SELLING CONFIDENCE IN HORSE RIDING
SELLING CONFIDENCE IN HORSE RIDING‼️🐴
Confidence issues with horses can hit people at any time. After they had their first fall or scary incident with a horse. After they come back into horses after a break or having kids when they have extra responsibility on their shoulders. It can be when they get a new horse that responds to the world differently than their last horse. As we age or sustain an injury or suffer an illness, or it can be out of the blue!
It is a horrible thing to experience. Riding horses is many people’s hobby. Their “thing”, their “joy” and it is awful that something so special to you makes you feel so anxious. Some people “put their big girl panties” on and force themselves to do it, but its not fun. Others find themselves making excuses and feeling everything from guilt to shame.
What happens when you lose your confidence is that your brain has identified horses are not safe. It can do this for many reasons. It has identified you got hurt, almost got hurt or felt out of control of the situation and there was a risk to your safety or safety of others. You have no conscious control over what your brain decides is dangerous. The horrible feelings in your gut, the worry, fear, nerves or anxious thoughts you are experiencing are all your brains way of motivating you to not participate or be near what it has identified as dangerous. It also changes your thinking. It flicks you into an emotive reactive state and where you perceive the world around you, negatively. It prepares you for flight or fight.
There are many programs out there offering help with confidence issues that people can sign up for. These online courses typically teach breathing exercises, meditation, visualization techniques, positive thinking, goal setting and fill people full of psychological theories so they understand their issues. All this is well and good and while these things are great to learn, when it comes to confidence with horses this “top down” approach is flawed. This is because if you don’t know how to help a horse that is struggling with confidence itself, you have no hope. All that theory you just learnt disappears when you brain takes your frontal lobe offline and your fear centers hijack your breathing. Sure, you might be able to fight to control your breathing rate, but this is hard to do if your horse is freaking out and you are panicking. Learning skills is key. Learn to help the horse and the process will help you.
The most straight forward and effective way of solving confidence issues is to show your brain that you are in control and you are safe around horses. You do this by learning skills. Practicing them and growing your competence in performing them. Then setting yourself up to be successful in your interactions with horses. The more “in control” and “successful” interactions with horses and riding them you have, the less your brain perceives risk. Your thinking becomes less reactive and more rational, and confidence grows. It doesn’t happen overnight, but with time, patience and thoughtful encounters confidence does grow.
Please share this if you know someone who has had their joy of horses or horse riding destroyed by a lack of confidence. Or someone that makes themselves ride even though they are really nervous. Maybe you know someone stuck doing ground-work and not progressing.....this does not have to be the way, learning skills grows confidence!
