Horse Wrecks and Anxiety: Moving Forward Confidently

A life-altering horse wreck: every horse person's greatest fear. Join me as I discuss what happened to me earlier this year, lessons from it, how I moved forward, and how you can learn how to conquer your anxiety. 

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Transcript

Episode 2

[00:00:00] Hey there, and welcome to the Philosophical Cowgirl. I'm your host, Sarah Geis, a former philosophy professor and current full time horse person. This show is where the horse world meets the deep questions of life. In each episode, I'll share insights from my own learning process and sometimes discuss fascinating ideas with some of the brightest minds out there.

I'm a relentless learner. So in this podcast, you get to ride along with me on that lifelong journey. Whether you're a philosopher at heart. A horse person looking for something new to listen to, or you're just curious about how these two worlds intersect. This is the show for you. Hey, y'all. Welcome to the show and welcome back. If you're repeat listeners in this episode, I'm going to take you through my horse [00:01:00] wreck that I had earlier in the year, and we're going to cover some things that I've learned during and since then, and also, I'm going to talk about how to handle anxiety and nerves when you're working with and riding horses.

I hope it's all very helpful to you. And, uh, I know it's been, even though fairly rough for me, it's been helpful to me because I've learned quite a bit through this. My life was turned upside down earlier this year. I was independent. My training business was growing. I had horse show goals.

I was working towards a lot of horse show goals. I had a community of wonderful people that I was a part of. And I really loved my lifestyle. Loved what I was doing every day. And I was riding horses. Several horses a day, and it was great. Then, as a favor to another trainer, I got on a horse that I was told [00:02:00] was very broke, finished even, and only needed a tune up.

So, I rode that horse the first day, She felt, it was a Western Pleasure horse, um, she felt very resistant and sold up, which sometimes they can do. I've ridden them in the past and that has been something that I've noticed in the past with some of these horses. Um, I did feel like I made some progress toward the end of the ride, getting her freed up and getting her a little clearer on what I was asking, but still not a ton.

The next day, which was April 16th, I got on and gently asked her to go forward. And, uh, she really sulled up bad on me that time. And I took my split rein and lightly tapped her butt to get her to move forward because she was completely resistant to my legs. And she immediately, as I tapped her rear end, [00:03:00] went straight up, reared straight up, and then went over backwards on top of me before I had even gotten a step out of her.

She was completely on a loose rein so I didn't pull her over backwards on me. She just did it and it was a very smooth, fluid motion. The saddle horn landed on my chest and I took the full impact of her fall. Um, well, I guess I almost took the full impact of her fall because my cell phone was in my interior vest pocket, right where the horn hit.

So my cell phone was completely destroyed, but I do think it distributed some of that pressure. She rolled off to the side of me after having pinned me for a second. She broke bones as she went. So I had, um, a lot of broken ribs. I immediately knew there was internal bleeding. I was completely awake. I didn't have, I didn't hit my head or anything like that.

Um, my chest and [00:04:00] my abdomen felt really warm and periodically had some cold flashes and, uh, I was starting to feel like my clothes were really tight. So I knew that there were, there was internal bleeding. Fortunately, a friend found me and called 911. One. And over the course of the next few days, surgeries and such, we learned that I had a damaged kidney that was not going to make it.

I had a damaged pancreas with some necrotic tissue. parts of it that needed a partial removal. Um, my heart was bruised. I had four broken ribs, like I mentioned. And then I of course had a lot of fluid that needed to be drained. So I had a lot of drainage tubes, which are not pleasant by the way. Um, I spent almost a month in the hospital, two weeks of it.

I was extremely drugged up on painkillers too much. So to be aware of much of anything. [00:05:00] Um, I spent a month after that in my parents house, at my parents house in their basement. I was, uh, not in good shape there. I was working on showering without a stool. Um, it was one of those things where I had to have really small goals.

So, showering without a stool, walking up and down the stairs independently, walking from one room to another room, um, independently, And sitting up for certain lengths of time, that kind of thing. Those were, those were the goals that I was working with for that amount of time. Eating was challenging for about six months post accident.

I had trauma induced pancreatitis where they had to take out part of my pancreas. So that was one of the most painful things I've ever been through in my life. And, uh, that could flare up any time over time. Anything that I ate or drank and it was really difficult to [00:06:00] figure out what would trigger that. The recovery was rough. I ended up back in the hospital a few more times with various complications Sometimes pancreatitis sometimes heart related. I had to get my heart restarted chemically I don't remember what the the drug is called, but, um, if you've ever had to go through that, it is terrifying and, uh, not, not something I would recommend.

I had pretty much no energy and I had frequent stomach pain until very recently. So there were days when I felt like I would be getting better and then the next day I would feel like I just moved backwards several days. So I couldn't lift much. I couldn't walk far, couldn't ride in any serious capacity.

I, um, really missed being independent because I had to rely on people to bring me foods, bring, foods, bring me food, bring me drinks, um, [00:07:00] and, uh, you know, help me with my pillows and all that kind of stuff. There was a lot of grief over time. That I missed raising my, at the time, three year old Wyatt. Missed spending time with friends, missed horse shows that I was supposed to go to.

I knew that my horses were getting out of shape. They weren't where they were when I got hurt initially. So I worried about losing the progress that I had made on those horses. Um, losing opportunities, losing clients, all of that kind of stuff. So I had a lot of mental issues that I had to work through.

Um, bouts of anger and depression. I don't do well when there is a lack of forward progress happening. And that was all one giant, um, in my mind, lack of forward progress. Even though that's not, accurate because I was healing. I was getting a lot better, [00:08:00] but I thought it was way too slow and it was ticking me off.

So what I did have to realize during that, and I did periodically have these realizations that there really was forward progress of a certain variety, just a totally different kind than what I was used to. So throughout my life, uh, God's been trying to teach me that I am not in control, that He is, and I am very stubborn.

So I rarely listen, um, I usually try to act like I have it all together, that I am in control of my life, that I am the master and captain of my own journey, and that is a bunch of BS, and he has to do fairly dramatic things for me to acknowledge that. And this accident has been him yelling through a megaphone directly into my ear to quit acting like I have it all under control, because I don't.

The only one who is truly in control, the only one truly capable of seeing plans through to completion [00:09:00] has been trying to get my attention my entire life, and, um, I continually blow him off and ignore him. So this was an opportunity for me to reorient myself toward him. And toward his plan, his goals, uh, because I've been building on shifting sands all along because that's what it is to try to do everything on your own.

 So, um, I'm here now for what God can do through me, not what I can do on my own. And I will continue to forget that and probably need some, um, reorientation moments in the future.

I just hope not as, not as bad. I hope it doesn't take quite as much next time. So this whole process was surprising for that reason, but then also for another reason, which is the sheer volume of people ready to jump into a messy situation and help me. That has been amazing. And, uh, my husband is one that had to [00:10:00] gather up all these loose ends and dropped balls.

He had to find bills that I had, um, hidden, I guess. I mean, not on purpose, but, you know, I had my own organizational system, and he had to go and figure out where everything was, because I was not awake or aware enough to help him. Um, and, uh, An amazing friend of mine stayed in the hospital overnight routinely, despite having a full time job, to give Justin some breaks.

Other friends stepped in to make sure someone was always in the hospital room with me. I had friends take care of my dogs. Another friend took four horses, my four horses, to her full care boarding facility and didn't charge me. I had a friend that lent me a red light panel to get healed up when I was kind of plateauing which helped immensely.

My parents let us move in for a month. Um, I've had friends cook and offer to clean and send me cards, send me flowers, all of that stuff. [00:11:00] So, uh, a lot of the time we hear variations of when times get hard, most people disappear, which was the opposite in my case. The majority of people showed up. That was a clear reminder that whatever I do, whether it's train horses, teach something else, do a podcast, whatever, it's about the people that I'm around.

The job that I'm doing is secondary. So a favorite author of mine, Simon Sinek, he wrote a book called The Infinite Game, and he talks about how Life with purpose should be about the infinite game, which is what we are here for ultimately in the big picture and finite games, little ways that we get there or little things we do along the way.

Um, that's good. And those are important, but they pale in [00:12:00] comparison to the infinite game. That is something that I think we all need to figure out is what, what are we here for? What is that infinite game for me? So, um, getting back to writing. We'll talk about that a little bit. I. Got hurt in April, like I said, April 16th.

Um, I didn't get back on a horse until June, and it was killing me until that point. So, I crawled back on a horse in June, it hurt, it was difficult to get on, it was difficult to get off. Um, I trotted, I loped, I threw a saddle on all for the first time in July. I got on my two year old filly in September and, um, I've been asked quite a few times, was it scary to get back on?

Do I get nervous now? All that kind of stuff. So we'll talk about that in a second. I, by the way, related to all of this, when [00:13:00] I, um, started to heal up about three months later, my hair all start started to fall out. And so now I have short hair, which I am trying to grow out. But you may notice that if you watch the video version of this podcast, um, I look like I have a mullet because I'm trying to grow it out and I do not like short hair, but that's where we're at now.

Um, apparently that is something that can happen after trauma, which I didn't realize until now. So anyway, okay. Going back to getting back on horses. It didn't scare me to get back on. I was dying to get back on. I knew that the horse that flipped over on me was not typical. That was kind of a freak deal.

Um, but I do get nervous. I've always gotten nervous at various points, not a lot, but when I show, when I get on a colt for the first time, all of that, that's always been, you know, Something that I've done when I did [00:14:00] when I got on my two year old Philly. I was a little bit nervous But the thing is is I've always had to learn how to move past that how to live with it and function because That's the only way forward with horses.

So I always want to be smarter with the decisions that I make while working with horses and, um, be a skilled as I can be. But, you know, I will always be a little bit nervous. So, uh, if you can tend to get nervous or generally anxious at any time around horses, just know that that's normal. That if you don't, you are very likely, uh, not doing things that are hard enough to push you.

Or, you are not someone who cares all that much. So, if you care, and if you're doing things that'll push, push your limits, uh, you're gonna get nervous at some point. and there's [00:15:00] nothing wrong with that. So we can talk about ways that I've learned to cope, ways that I've learned to move forward through nerves, um, and do what I kind of consider to be putting the anxiety in the backseat and putting thinking and skill in the driver's seat.

So when things start to go wrong on horseback or start to make us nervous, um, we can either think, or we can give in to panic. Our natural instincts with horses, we have to realize though, are often wrong because our natural instinct is to think like a person and not think like a horse. And when we panic, we tend to go into panicky person mode, anxious person mode, and not think about what the horse needs us to do and who the horse needs us to be.

Sigh. So, more people get hurt, I think, because of their own panic than anything that the horse did. [00:16:00] So an example of this that I see all the time is, uh, well actually, it's, uh, There's two levels of this. First of all, there's the person who panics and quits riding and just screams or holds the horn and drops the reins or freaks out.

Um, and then the second stage of that, the second level of that is the person who bails off the horse with no reason to do that. And in both of those cases, it is very, very easy to get hurt. So. We look, we need to look at anxiety versus thinking and ask ourself which one is driving the boat, which one is running the show.

Anxiety and tension are normal and thinking is not normal because it is difficult to think and override your anxiety and your tension. So feelings, any kind of feelings and emotion is, uh. often stronger [00:17:00] than anything that our brain does, unless we have trained our brain to override our feelings.

Thinking is essential though, in horsemanship, because the horse is a feeler and there doesn't need to be two reactive feelers. There needs to be only one of those. Well, ideally you're both thinking, but if one of them's going to be, reacting. It doesn't need to be the person. It needs to be the horse. We need to be able to help the horse through react reactivity.

Um, we also need to realize that anxiety and excitement are physiologically the same. We we have this phenomenon of heart rate increase. Stomach discomfort, uh, my, our mind starts racing, our blood starts pumping, and that happens in anxiety and that happens in excitement. The only reason they're different emotions is because mentally we interpret them differently with our [00:18:00] minds.

So when we start feeling those feelings, if it's going to turn into anxiety, we're going to We are thinking worst case thoughts. We're thinking panic and flee thoughts. Excitement is different because we start thinking that we want to engage. We don't want to flee. We want to engage. We're about to do something that's exciting.

We're about to do something that is, um, intense and we are looking forward to it and moving forward towards it. So when you let anxiety drive, when you interpret those feelings through an anxious lens, you're going to end up tense and reactive. So you're going to grip with your legs, you're going to lean forward, you're going to drop the range, you're going to scream and stop thinking, all of that kind of stuff.

Maybe bail off the horse and twist your ankle, um, or break a leg. So we need to, instead of going there with our thoughts and with our reactions, we need to not assume that feeling butterflies and a heart rate increase are indicative of a [00:19:00] problem or of danger. It's just your body charging up to do something intense.

So we need to be able to put anxiety in the back seat by using problem solving skills, by asking, um, What do I need to do in order to solve this problem? Instead of thinking, quit thoughts, or how do I flee? So we need to think about how to fix the problem. So when anxiety does hit, or when those feelings that we interpret as anxiety hits, um, we need to recognize that it's there, and work extra hard to override it by thinking, and by asking ourselves, important questions.

So we do need to breathe deeply whenever that happens. That's something that we can develop as a habit, but we need to remind ourself to do it every time. because it does slow the heart rate down and it gets oxygen to your brain that has just [00:20:00] recently in the middle of all those feelings been deprived of oxygen.

So you're, you're not going to be able to think as well until you get that oxygen back to your brain. We also have to regain physical balance because often if a horse jumps or spooks or, um, tenses up, we will naturally have leaned forward or raised our heels in our stirrups and destabilized our Um, things like that.

So we need to check in with what our body is doing. Do I need to put my heels down? Do I need to sit back, sit up, et cetera, that kind of stuff. We also need to be present in the moment because panic has a tendency to spiral out of control and cause us to think about all the things that could possibly go wrong in the near future.

Problem is, is that when we do that, we, we are robbed of the ability to process and act in the present because we're so [00:21:00] preoccupied with the future. And when we do that, we quit writing in the present and we turn into passive panicking victims that tend to get hurt. So that's four things. Recognize that you feel anxious or that you feel things.

Things that we've interpreted as in the past as being anxious feelings and that we need to work hard to override it and think so recognize it there and think to breathe deeply three, regain your physical balance and four, be present in the moment, figure out what is happening right now and what decisions need to be made right now after we've done those four things.

Then you can address the problem. But you can't help the horse recover until you've recovered. You just have to try to do it quickly. Because horses do things quickly. So, what I would [00:22:00] add though is that as long as you are still in the middle of the saddle, never quit riding. Bailing off is usually a guaranteed injury.

Quitting riding gives the horse an opportunity to spiral out of control, because they do tend to do that, by the way. Horses have a tendency to think worst case scenario thoughts and do it very fast. And, uh, your job is to try to redirect that horse and help that horse to start thinking again. But you can only do that if you're thinking and if you're balanced, so that's why it's that's why this is so important When you make yourself think rather than letting yourself react Time does seem to slow down which does actually give you the space to act wisely as opposed to react unwisely Often what happens is if we pause to breathe collect our [00:23:00] thoughts and think the horse will follow suit.

The horse will breathe and collect his thoughts. So I had a horse that would, um, spook at something and drop to his belly and panic, but he would freeze while he was panicking. And if I would also freeze, breathe, stay in the center of the saddle, um, and then just. Give him a second, he would get over it and it wouldn't spiral into anything.

It would just go away. It was very benign. If horses trip, same thing. If we panic because a horse trips, then often, as opposed to what they would do if we were calm, which is just regain their balance and keep going, um, we might freak them out because all of a sudden our legs are squeezing their sides because we're panicked or we're yanking on their face or we're doing [00:24:00] any number of weird things that we do when we freak out and aren't thinking.

So, um, just sometimes pause, breathe, collect your thoughts, give the horse a chance to collect his thoughts and always keep writing. Unless you are three quarters of the way off already or the horse is about to run off a cliff or something really dramatic like that, 90 percent of the time staying in the saddle and reengaging the horse is going to save you, is going to help.

Um, also don't reward a spook or silliness with a break. Um, So that's something people do almost all the time. They, their horse will spook at something in the corner of the arena or their horse will decide to, um, crow hop a little bit because it's feeling fresh or whatever.

And that person, because they get destabilized, will stop [00:25:00] and pet the horse or stop and breathe or whatever, as opposed to just continuing to ride. And then what that horse has just learned. is well, if I do something dumb, or if I, you know, aren't careful with my feet, and I trip, or if I spook, or whatever, I get a break, and I get petted, and she leaves me alone, or he leaves me alone.

So, keep riding through these things. Don't necessarily get aggressive, you know, and make it a big thing, but make it nothing. Continue riding your task, continue their task. And, um, maybe if there's an area in the arena that you know, they're afraid of go back to that later for a rest period, but don't allow the spook itself to get the horse a reward.

So, um, that's a basic little bit of training. That is something to work into your everyday habits. We also need to look [00:26:00] at confidence development. So how do we gain confidence when we are frequently nervous or when you're, when you tend to be a nervous writer or when you tend to show nervously or whatever?

Um, a lot of people will say, look inside, look at yourself, reflect on yourself and believe in yourself and all of that stuff. Um, I already mentioned this author, Simon Sinek. And he makes a really good case for confidence coming from the outside, not coming from self reflection necessarily. Confidence comes from repeated success, um, in certain skills.

It also comes from other people telling you that your skills are in fact sufficient to handle certain things. So, um, You need to practice a lot. You need to always be working on your skill development. You need to always be working on how your mind can override your emotions. [00:27:00] So taking your emotions and shelving them and saying, all right, yeah, I'm nervous right now.

You know what? Doesn't matter. It does not matter. I need to think through this situation and not feel through this situation. And then I can address my feelings later. That's how we need to start, you know, approaching this sort of thing. Um, but it's what we also need to realize is while we practice, while we work on our skills, work on our mindset, all of that, it is sometimes also okay to acknowledge that the horse that we have or the horse that we're riding makes us nervous too often to be helpful.

So if that horse will occasionally make us nervous, That's okay. But I mean, we can work through that sort of thing. But if the horse is at a different level than where we're comfortable, it's okay to get a different horse. If you don't have the skills to work through that [00:28:00] frequently. Um, it's okay to acknowledge that that is not the horse for you because sometimes that scenario will actually get you in trouble.

kill our confidence because we never get an opportunity to feel successful and to feel like we've improved in any given area. Um, I will say, try to work on it first, you know, get a trainer's opinion, that kind of thing. Maybe get a couple trainers opinions, but at a certain point it is okay to say, this is not a good horse for me because the horse is damaging my confidence more than anything.

So that horsemanship game that we're in is majority mental. You do have to have basic skills. You have to have a baseline athleticism, baseline level of coordination, um, baseline level of mental mastery over your emotions. But, um, [00:29:00] it is mostly that mental game. So I think that that's why I'm so passionate about this kind of thing.

And I thought I would share my story and some of the stuff that I've learned, even though this didn't necessarily just come from my accident. It's been stuff that I've been honing over years and years and years of working with horses and training people and all of that. But, um, It's not something that happens overnight.

It's something that we all need to be working on every day of our life and, uh, hope that this helped.