How Can Horses Heal?
“Let’s take a dive into grief. The art of grief can be a space so unfamiliar it becomes the most avoided, then making healthy living quite precarious. If the space of grief is not held to a standard of respect, its tentacles will weave into spaces grief does not belong. Life becomes a management issue and often grief is overlooked as a reason for the way we respond to certain situations and circumstances.
Grief requires a place to be in our lives. It’s a natural and God given healthy response to what is happening around us. Would you consider exploring what grief might mean in your life? Since 2010 this farm has encouraged the encounter of grief. Horses have the ability to unlock and create safe space and the farm is a safe place to navigate the ebb and flow of this very important emotion-GRIEF. The month of June is EAD’s grief emotion month.”
Deb, EAD Owner & Equine Specialist
I've been working with a lot of my clients lately about sitting with our emotions and not being in such a rush to distract ourselves from them, or to unwillingly dissociate from them out of habit. It's very tricky in our current societal norms, and often results in problematic behavioral or emotional "surface symptoms" (i.e. anger outbursts, relationship issues, substance abuse, etc) that might lead someone to treatment. A very telling example of this came from an experience with this horse, Rita, who passed away just one week ago.
In a nutshell, I had a client session with Deb from EAD and Rita, and a client we will call Blue for confidentiality sake. Blue qualifies for a complex-PTSD diagnosis (chronic, long-term trauma symptoms that overlap with ongoing traumas rather than single or episodic trauma).
The client was tasked with brushing Rita in her stall. Blue talked about their inner experience while they did this, and shared that they were thinking the brush wasn't working well, there was probably a more efficient way to do this, what was next, and other run on internal processing. Blue noted they are a solution-focused person and can't help but think of the "next thing," rarely existing in the moment in peace- a common CPTSD response focusing on adapting the next survival strategy to feel prepared. Blue was asked how they were feeling emotionally, they said, "fine I guess." Rita, the horse, walked away from her to the corner of her stall. Rita did not want to engage with Blue.
Blue picked at the grooming brush and continued processing aloud. "What is the solution you have found to the problem you have now?" "I don't know, I haven't figured it out." (These are all generalizations of an ongoing conversation and not direct quotes) "What barriers are preventing a solution that works? Your mind works like that all the time for other things, except for yourself?" How do you feel even thinking about it?" Meanwhile, Rita is in the corner doing nothing with Blue. Client says, "Sad, I think." Rita turns her head to Blue. Client explains their sad feelings. Client begins to cry. Rita turns her whole body toward client, expressing interest and awareness of the change.
Client pondered about the change in Rita's body language, and considered that her initial answer was not true, and Rita didn't trust her; when client became more truthful with what her inner experience really was and expressed that outwardly, her body and emotions aligned and were able to be observed by Rita, a massive prey animal with huge instincts of fight or flight. Her life depends on sensing inconsistencies and threats in her environment, and in that stall, the client was a threat because her ins and outs did not align. Rita moved in the stall and the client was able to engage with her again.
Client discussed that they don't bother dwelling in sad feelings because it doesn't do anything for them, it doesn't change anything, it's not a solution, they don't want to burden other people with their sadness (anticipating no one will be able to handle it, or try to), it feels vulnerable and weak, etc etc etc.
But sometimes we need to feel sad. If we keep pushing it off, assigning it to another time and place in our overwhelmed life schedules and responsibilities, waiting for the "Right moment" to let it out, or, twisting it up in our minds that we don't deserve to feel that way at all, we prolong our sadness and also muck it up with a lot of other destructive feelings.
It's like watching a 2 hour movie but in 2 minute increments scattered throughout the day or week. It's going to take a LONG time to get through the movie, and there will be lots of interference along the way, dragging it out, complicating it, mixing it in with other movies. If we sat down and watched the 2 hour movie all the way through without much distraction, we could move on to the next thing we need to. Sadness and grief demand the same. It doesn't mean we stop existing in our lives for days, weeks, months at a time until the feelings go away, because they never really will. But it does look like honoring and acknowledging WHEN they are present, saying hello to them, considering what is going on for those feelings to come forward, validating the experience as real and important, and taking care of the body and mind as best as able in that moment. This is where new adaptive coping skills come in to play that can vary greatly in time, intensity, involvement, etc.
But, it starts with letting sadness and grief exist, because they do.
For Blue, that means stopping for a minute and saying "I'm feeling sad right now. I'm allowed to feel sad. I don't need to cover this up, hide it, or run away from it. The feelings of others are not more important than my own." Many people don't get to this point, and they will eventually end up with "symptoms" that come through on the surface, behaviorally, mentally, health-wise, because they didn't know to just acknowledge their feelings so they could move forward to the next thing.
Equine Assisted Therapy is so fascinating and simplistic at the same time, observing in real time how a horse is used as a tool to navigate a human's inner process. I'm so excited to be a part of EAD's team and encourage anyone with a shred of interest in seeing what it's like, what EAD does, how it helps, and how it could help you, to reach out to EAD and find out!
And to honor EAD's original post, we remember Rita today, who has been gone just shy of one week, and all of the amazing work she did in helping clients work through grief. Horses heal the heart.