It took a herd of 18 horses to end 30 years with an eating disorder….no traditional therapy could get through to me.
For as long as I can remember I lived in a world that was shadowed by fear. My fear clouded everything…my thoughts, perceptions…feelings about myself and my judgements of others. After living with Anorexia/Bulimia from the age of fifteen it became so much part of my life I could not imagine a life without it, in fact the thought was as terrifying as the disorder. I didn’t deserve to be free and happy…..I was a bad person and felt only intense self-hatred and feelings of failure and worthlessness. For over 25 years my mind was a battleground of negative and destructive thoughts and I was existing on a diet of fear, anxiety, doubt, starvation, biscuits, chocolate, endless ice cream as well as denial and purging.
For me it began, continued and hopefully ends with animals. I’d always had animals.
Animals have a ‘way of being,’ forgotten by us humans….as our frontal rational brain has continued to evolve at an alarming rate we have left behind the natural power and beauty of our senses, instinct and our intuition. It is through this natural way of being…this extra something animals have retained that I was given the very key to life.
That key began eighteen years ago, with a small flame coloured pony with a startlingly bright flaxen mane and a fiery attitude which matched both his colour and his diminutive stature. It was this pony who opened a door revealing a gift that changed me forever….it transformed my understanding and experience of all that was life, my life. It took me to a place that lay beyond my wall of fear……..a wall of fear that had formed an impenetrable barricade which blocked and darkened everything… my thoughts, imagination, emotions, senses and even the mobility of my own body.
His name was Gus….he came to us because no one else wanted him. It wasn’t long before I understood why, to say he and I did not get off to a flying start would be the understatement of the century. Our relationship from the very moment we laid eyes on each other was shaky to say the very least. I was petrified of him and he thought of me as a complete waste of space….unless I was carrying a carrot…….I was stupid and of absolutely no consequence to him whatsoever. He had about as much respect for me as he would a squashed limp lettuce leaf……probably even less.
He showed his pure contempt in two very distinct ways. If I approached from the front, his head would snake round with grease lightning speed, he’d direct his aim with perfect precision at my ankle and sink his large scissor like teeth into the bony flesh on my ankle. If this failed, which was rare, he would go for tactic number two, the swift and accurately targeted, double barrel. Both back feet flew out from under him with the velocity of a bullet from a cannon sized shot gun. He was clearly very practiced in the art of eliminating human beings from his space and I gave him ample opportunities to further perfect his skills. He was scary, especially if you believed his opinion of you was true… that’s exactly what I believed, I was worthless.
Everyone told me Gus needed a companion…..you can’t keep a pony on its own, I was told, it’s cruel. My conscience couldn’t allow such unkindness even though the idea of two Gus’s almost sent me over the edge. My instinct to say no was soon drowned by more dominate individuals…it didn’t take much for me to be overruled…it never did.
Unsurprisingly the new arrival evoked the same set of terrifyingly disagreeable emotions experienced six months earlier by our little ginger friend Gus…..however, on this occasion it was for some very different reasons. Bronwen was large and I was small…..oddly despite this fact she seemed to eye me nervously, with concerns that looked remarkably similar to my own. I was used to Gus who had always viewed me with utter contempt, that felt acceptable…..I’d always assumed most people saw me that way. I found Bronwen’s response uncomfortably disconcerting and it left me no less flummoxed…….I could not see why she was so afraid of me. No-one was scared of me…..except me.
From the moment she set eyes on me she couldn’t get away fastest enough and would run as far from me as she could…..I was devastated. Every time I went to visit her, she turned tail and headed off to furthest corner of her paddock…..when I finally caught up with her, her eyes would harden with fear and she’d do all she could to remove herself from my presence.
It was obvious even to the most confused that something was wrong….in her previous home Bronwen had been a biddable, delightful and genuinely well behaved horse… all changed instantly when she came to live with us and I could only conclude that I was the catalyst for her dramatic change in personality.
Weeks of battling and disaster followed disaster…I was determined she and I would have the perfect relationship. If I tried to ride her she would move away when I tried to mount her. Trying to go out on a hack was a nightmare, she would spin around in a desperate bid to return to the security of her paddock. If by some miracle we managed to get through the gate and onto the lane, she would find every opportunity to make her way home as fast as possible….being stronger, mentally and physically than I was she almost always succeeded. I was so miserable and felt such a failure.
This was not building a relationship as I had so desperately hoped, it was demolishing it daily, brick by brick…….quite a feat when the only relationship we’d ever had was one based on mutual fear.
Still unaware of the blatant reflection being held up with such crystal clarity in front of me, I finally realised if I was to continue, some drastic outside help was needed. The stack of books beside my bed were not enough…..I’d read the entire pile, which was several feet high, many times over and ordered more, but nothing was changing. Of one thing however I was certain, it was all my fault….I knew that, because it always was. I was obsessed and nothing was going to stop me finding an answer to the dreadful problems the two of us were experiencing
About three months after her arrival a possible solution finally presented itself. A man with a reputation for being a true Horse Whisperer was prepared to come and help Bronwen and I resolve our differences. I was so nervous I almost abandoned the whole idea and only sheer desperation kept me going. I watched in wonder and amazement as this small insignificant little man had Bronwen mesmerized by his every move…within only a few minutes of meeting him, she loved him. He barely moved and with the tiniest signals had her moving in circles around him, backing, stepping sideways and listening with both ears and eyes fixed on him attentively the entire time, her eyes never left him, even when she was supposed to be attending to me.
His assistant explained to me that he had been communicating with Bronwen, in a way that she instantly understood….it emulated the way horses communicate with each other. By speaking to her in her own language the two of them could understand and respect each other as equals.
As they drove away leaving Bronwen and I alone, I saw at last how I appeared through Bronwen’s eyes. I saw with clarity the reflection she was mirroring back at me and to change that reflection I had to alter my whole way of being……my body language, thoughts, beliefs and my defeatist attitude. It finally dawned on me too why Gus treated me so badly, he was simply mirroring another part of me, the part that had no self-respect or positive expectations.
Horses have to live with certainty to survive in the wild, a moment of doubt or hesitation could lead to their being eaten. If Gus was ever going to behave respectfully and Bronwen feel safe in my company I had to let go of my fears and become someone very different…..someone with self-belief, inner strength and self-respect. Without my beloved horse Bronwen to monitor my progress and encourage me with her loving approval I could never have contemplated such a task. She was to be an extraordinary teacher… so forgiving of my inadequacies and her truly loving nature forgave and rewarded my efforts over and over again, even after everything I had put her through previously.
Gradually, the two of us found ways to completely re-programme my whole way of being, beginning with my body language and destructive thought patterns. Having learned that my fear was the cause of Bronwen’s behaviours and mood changes I started watching her far more closely. Studying every, body twitch, ripple of muscle movement and rise and fall of energy, I was curious about the tiny changes that took place when she tensed and when she relaxed. I was even more interested in what was going on within me to cause her to react as she did. It was an extraordinary exploration and took me years of practise to read the imperceptible fluctuations in her contracting and relaxing muscles….her energy too I noticed would soften or harden giving me further opportunity to understand my own somatic responses. My body was a foreign land, I hated it and felt no connection with it whatsoever….becoming aware of it was truly like learning a whole new language.
It quickly became obvious how bad things actually were as I began to familiarize myself with what was going on in my body, When I tuned in there were parts of me that felt like they didn’t exist….just a huge invisible void with nothing in it. Other parts felt dark, heavy and rock solid……my feet were rarely in touch with the ground and my head and neck belonged to someone else, they were not part of the rest of me at all.
Slowly over many months I was able to notice what was happening in my own body with the same precision I had learned through watching Bronwen. This, I have now learned, is exactly what we need to do to work with the emotional impact of trauma or negative memories. The effect of past traumatic events or developmental trauma become locked or frozen in the body and can only be released when we become aware of its existence and cause. Working from the ground up, I went to great lengths to become familiar with every sensation, muscle contraction, pain, discomfort and movement felt in my body….all of them in some way related to an aspect of my fear. Sometimes to make it easier and get to know the sensations even more acutely, I would identify them with colours. It’s amazing how a colour will often come to mind when you start to practice the art of body scanning…..colour also helps to soften the impact of the emotion attached to the sensation, making it manageable.
We’d made a huge step forward but change was only going to happen when I worked out how to bring this recognition of our mutual fear into balance. Horses in the herd do this naturally by fully grounding themselves and lowering their energy…..they take a deep breath, breathe out and with a series of movements release all physical tension from their bodies. The herd remains harmonious by re-balancing each other in the same way ….they become still and quiet in mind, body and soul to counteract the heightened energy of a member of the herd struggling to do this for themselves.
If I wanted to make further progress I needed to learn how to quieten my mind, calm my nervous system and lower my energy. My self-punishing, soul destroying eating disorder had been created out of a need to attack and self- destruct. My inner fears had ruled and tried to destroy me…they had overshadowed the vast majority of my life. The idea of becoming still in anything let alone mind, body or soul was a long way off…I had so much more to learn.
A talented and dedicated teacher gave me all the incentive I needed….Bronwen with her loving forgiveness, patience and gentle encouragement was more than I could ever have imagined. The gift I received when I did well was beyond remarkable. As I learned to lower my energy, breathe, self soothe, let go and ground myself, she rewarded me with such softness it felt like being wrapped in the warmest most loving embrace. Her head would drop as my breathing deepened and I swear her heart actually opened as she turned to congratulate me for what I had achieved. My fear driven obsession and addiction to my body and food was being replaced with something so good, so healthy and so healing, I could not get enough of it… I wanted more and more……
I practiced and practiced stilling my mind through my body scans, breathing and using colours. I called it my ‘quiet time’….maybe it was the similar to meditation, I don’t know but it helped enormously. Several times every day I would remind myself to breathe,, I kept forgetting and would suddenly notice I’d been holding my breath which made my whole body become rigid and tense….practice truly was the key.
As the months stretched into a couple of years, I noticed things no longer affected me the way they used to and food stopped being such an obsession. I was able to consider the option of eating healthily as a way of regulating weight gain and of calming my negative thoughts about food. With Bronwen and her exquisite energy to help me we continued to find further ways to add to my inner strength and calm.
Two years became three, Bronwen had foals and we collected more and more horses and ponies. Every horse and pony contributed their unique wisdom to help me overcome my fears at a deeper and deeper level.. Through them I realized the concept of recovery is an unknown quantity, when are we recovered? Or is it true to say we are all recovering all the time, it’s a process which, if we want the very highest quality of life we can keep working on until we choose to stop.
Feeling good is a wonderful addiction, addiction can be positive and my addiction to the beauty and sentience of horses has certainly turned my life around completely. Eighteen years down the line I am so lucky to be able to fully appreciate the stark contrast between a life of fear and one of inner peace and fulfilment. My life’s purpose is to teach others that they can experience what that means too www.hopethruhorses.com
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