over.  The connection between your mind and body becomes disrupted and your conscious control of your thoughts and movements can become a struggle.  Therefore, your stress and fear become detectable in your emotional tone of your presence and movement.  Your horse senses this and it them becomes triggered.  I call this “the horse and rider vicious cycle of fear”.

To overcome confidence and trust issues with your horse it is therefore necessary to gain control over your emotional tone. This can be done; however, you need to understand what is triggering your fear and it is a very individual thing.

It is certainly not helped by “putting your brave pants on” or getting a new horse.  Putting brave pants on can just perpetuate and cement emotional tone patterns of behaviour. And a new horse is most likely going to end up with the same problems as the previous horse - because your emotional tone patterns will keep re-creating the same problems!

Fear and your ability to control your emotional tone and presence around a horse can be triggered by a fear associations after an accident; subconscious beliefs such as deep seeded sense of insecurity and people pleasing coping habits; feelings of vulnerability that occur with parenthood or ageing; a lack of handling and riding competence…and so on.  Many people can have more than one cause that triggers them.

To gain control of your emotional tone each cause needs to be strategically targeted.  This is why you can do many different things to try and help your confidence and nerves riding but still struggle and continue to have an anxious, spooky horse or fighting worrying thoughts of “what if”.

If you look at the image associated with this post you will see the flakes of “emotional tone” pouring off the rider and horse.  Each trigger has to be addressed to lower this vibe pouring off you and replace it with a confident tone.  Where the mind and body is connected and movement is controlled, consistent and easy for the horse to follow.

If you are interest in learning more about the layers of triggers and targeting the complexities that impact your emotional tone I have written a book.  It is designed to help people and inform trainers and coaches how to strategically overcome confidence and trust issues.  It is short, easy to read, gives you a plan and makes you realise you are not just lacking bravery.

Click HERE to purchase as an eBook any where in the word OR if you are in Australia you can purchase a hard copy.