How EAP worked for one...

As a little girl, I always had a thing for horses.  To me, a horse was just a really big, cute animal.  It never dawned on me that horses had personalities and emotions like I did.  It wasn’t until 2008 that I got the chance to be around and learn about horses.  That is when I started taking lessons at a place called CaliCos Haven.  What drew me to that place was reading an article about how the organization used horses in therapy sessions with troubled youth.  Any money made from horseback riding lessons went toward children who could not afford the therapy sessions.  I loved the idea and was ready to start.  I assumed all there was to riding was getting on a horse and learning how to walk, trot, and canter in an arena.  I was in for the surprise of my life.

I learned that horses have the same feelings as humans do.  It made me aware of how I behaved and treated others, humans or animals.  I started spending as much time as I could volunteering outside of my lessons at CaliCos because every time I walked away from helping, I learned something new about myself and relationships with other people.  I realized that, “being preoccupied with our self-image is like being deaf and blind," (Chodron).  Life requires us humans to pay attention to what is going on around us; to see the effects of how we act towards others.  We are too quick to blame others or deny the obvious that, “the most difficult times for many of us are the ones we give ourselves.”

The thing with being around horses, on or off the ground, is that the horse can tell within five minutes what type of person you are:  your behavior, personality, and the emotions you are feeling at that very moment.  And just like humans, they feed off of the feelings you are projecting.  This is why a horse in a therapy session can be so successful.  It forces you to examine who you really are, and not be able to play the victim card of accusing someone else as the source of all your problems.

I did not understand the depth of how powerful horse therapy was until I experienced it.  My volunteering had to do with taking care of the horses through feeding, grooming, and checking their health.  I heard the director, Michelle Bacogeorge (who is also my riding instructor), talk about the effectiveness of what happened in a CaliCos session, but I could not wrap my mind around it.  Michelle offered me the opportunity to do a session with two other girls and I eagerly accepted.

There were two mares that we were going to be working with, [a brown one] and [a large white one with grey freckles].  Michelle set out small and large orange cones, posts, and a lead rope in the arena.  She then had us step into the arena and just hang out for five minutes.  During those five minutes, we were welcome to interact and observe the horses, but not talk to each other.  After the five minutes were up, Michelle asked us to do voice-overs for whichever horse we picked.  It seemed silly, but we began taking turns voicing what we thought [the brown one] or [the big white one] were thinking.  Michelle then questioned us on our dialogue:  what made us say the things we did?  You could choose to voice your opinion or just take time to think it over.  It made us all stop and think.

We were then told to watch the horses again and pick one that we felt was closest to our personality or one that you were first drawn to when you entered the arena.  When it came time for me to tell Michelle which horse I picked, I told her I was having a really hard time making a choice.  She asked me which one I was initially drawn too, and my response was [the brown one].  Michelle saw there was something more.  She asked me which one I thought was more like me, and I told her it was [the big white one with grey freckles]. Michelle’s only response was “interesting” before she went to the next person.  Then I began to think over what I had just said, why had I liked [the brown one] first, but felt more like [the big white one]?  After a minute or so, I knew the answer.  I felt I was [the big white one ~] a big, plain, white horse with gray speckles, but I wished I was [the brown one ~] a stunning, delicate, chestnut show horse. I have always had self-esteem issues about the way I look, and I felt like [the white one ~] cute, plain, and big.  I wanted to be beautiful like [the brown one], but I knew I felt I was not.  Tears welled up in my eyes at this realization.  I never voiced my thoughts out loud because during these sessions you never have to explain what you are feeling unless you want to.  I related to one of Chodron’s sentences, “we want to be perfect, but we just keep seeing our imperfections.”

There were several other activities that Michelle had us do that revealed who was the leader of the group, which one was most confident or timid, and the realization that we make things more complicated for ourselves.  I walked away from the one-hour session with thoughts swarming through my head.  Hours later I was still thinking about what I had learned in that session.  Pema Chodron’s statement summed up what I was feeling that day, “we find that the present moment is a pretty vulnerable place and that this can be completely unnerving and completely tender at the same time.”  I left CaliCos Haven with a peace deep and penetrating, but at the same time I knew I had to confront certain things in my life.

So often I find myself judging others by the way they act or look or speak.  Does it make me feel better about myself in the long run?  No.  Does it boost my confidence in myself?  No.  The idea [... of what] we humans dislike and criticize in others is really [that], “what we hate in ourselves, we’ll hate in others,” except we don’t want to face it.  Without realizing it, we are all alike in some way or another.  It is our decisions that determine whether we run head on to work through our issues or run away.  If running away is the choice, then we will always come face to face with the same issues only disguised, “with new names, forms, and manifestations.”