Category: Confidence & Mindset

This is Nadia. If I were to describe Nadia as a person, this is what I would say:

Nadia has a heart that swallows you in its arms as soon as you are in her company. Her eyes are a pool of kindness and she has a pulse that makes you feel like she’s a very old soul.

And yet all at once, Nadia does not recognize her own power. The strength that she could so easily own has been dampened by the assertions of many she has held company with.

Her opinions have not been allowed to express themselves.

Her natural athleticism has been shaped and held in very physical ways so her outside form fits the shape of an ideal body but in ways that are forced, not created.

She’s been kept within a confined definition of beauty where the standard is more about form than it is about function. More Pleasantville and less The White Mouse.

And none of this has been done with malicious intent. It’s simply the way it’s always been done.

For some at least.

When Nadia and I first came together, her strength only held when the scaffolding was there to support it. Without her equine friends around, it crumbled into dust. Even presenting her with the bridle and the bit ignited a pattern in her body of concern and negative anticipation.

In order to soften the edges of the concern and create a new perspective, we can’t approach the training the same way it’s always been done. Going as far as to share the same start point would even be a mistake; from there, all we would ignite is a chain reaction of conditioned responses that take us to the same conclusion before we have even introduced the possibility that things could be different.

Nadia has fallen into the same training system think tank that many of us unknowingly subscribe to ourselves when it comes to navigating fear, tension and concern; the go harder, go stronger or go home philosophy.

The cowboy up method.

The push ‘em through it way.

The Just Do It approach.

Us humans, we think that the system we fall under is different from our horses- but it’s really not.

If we ignore the signs of tension, unease or concern in our horses in favor of “manning up and pushing through”, bets on we do the same thing to ourselves when we feel a similar way.

We translate those feelings as weakness, disrespect or shameful. Instead of allowing space for them, breathing into them, we contract around them and hope that if we hold them tighter, nobody will notice they are there.

In order for us to truly understand relaxation, we have to truly understand fear and tension. They are in a co-dependent relationship.

The basic rules are this:

Add power to tension and you just get more tension.

And:

The amount of tension you begin with is directly proportional to the level of reactivity your requests are met with.

For instance: If my horse begins with a baseline of tension that is high, asking for more will only increase the level of tightness I’m rewarded with on a physical, mental and emotional level.

If I myself get on with a high level of anxiety and concern, pushing for more without first seeking to soften my concerns will only see those concerns tighten.

In both scenarios, asking for more is not the answer.

Asking why, however, is.

Why is this concern there? How can I better understand it? And how can I allow those tensions to release so we create a new start point, a brand-new conversation from which to begin from?

This is Nadia.

I have not worked specifically on making her comfortable with the bit, and yet when I put the bridle on the day before yesterday, for the first time in two years, she accepted it and held it without question.

I haven’t worked specifically on making her brave, and yet she is becoming more and more so.

I have not asked her to push through or ignored what she was feeling, and the softness has made her stronger.

I haven’t done anything special than give her the same graces that I hope to extend to myself.

That if she shows concern, I seek to understand it.

That if she carries tension, I seek to relieve it.

That if she has an opinion, I do my best to listen.

And that when I see her, I tell her how magnificent she is and how grateful I am to be in her company.

The qualities we should all be granted in a partner.

Onwards.

❤️ Jane

Never at any point prior had I ever imagined myself sitting barefoot on an unstable plastic chair dressed in a nightgown that buttoned all the way up to just under my chin, long voluminous swathes of material that extended well over my wrists and well past my ankles in the middle of the Sri Lankan jungle.

And yet here I was, getting eaten alive by many forms of biting bugs, a position I had chosen over the stifling room I’d been given in to sleep in prior.

I laughed at first. Initially to myself. Then out loud. And then the crying merged to sobbing and I found I didn’t know what to do with myself as the ugly cries and tears and snot streamed and I didn’t want to use the sleeve of the gifted nightdress to deal with any of it.

I felt my chest. My passport was still there, gaffer taped to my person. A small group of others slept in the tiny hut just behind me.

It was 2005, shortly after the first Tsunami had demolished the Sri Lankan shoreline and I was here to help.

The fear was palpable. The second Tsunami was coming. It was a fixture in the minds of all who had seen the first. A TukTuk had sped out of the trees and picked up a reluctant me from my dilapidated lodging near the shoreline.

If the second wave comes, I was advised, you must get off the ground. Even if the water is only 2cm deep, it will come at you the speed of a jumbo jet. You will be knocked off your feet and swept out. In many cases, it wasn’t the depth of the water that killed, but this. Get off the ground.

I was tired. I felt alone. I was in this strange place and I was hot and sticky and for that moment, over it.

The first thing to happen was a detachment. As I sat and sobbed with my weary, tired tears I dropped deeper. A quietness. Still bearing witness to my own crying but as though I was hearing myself in another room.

It stopped, little by little. I was like a child, distracted from their feeling by a toy held out for them. The quiet deepness, a door very slightly ajar, tempting me to peek around the corner.

I sat. For how long, I’m not sure. Just me and the bugs and the heat and the 1800’s nightdress.

I asked the quietness what to do. It felt like it was open to questions.

Listen, I asked it. How do I let go?

I sat for longer.

How do I let go?

I felt my hands relax on my legs.

By releasing what you are holding onto.

Faith is a curious thing. It’s an act of surrender in moments where you feel like holding tighter is the only logical answer. It’s a return to some understanding, however superficial, that you are part of a bigger navigational system that will guide you and tell you what to do from one moment to the next.

We can plan. We can arrange as much as we are able. We can learn and save and account for. But the thing we have the least practice in is something that we need the most of: Faith and trust.

Not in anything or anyone around us.

In ourselves.

In all the moments since, I have practiced with varying success those two things. When I feel anxious, afraid or unsure, I drop deeper.

I detach from the noise. I drop as deep as I can go.

There are always two things waiting for me there.

Trust that no matter what happens, I can, and will, deal with what comes up.

And:

Surrender to the moment. Only looking as far as the next right step.

Trust and surrender are the worker bees of your intuition. Aligning yourself with them takes you out of future-focused fear and connects you to a guidance system as expansive as the stars in the sky.

In many instances, the only reason we seek this out and find peace within it is when we’ve spent too much time in the opposite. Too much time holding on. Too much time thinking. Too much time attempting to control everything we deem within our scope of power.

It’s ironic to think that the answer could possibly come from no longer holding on.

That the power lies in an intangible practice of trust rather than a logical grappling with details and fine print.

My horses are a constant reminder, my teachers, of this deep pool of knowing. They live within this space. When they think about how to behave, act or respond, it comes from their knowing. Left to their own devices, their knowing never lets them down.

It tells them, graze now.

Rest now.

Run now.

They don’t pre-empt their knowing. Or wonder if it no longer there. They simply trust that in the moment, it will speak to them and they will deal with it as it comes up.

They trust in their knowing and trust in themselves.

Big situations require big trust.

And the knowing is always there.

So if you find yourself rising up. Into the space of anxiety, fear or concern. Drop deeper.

Tap into your trust.

And remind yourself that whatever comes up, you will handle it as and when it is needed.

Onwards.

❤️Jane

A little while back, I had two experiences, very close together which changed the fabric of my world as I saw it. I came home from an overseas work trip only to wake up the next morning and find our beautiful older horse injured in the paddock. Although I hoped to be wrong, I knew immediately that it was not an experience that he would recover from. Despite being able to rationalize that he’d lived a full and happy life and was loved throughout- despite knowing what was coming-  at the moment that death came, I could not escape the feeling of the air being sucked out of my body as I struggled to compose myself through the noise of my own sobbing.

Not much later, my younger horse became very ill and whilst he went on to make a full recovery, his life hung in the balance for many weeks in between. Here the grief was different- I felt swallowed not only by the potential loss of my friend, but the loss of the dreams that I held for the both of us. The fear of his death was always front of mind and despite many efforts to distract myself or focus on what I could control, I learned very quickly that grief and sadness is not a process that can be avoided, denied or suppressed. It pulses through you with an energy that will only reappear in different or undesirable ways if you attempt to control or contort it. Instead, I had to surrender to the grief and allow for it; to allow the natural process to take its course.

Change also brings its own form of grief. The loss of what was or would or could be. Grief at the loss of routine, of connection; of letting go of the attachment to things that we love and hold dear.

The experience of grief is made more bearable if we can understand that it is natural, expected and painful. From my work and own studies, I have come to understand the function of grief as something that we feel in our psyche when we are confronted with a big change. When we accept it in this way, we can then come to recognize grief in its many forms. The most obvious form is death, but we also grieve as a result of injury and trauma; in fact, any loss that represents a new reality that differs from what you have been used to can show up as an experience of grief.

The most common response to grief is one of huge loss, but at its essence, grief is a re-creation. We don’t forget what or who it is that we are grieving; instead we take them with us. The experience of grief destroys what we have come to know previously and reshapes us- if we let it- into something new and more expansive. We take forward everything that we have learned, be that from horses or humans, and apply the lessons to those who come into our path as part of the newly created present and future.

While I am respectful of the experience of grief being a very personal one, there are some common points that feel worthy of discussion that come to mind from conversations with riders who have struggled with or feel debilitated by the loss of their horse, or by grief in its many shapes and forms.

Your grief is valid

There are many stages of grief, but it’s not so much a step by step process as much as it is like being thrown in a concrete mixer- everything is happening all at once and altogether. The denial, the anger, the sadness, the acceptance, the resignation, the understanding; all conflicting and confusing and seemingly happening all within the same breath. Regardless of how things are showing up for you, your feelings are valid. They are not a sign of weakness, or failure; they are a natural response to massive change that is requiring you to reconfigure life and riding as you know it.

You have to surrender to the process

As a culture, we are “bad” at grief, change and dying. Not only are we unsure how to deal with it personally, but we are even more unsure how to deal with someone else in the midst of it. The ability to hold space for someone to go through a hard and painful emotional experience is a skill- and it’s a skill that not everyone has. As a consequence, big emotions are often shut down or glossed over because we don’t know how to “fix” it and consequently, we would rather pretend that it isn’t happening.

For those of you in a support role for someone grieving, you are not expected to fix it. You are off the hook on that one. Instead, allowing someone to experience their pain and be with them without diminishing it or disallowing it is one of the most healing and loving things you can offer someone.

What’s more, if you are in the midst of grief, you don’t expect to be fixed- and even more than that, you know that it isn’t possible. The process, however, of being allowed to grieve is an important one, and if that space is not created for you, you need to ensure that you create the space for yourself.

Lean into your grief

Suppression, denial or pretending everything is ok is intimately related to this. When others are unable to hold space for us, and we are unable to hold space for ourselves, we do not allow ourselves to cycle through the natural grief process. What you are feeling cannot be ignored, and when it is, it appears in ways that are unhealthy and unproductive. Leaning into the pain is the only way to allow yourself to be transformed by it. Pretending it isn’t there does not give you a free pass to escape the process; it will just prolong it and create a whole lot of messiness in between.

The other reason for suppression or denial is that we believe that allowing ourselves to feel our grief means something about us that we don’t want it to mean or we feel like we are falling into a hole that we may never come out of. Allowing yourself to feel the emotion does not mean that you are weak, that you lack courage or that you are a failure. It just means that you loved deeply and that you are going through a big change that demands respect and reverence.

Although it can be scary, going into the grief does not mean that you will stay in it, or that the feelings will be the same forever. It will be hard and it will be painful- that’s intrinsic to the process and something that none of us escape from- but you can and will come to the other side of it if you can give in to the reemergence of a different version of yourself. The transformation of grief happens by itself, whether or not we are willing participants.

Grief is hard work

Grieving, especially in the early stages, is a full-time job. Nothing is more time consuming than the energy that grief requires. If you are in the midst of grieving, extend to yourself the same kindnesses that you would extend to a friend or a loved one. Make time for the grieving process and give yourself the space to process and recover. You will get to the other side of it, but only as a consequence of allowing yourself to feel it.

There is a beautiful quote by Anne Lamott that says:

 “You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”

 Here’s to learning how to dance with the limp.

❤️Jane

Change is a difficult thing for us to get our heads around.

A while back, I worked with a rider who was becoming very successful on the showjumping circuit. She was consistently winning, feeling great, and leading the series that had been on her dream list to win for as long as she could remember.

Then, one day, she stopped going to shows. She just… stayed home. Left the truck parked in the driveway, and sat on the couch, thinking about everyone else out there with their horses.

Naturally, this behavior seemed to make no sense. After all, this was what she wanted right? What was wrong with her?

But as we began work together, and started to pick through, the reasons became more and more clear.

Her friend group- people who were very important to her- had started to treat her differently. Winning had changed the dynamic they were used to and the previous close relationships they had shared became less so.

At least, that’s how it felt.

If winning, then, was the reason for her strained relationships, best she stop doing that quick smart. Or so her unconscious mind told her.

You know, I told her, the thing about comfort zones is that it’s not so much about what we want but what we are used to. Your comfort zone represents what’s most familiar, and change- even if it’s what we want- challenges that. So when we hit the outer edges of our comfort zone, we cycle back down to what’s familiar. That is our homeostasis point, and everything in nature is just trying to preserve homeostasis.

You are just cycling back to what you know.

Our tendency, I continued, is to view change and movement forward- especially if it’s really disruptive to our systems- from the position of loss. In your situation, for instance, you are not viewing winning the showjumping series from a position of gain and advancement; you see it from the position of loss and separation.

If there’s one thing I know about change, is that it’s a filter system. My mantra is this:

Change is a filter and everything that is good comes with me.

If my friendships are really there for the highest interest of everyone, I know they will come with me.

Whatever I know in my experience now, if it is meant to be mine as we continue on, I know it will be there for me on the other side.

It doesn’t mean that it is easy. It doesn’t mean that I won’t do my best to maintain relationships or work to preserve what I have.

This is not a passive process.

But I do know that if I prevent myself from advancing and expanding in favor of staying where I am, then I’ve fallen into the trap of believing it’s possible to be static. That what I have now is the best deal possible for me, and the truth is, we don’t really know that.

Our human tendency is to view change through the lens of loss, especially if that change is something we didn’t initiate or necessarily want. We sit where we are now, we look around and back and think, I don’t want to lose this.

We look forward, and instead of seeing possibility, we see blackness.

So we start grabbing. We hold and snatch and hunker down in the hope that the tighter we hold on, the less chance we have of change taking a hold of us.

But the only thing that does is create stress.

It’s possible, that what lies ahead is better than what we know.

But in order to walk through the invisible wall, we have to let what has come before fall away. And what remains will be what was meant to come with us.

Change- even change that we want- is a process of surrender. It’s a process of faith. It’s a process of trust.

But not of anything outside you. Of yourself.

You have to trust that you will deal with whatever comes up.

You have to keep your face turned towards positive possibility.

You have to be willing to let it burn so you can rise.

But not facing towards what you have lost.

Facing towards what you have and will gain.

And my showjumper? She won the series.

Change is a filter and everything that is good comes with you.

Onwards.

❤️Jane

I’m a freedom lover. For a very long time, I rebelled against the idea of any sort of routine because I believed that true freedom came with being able to create my own schedule and exist outside of any pre-set parameters. I quickly learned this was a fast track to nowhere.

Yes, I love freedom, but every form of energy needs direction to be truly felt and appreciated. Without a framework around me, it’s too easy to lose track of what was important or what was the highest and best use of my time. Now I realise that liberation exists as a consequence of good habits and structure, and this is possible to create for yourself even within circumstances that are unusual, unwanted or unfamiliar.

When you have a lot of time on your hands and not a lot of variety in terms of how you can spend it, it’s easy to get into a routine that follows the path of least resistance and leaves you feeling under-nourished mentally, emotionally and physically (hello endless watching of TV and scrolling the internet!). As humans, two of our base needs is to have a sense of purpose and to experience a sense of progress. Both of these are possible to cultivate, we just need to be intentional in how we are using our time.

Let’s start at the start and take it from there.

Establishing some sort of routine when you wake up

With everything on the outside seeming kind of out of control right now, creating a morning routine is an important part of taking control for yourself and gifting yourself with a sense of certainty when you wake up.

This can be as simple or as detailed as you like, but I see this very first part of the day as an opportunity to decide how it is I want to show up in the world and the kind of person I want to be. I know- that all sounds very idealistic- but the truth of it is that recognizing that these elements are within my control is something I find very comforting.

Instead of seeing joy or bravery as destinations I arrive at, I see them as opportunities for practice. How can I practice joy today? How can I practice bravery? And if I am operating from that place, how does that inform my decisions and actions?

The other thing that I consider uber important? Taking care of your nervous system. Right now, I believe self-care is part of our community and global responsibility. This is a time where our considered responses, our creativity and our ability to care for each other is needed more than ever. We aren’t able to do any of those things in any constructive way if we are anxious, overwhelmed and strung out.

For me, setting my intentions and practicing a combination of Qi Gong and Yoga help me ground my nervous system and nourish myself so that I can be a part of the solution- part of the flow of the good stuff- and remove myself from feelings of panic or distress that are so easy to slip into right now.

Create a morning routine that’s specific to you. And within that, be flexible.

If you’re inclined to stay in your Pajamas all day, your morning routine might be as simple as getting dressed and taking a moment to breathe before going to whatever comes next.

It won’t always go the way you planned. My moments of tranquility are often interrupted by two little people vying for space on my mat, but it’s all part of it.

Sleep- Make sure you getting it.

This is really a big one and something that I’m practicing devoting myself too. I asked myself what is the one thing that I can do that will have the biggest effect on everything else in my life and making sure I am getting enough sleep takes the top spot on my list.

If you’re still on the fence about whether sleep is important, check out this Ted Talk. And if you aren’t so much interested in watching that, here’s a quick summary of factoids I took away from it

1. Reducing sleep by 1 to 2 hours a night reduces immunity by 70%. Those Killer T cells that we need to rally around reduce by SEVENTY PERCENT! Can you believe that? The simple equation means that sleep deprivation = immune-compromised. I get that some of us (shift work, small people waking us up in the night) aren’t fully in control of our sleep, but for those of us that are, we really need to make sure we are getting our full 8 hours in. It really matters.
2. With the same reduction, our cognitive abilities decrease by up to 40%. That means our memory and our ability to retain information is drastically affected.
3. Not so much mentioned, but talking experientially, if you are sleep deprived, your emotional balance and resilience are going to go out the window. Nervous system restoration and balance happen during deep rest. And there is no backup plan if you aren’t getting it.

Make sleep a priority. It really is a matter of make or break.

Fill Yourself With The Good Stuff (I’m talking eating well, drinking water and exercising however you can)

 I know, nothing groundbreaking here, but it is ah-ma-zing how quickly this stuff gets pushed out when the days are stretching before us and we don’t have the defined breaks that we might be used to. I’ve found one of the most challenging parts of being an adult is deciding what to eat every day, and over the last little while (no need to congratulate me, this is a really new thing for me!) I’ve been going through the recipe books and pre-planning (I know!) what I’m going to eat.

Given how going to the supermarket is not an opportunity for doodling around at the moment, I’m planning on having a pretty firm idea of how to go about things so hitting the old recipe books and getting myself a tight little list will help make sure I actually come home with things I can use (and hopefully avoid the “why did I buy that?) feeling.

Drinking water and exercise. You know how this goes. Do both of them. They aren’t luxuries. You need both of them to be a human being that feels like they have it going on.

Learning. Soak it up.

For me this is as important of any and all of the above. If I feel like I’m not learning, I feel like my soul has turned into a raison, and that makes me a grumpy person on the outside. Space for learning- be it a podcast, an audiobook, a tutorial- is a total must in my day and I’m always looking for opportunities to tune my ear balls into helpful words as I go about doing things.

In my online program, we are really ramping things up to make sure we have the ways and means to support our heads and hearts over this time, and of course continue to create wonderful partnerships with our horses. There is so much incredible content out there to allow you to enrich your heart and mind. Make sure you make the most of it and make space for it in your day.

Humour. Seek it out.

I love me a good giggle snort. This situation we’re in? The universe has really pulled one out of the bag. Yes, it’s serious, but it’s also possible to take the time to lighten up, to soften the edges and realise it’s important to seek joy and laughter in order to make the whole experience sustainable.

I’m really affected by what I watch and read (I think we all are really). When I’m in a position of feeling more vulnerable than usual, I’m especially mindful of what I consume. Watching standup comedians or listening to podcasts that make me laugh is part of my soul food right now and helps me soften the edges of what is a pretty tough time for all of us.

Seek lightness. It’s the only way to be able to carry the heaviness.

Choices. You have them.

A quote that’s always stuck with me (and I paraphrase) is that suffering comes about when we see reality as different from what it already is. What that means is this: fighting against or resisting what is happening only adds a layer of suffering to our experience that is not needed or necessary. It’s possible to observe what’s happening without exaggerating or inflating it with the stories that we tell ourselves.

Suffering is a choice. And that understanding is a liberation. If I feel stress, that’s coming about from me thinking that this situation should be different from what it is.  Instead, I can ask, what’s the next best thing for me to do right now?

Choices. We all have them. And the biggest one might be to reconnect every moment with what is within our control and influence.

To decide on the smallest thing that’s possible for us to move towards a better feeling place.

Onwards.

❤️Jane

You know when you are just trucking along and everything is going great and then all of the sudden, you look to the left and a small child wot happens to be yours looks a little green and next minute, you find yourself tending to their every need for the next few days and you can’t remember whether the clothes you are wearing were the exact same ones you wore yesterday, and the only way forward is the sniff test?

Or perhaps, you think, look at us go! We’re amazing! And then all of the sudden, your boss rings from work and the clean desk you left the day before is now piled high with to do’s due yesterday and you try to tell them, but I have a life! And they reply, what is this life you speak of?

Or perhaps you are the equestrian version of the Sound of Music, and then your left ear falls off, along with both knees no longer working and you lose your sense of smell and have to lie on the couch for two weeks?

Whatever the situation, we all have well, stuff, that gets in the way of our manicured and carefully procured plans. Even if we manage to graciously surrender to the moment, momentum can be hard to get back, and it’s easy to find yourself in a situation where the dust has lifted, your scratchy eyeballs are cured and your ear reattached, but now your mojo has left the building.

Sounds like an emergency plan is in order! Having found myself in a similar situation in the last few days, I thought it would be a good opportunity to share with you a brief plan for getting back on the literal and metaphorical horse.

Let’s giddy-up.

1. Look at what’s important

With all that out-of-control-ness that you have been living in, what’s needed is to get a handle on your own time again so you can actually gain some semblance of order. It sounds massively boring, but if your head is feeling like a pressure cooker of stuff that you have needed to get done but haven’t managed to, now is the time to look that puppy in the eye and get things sorted.

I write a list of things and then I ask myself these vital questions:

Is this important?

Does it need to be done now?

Does it need to be done by me?

If it’s not important, it can either be shelved until later or shaved off the list altogether.

If it doesn’t need to be done now, bump it.

If it doesn’t need to be done by me, am I able to delegate it or find some ways around it so that it’s no longer occupying my brain space.

Excellent. Let’s move on.

2. Make a plan

With all of the above clarified, it’s time to make a solid plan for the week. My main way of dealing with this is to project myself forward 7 days and ask myself, if I was looking back on the week from the future, what are the top three most important things that I needed to get done?

That helps me sort of the uber-important things from the list of things that I have already flagged up as important.

Then- and this is really important- I MAKE TIME in the week. Like, I schedule it in. I give those tasks as much weight as any other non-negotiable appointment or thing I have to do.

3. The horse side of things

It can be easy if you’ve taken an unplanned break to get back into it, especially if things were feeling a bit delicate or you were working through some challenges prior. Picking up where you left off can feel like a lot; in order to keep yourself out of big-picture-what-if-this-happens-overwhelm, you need to bring your focus into the moment and focus on the details.

My go to’s (as I’ve been known to drum into you) are only going as far as the next good step and committing to showing up. Those two things work to keep me grounded whenever I get a case of the heebie-jeebies. Decide on a good start point to begin with and then exercise your superpower of showing up.

Let’s get this party (re)started.

❤️ Jane

Occasionally, I get tagged in posts on Facebook from riders who are going through some confidence issues or challenges that relate to my area of expertise. This happened again a couple of days back, except this time, the person in question was their daughter, a teenager who suffered crippling performance anxiety at competitions and became quite unpleasant to be around as a result.

Her mum, who was attempting to help within the scope of what she was able, felt angry with her that her daughter was lashing out or consistently losing her temper with her at these times, and many of the comments offered how this was “unacceptable”, how she should walk away and “teach her a lesson” or just refuse to take her or engage with her at the competition altogether.

Now from the outset, I want to say that I appreciate this is a tough gig, especially when you throw family dynamics into the mix. Emotions run high. But I wanted to take a few moments to offer a slightly different perspective so that we can better understand why anxiety often spills into anger, and how we can best respond to it.

Emotions travel in groups. Our emotional selves exist within a complex interaction of feeling and intuition that, when honored, allow us to respond effectively and appropriately to the situation that we find ourselves in. The problem is that the skills of emotional self-management and navigation are something very few of us are taught, much less understand. Consequently, we often find ourselves in situations of high emotional charge where we are unsure or unable how to process the energy to constructive benefit, and as a result, we look to discharge it by any means available to us, often resulting in explosive and seemingly irrational or disproportionate behavior.

Anxiety itself is a highly vulnerable and charged emotion. If you have ever felt yourself in an anxious space, you will recognize how threatened and vulnerable you feel, even if the reality of it is that you are perfectly safe. The emotional charge that anxiety liberates into the system is enormous, and the reason for this is legitimate and useful; after all, anxiety is us exercising our superpower of predicting the future in advance. In the face of perceived threat, it creates enough energetic momentum for us to remove ourselves from the situation in question so that we can rest and reset.

The problem, of course, arises when the anxiety response is not appropriate for the moment, or we are unable to remove ourselves physically, mentally or emotionally in order to find relief. So what then? Without the appropriate tools, we are left with a high-octane emotion floating around our body, searching for an outlet. One of the most obvious and easily available routes of discharge is through anger.

Anger at its essence is a protector. When we are using our anger healthily and productively, it allows us to set boundaries and preserve what is important to us. When we feel exposed, or unable to cope with what is going on internally, anger often steps forward as our emotional bodyguard. Not always but often, it’s a mask for a deeper vulnerability, shame or concern that’s flowing underneath. Rather than be forced into a corner where we need to look an emotion in the eye, we have neither the skill nor strength to deal with in the moment, anger provides welcome relief. It also allows us to turn our focus away from ourselves and towards other people or things who become unwitting and undeserved earth points for the electrical charge coursing within.

This is not only true of person to person interactions. Without appropriate awareness and skills, we know this to be true of person to horse interactions also.

I’m not suggesting that if we find ourselves the “earth point” in this dynamic that we simply stand there and take it. But it is important to understand the motivation behind the anger and its source, so our responses aren’t just mopping up the water instead of turning off the tap.

Responding to anger with more of the same only magnifies the situation. If we understand the underlying vulnerability, it becomes easier to maintain an emotional distance and not fuse ourselves with the experience. That intentional separateness allows us to question the deeper hurt beneath and understand that distancing or punishment is only going to drive the anxiety deeper in and strengthen the defensive mechanisms that support it. Naturally, this also begs the question: if we recognize the lack of emotional navigation skill that’s apparent in this context, are we equipped ourselves in such a way that allows us to be intentional in our support and response?

Often times, we are not. If we are asking something of someone else- an emotional maturity, a willingness to express vulnerability, a leaning into emotion- then we best be sure we are modeling the same.

Asking yourself is my response relieving or exacerbating the situation allows you enough time and space for a considered response.

The other thing? This is not about you. If you are the receiving end of anger fueled by anxiety (and supposing you are not the cause of the anxiety itself), it’s important to remember this is not about you.

The scope of this discussion does not include dealing with the anxiety itself, but in understanding the relationship between anxiety and anger in order to arm ourselves with empathy, compassion, and understanding for the times we find ourselves in the position of having to deal with it. After all, what lies beneath is often much more than what initially presents.

Onwards.

❤️Jane