Back in 2018 I was standing in the tie up bay with my horse, Banjo planning to ride, he is all saddled up. 

I felt butterflies in my stomach , I thought- oh -this is bad, I don’t want to ride like this, so I started jumping jacks to get rid of it. While jumping I was thinking,  why am I so scared? my mind was blank, I couldn’t come up with an answer.

I was trying to rationalise it, like I have ridden so many other horses, and found myself in a quite dangerous situation, nothing helped. 

Only after 20 min my body stopped shaking and I thought, good I can finally hope on.

As soon as my foot was in the stirrup, my body felt stuck, stiff, ‘frozen’ , so I got off. 

Driving home wasn’t fun…the voices in my head kept telling me that I was a disappointment.  Why did you get off? you were fine. 

you’re stupid for not continuing. I felt angry at myself for avoiding the situation. 

I was so disappointed with myself for quitting.

Have you experienced something similar?  Maybe you had a nasty fall?

Or maybe it’s been a while since you had a ride and you feel scared to hop on the horse.
Or maybe you just feel this invisible pressure to “get back on” and “ride like you used to”… but your body tense up every time you think about riding. 

There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s fear and it lives in your body, not in your mind.

Fear in the body can show up as shaky hands, tight chest, shaky legs, butterflies in your tummy, like I was feeling back then, and even the thought or doubt that you might not be a ‘good rider’. 

If that’s you—I want to reassure you
These are all symptoms, trauma responses.

As a trauma therapist who specialises in helping female equestrians all across Australia to overcome fear, anxiety and self doubt, and as someone who has personally experienced trauma, anxiety, and fear, I can tell you that trauma is subjective.

What I mean by that, is you  and I had the same incident, we both fell off, one of us might feel she had experienced a traumatic event, the other one won’t. Why? 

Because it depends on if we feel safe in our body, if we had support after the fall, the way we grew up, the environment, our beliefs about the world. 

It’s crucial to remember this, because it reduces the pressure to be perfect and we don’t need to wonder why my friend isn’t afraid to ride after she has a fall, while I’m freaking out. 

Also, and I know this might sound a bit “woo-woo,” but the body remembers. It stores sensations, memories, and patterns of how we react in certain situations

So when we go back and try to ride, we feel scared, we feel symptoms like fast heart rate, maybe shaky legs and hands, and we can’t think straight.
It’s your nervous system doing its job — trying to protect you.

That fear might come from:

• A fall or accident
• A moment where you didn’t feel supported
• Or something much older, stored deep in the body (which btw, that was my reason for my fear)

Try to fix fear by willpower or mindset hacks, does not going to work. 

Unfortunately there is no magic pill or one exercise that will help you eliminate the fear. 

You can’t be logical with this fear, I know I tried. 

I tried to convince myself that day that I have gone through 2 childbirths, so surely I can do this. Right? No, that didn’t help, because fear was in my nervous system, not my head. 

But now I know that what I needed back then was to know how to feel safe in my body, how to regulate my nervous system, and most importantly to not be ashamed of it and to acknowledge it with compassion. 

I’ll give you another example: 

I worked with a woman, who has a reliable horse. She taught him how to stand still near the mounting block. She was told by other instructors to just breath, and ‘you’re fine just hop on…’  but she wasn’t fine, even though she was practicing her breathing. How much breathing do you need to do before you can mount your horse?

She felt scared by even standing on the mounting block, her body froze and she felt frustrated. Why can’t she just get on the horse? 

In our sessions, we didn’t start with riding—we started with safety.

To learn how to feel safe in your body. Then unpack what was behind the fear. 

And not only that it helped her to get on the horse, the strategy that we used to feel calm, and relax in the body, actually helped her with other parts of her life that make her anxious. 

Now she feels excited to ride, not feeling ashamed about her fear if it comes up, and she has a clear plan on how to handle it. 

And that where the magic happens, she needed guidance to overcome her fear, she needed tools and strategies and she needed to remind herself not force herself to ride again as it brings more resistance. 

When you feel safe in your body and your nervous system is regulated you can see the path ahead, your mind is clear to respond to your horse. 

So how do you do that? How do you regulate your nervous system?

Here are 3 tips. 

1. I’d like you to think about what makes you feel good?  Doesn’t have to be horse related.

For some people it is music, for others  it is the connection with their dogs for instance. So if it is music, for example, how does it feel in your body? 

Feel that sensation in your body and try to connect to it every time you feel scared or anxious. 

2. Be curious why you feel this way? Even if you can’t find the answer, that’s ok, by being curious you don’t feel ashamed about feeling those emotions. You don’t create a story behind feeling scared. 

3. Is to be able to be present in your body. When you are in your body – you are present which means you can respond instead of react to your horse’s needs.  And when we are present, our horse can feel it and the relationship is different and we come from a place of compassion not fear. 

if you would like to get more tips about how to feel present in your body, watch this video…

If this resonates with you, I’d love to know What’s one moment where fear stopped you in the saddle?

And if you’re ready to take that next step, I offer a 30 min free phone consultation, press the link to have a chat.