Fear vs. Anxiety

Sooner or later, it happens.  Maybe you are at the barn and others are about to mount up and ride, or you have been invited by your horse friends to go ride at a clinic or on a trail ride.  You give excuse after excuse so that you don’t have to ride never admitting the real reason.  But you know the truth:  You are afraid to ride.  Perhaps you had a bad fall from your horse or you saw a bad horse accident.  Maybe the fear seems to have come out of nowhere.  All you know is that instead of happily getting on your horse and riding, the voice of fear is speaking to you, and you just want it to be quiet and go away.

fear_dawn_hill_adams_drawingFor many years, individuals have carried around their fear of riding as a dreaded secret in the horse world.  People do not want to admit that they are afraid, whether it is in front of their trainer, their fellow boarders, or their riding friends.  The horse community has a bad reputation for being judgmental of riders who have fear of riding.  The old adage after a fall has always been “get back on the horse so you won’t be afraid next time.”  The truth, though, is that even if a rider does get right back on, she can still experience fear the next time or sometime in the future.  Some riders feel ashamed of their fear because it seems to arise out of thin air.

Riding fear does have a cause, even if you can’t immediately figure it out.  The first thing to determine is if your fear is reality-based or if it is anxiety.  It may all feel the same, but there is a very important difference between the two.  Fear is actually an emotion that benefits us.  When your body senses danger, it engages in physiological responses that help us to take actions for our own safety.  We feel these responses as “butterflies” in our stomach and other sensations.  If you are a beginner rider with an 18-hand, 4-year-old horse who has only had two rides, your fear might be telling you that riding that horse is actually not such a good idea.  This kind of fear is worth taking the time to reflect on and decide if it is telling us ways to stay safe.  If you are a beginner rider with a 14-hand, 20-year-old ex-lesson horse, you may be experiencing anxiety, which is fear that is inappropriate to the situation.

The way to tell the difference between fear and anxiety is to assess the situation.  Really step back and be honest with yourself.  Some questions to consider are:

  1. What is my riding level and what level does this horse require?
  2. How well trained is this horse?
  3. Do I have any physical ailments that might impact my riding?

It is all right, no matter your age or riding level, to decide not to ride a certain horse.  Riding should be fun and safe.  Being honest with yourself and asking important questions like the ones above can keep you safe.  It can also allow you to have fun riding instead of experiencing fear and anxiety.

Next time, we’ll continue our exploration into anxiety and how it impacts our ability to enjoy our horses.  Remember, you can always order my Ride Without Fear DVD or attend a Ride Without Fear Clinic to learn more.



Mindfulness Comes Home

T’ealc in northern New Mexico, 2007/2008.

For the last year and a half, I have been practicing and researching mindfulness.  I teach it to fearful riders as way to help them have joy with horses again, and I also teach it to all horse people as a way to have a better connection with their horse.  I didn’t realize the powerful impact it was having on me until last week.

I experienced the importance of my practice of mindfulness in connection with a medical emergency concerning of my dogs. I found T’ealc when he was 5 weeks old, and he would have been 10 this month. He was always happy. A big dog with a big heart and an amazingly big presence even when he was simply laying quietly in a room. When he got sick in the early morning hours last week, the emergency vet said he was hemorrhaging because of a tumor on his spleen.  She said there was a high chance that the tumor was cancerous, and that T’ealc probably had cancer throughout his entire body. I had to make the difficult decision of letting him pass on. It was the best thing for him.

For me, it was heartbreaking. Within three hours of him first appearing sick, he was gone. I have had animals my entire life, and I am 45, but he was a once-in-a-lifetime dog. One of those dogs that just has something special that makes the two of you best buddies. The shock was immense and intense. How would I go on without him? I thought I had a few more years with him. I was preparing for my older Collie, who is almost 13 and has hip problems, to pass on this year, but not him.

I went through it by breathing. By coming back to my breath. By thinking about impermanence and listening to Thich Nhat Hanh speak about death. I sat on my cushion, and I just took one breath at a time. Sometimes, that’s all I could do as the tears welled up and spilled over, and I thought I would never stop crying. I didn’t know that a person could have so many tears.

T’ealc in Sowbelly Canyon, 2006/2007.

I have lost animals before, and very close friends have lost animals in tragic ways, and always, in those cases, the pain seemed overwhelming. While I will miss T’ealc every day, the pain was different this time. When I felt it, I thought of all the Pema Chodron talks I’ve heard and the books and articles I’ve read, and I moved into the pain. Before, I would brace myself against that wave of hurt, not wanting to feel it, and when it hit, it was like being cut by a knife. But not this time. Oh, it hurt. But then it subsided. Like a wave washing over me instead of a knife stabbing me.

So it is that T’ealc gave me a gift as he passed on; the gift of seeing how mindfulness and meditation could have a positive and centering impact on my life in ways I had never imagined.

It is my hope that by learning mindfulness, the fearful riders and the other horse people who attend my seminars and clinics, anyone who buys my DVD, and the people who read this blog can find an end to some of their suffering. I know that mindfulness, and for me meditation as well, helped with the suffering I felt when T’ealc passed on.


Inheriting Fear and Anxiety

LascauxhorsewithplantsWhat if some of the fear and anxiety you have when riding comes from fear and anxiety suffered by your grandparents?  Many of the riders I work with state that they don’t know why they are fearful, just that they are.  Recent research suggests that some forms of fear and anxiety may result from experiences our ancestors had that cause them to be anxious or suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

A recent study at Emory University showed that fear of a certain smell was passed down from male mice to two subsequent generations of mice.  In this study, researchers caused male mice to become fearful to the smell of cherry blossoms by giving mild shocks to their feet when they released the smell into their cages.  Researchers then bred those mice.  When that next generation of mice first smelled cherry blossoms, they became fearful and anxious, even though they had never had any kind of negative experience to that smell.  The effect lasted through one more generation of mice.  According to the Washington Post, researchers found that those mice actually had “more cherry-blossom-detecting neurons in their noses and more brain space devoted to cherry-blossom-smelling.”

While studies on mice may not be easily translatable to humans, there is similar evidence resulting from human studies.  For instance, studies on humans have shown that a generational effect may result from traumatic events, such as children being more likely to suffer from PTSD if their mothers were also PTSD sufferers due to a trauma.

Genetics is a complicated science, so no one is suggesting that a child will definitely be impacted by environmental influences upon a parent, grandparent or other ancestor.  These studies are puzzle pieces that can help us better understand fear, anxiety and PTSD.  They also encourage scientists to delve further into the impact our DNA has on these issues.  Interestingly, a recent study on mindfulness and gene expression shows us a way to address the issue of these studies’ findings and the fear and anxiety some people experience around horses.

Mindfulness MattersA recent study by researchers in Wisconsin, Spain and France showed the impact that mindfulness may have on gene expression.  After only 8-hours of mindfulness practice, experienced meditators showed reduced levels of pro-inflammatory genes.  The study’s author, Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D. founder of The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, stated, “To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that shows rapid alterations in gene expression within subjects associated with mindfulness meditation practice.”  It appears from this study that mindfulness can actually suppress gene expression in some instances, and more studies are needed to further explore this finding.

If some studies show that we may inherit traits of fear and anxiety through our genetic makeup from our ancestors, and other studies show that mindfulness can suppress gene expression, then there is the possibility that mindfulness could be a vehicle to suppress the gene expression of inherited fear and anxiety.  The effect that mindfulness has on fearful riders speaks to this possibility.  All the riders I work with find that mindfulness helps them with their fear, even when there is no discernible reason for them to have that fear.

Even if we can’t pinpoint where our fear and anxiety arises from, even if it’s from an event that occurred a generation or more before our birth and having nothing to do with horses, being mindful appears to be a way to help with the fear and anxiety that we are experiencing now.  I, for one, am excited to see more studies done to see what impact mindfulness has on calming and centering us and helping us to enjoy our horses, and indeed our entire lives, more.


Fearful Rider Clinic


Join Trainer Jo Belasco, Esq. on Saturday, May 4 at at Happy Dog Ranch in Littleton, CO as she presents a Fearful Rider Clinic.  The clinic begins with a 45-minute seminar addressing different aspects of fear and what tools we can use to deal with our fear.  The clinic continues with application of these tools in a riding situation.  Each rider works with Jo for one hour and will be able to get help and instruction concerning her specific fear issues.  Auditors are welcome to attend the presentation and then to remain for the clinic to watch the rides.  The cost to ride in the clinic is $100, and the cost to audit is $35.  Registration is required for riders and auditors.  Visit the registration page today to reserve your spot!