Overcoming FEAR, together
If your dad is anything like mine he’s probably full of corny sayings that he loves to pull out when the setting is right. A lot of these are just plain silly (I’m looking at you “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could use power tools?” ) but some of them seem to have wormed their way into my brain, creating a lasting impact. One that seems to be popping up regularly for me these days is actually an acronym. F.E.A.R. or “False evidence appearing real”. Now, I know my dad is not the one who invented this phrase, but he was certainly the first one to say it to me.
Mastering the zip line at a local playground that often felt too tall he’d remind me “Fear is just false evidence appearing real Kate! You can do it!” Faced with a new fear food, stepping out the front door on my first day at a new school… you get the idea. His words always seemed wise to me, but it wasn’t until recently that I started to think about how I might apply this same concept to horse training.
One of the things I have learned about Beau over the last month of working with him is his fear- specifically, claustrophobia. Any sort of environment that puts pressure, physically, on him is terrifying. If he reaches the end of a rope and feels the resistance against his head, if I ask him to play the squeeze game between me and a wall, for example. These moments bring out a different side in him, one that is bracey and scared.
Although I don’t understand this fear, it is my responsibility to honor it. Like my own absolute terror of ice cream, it’s something he will eventually learn to overcome, with time. In Beau’s mind the false evidence is real, either from some early trauma which I am unaware of, or simply a natural part of his personality. Like people horses can, and often do, develop phobias that are not based in any sort of reality. He is unable to rationalize the fact that those traumas are far behind him, because he has yet to create new connections to these moments which will tell him he is safe. It is my job, as his human and trainer to find ways to remind him that this evidence is indeed, FALSE!
One of the easiest ways to do this, for humans and horses, is through gentle, slow exposure. You’ve probably heard the saying “Come closer stay longer” (thank you Dr. Stephanie Burns) in regards to horse training. If you have not, I highly recommended the book “Move Closer Stay Longer”, a wonderful story of dealing with fear in life and training. The practices outlined in this book parallel nicely with the therapy principle of Exposure Therapy, in which a patient is asked to identify a fear of theirs, and then slowly overcome it using small steps and timed sessions.
Let me break it down for you:
One of my fears in regards to food is touching food. I believed that if I were to touch a food but not eat it I would still absorb the calories through my skin. Crazy, right? To me it felt real. In order to combat this my therapist would put a food in front of me, say pretzels. I would have to touch pretzels, maybe sorting them, until I felt like my anxiety had reached its peak. Then I would stop, and simply sit with this anxiety until it had halved. I would time this, and do it maybe 2-3 times in a row. This would be my homework daily for the next week or so, until I could confidently perform the task without my anxiety peaking.
So how do we use this with our horses?
Take Beau for example. When he first came home with me he was terrified of the mounting block, or more specifically, when I would be above his eye. In order to combat this we worked on slowly approaching the mounting block, then backing away. Once he could do this confidently I would ask him to come closer, maybe take a treat from me or get scratches. Over time his confidence has increased and he can now approach the mounting block, stand quietly, in a relaxed manner.
This is just one, small example of breaking down fears into real evidence. By taking things slowly and in small steps the false evidence that he once understood to be true has been replaced by new evidence. Because we did this slowly, on his terms, we were able to break the fear down in a compassionate way that is lasting.
