#26 Understanding Anxiety Part One
“Anxiety is the worst possible use of a good imagination.” ~ Deepak Chopra
When I’m not writing, I’m teaching. Not teaching riding, by the way - but teaching A level English. As part of a professional development day recently, we received training on mental health issues - specifically, on anxiety – and I found it so useful, that I’m sharing it with you now.
The number of young people passing through our classrooms who experience anxiety on a whole spectrum of levels; from mild forms to debilitating panic attacks – even an inability to leave the house some days - is definitely on the increase. I say ‘definitely’ - whether it just seems this way because more people are talking about it now, or it’s a genuine societal epidemic, I’m not qualified to say. But, I would imagine that the way we ‘consume’ life nowadays, through a social media lens, cannot be helping.
Not many people post the rubbish stuff, do they? And those who do sometimes find themselves accused of attention-seeking, or having chosen the wrong forum to air their dirty laundry. After all, if something bad (or good, for that matter) happens to you, you don’t usually scream about it through a megaphone to the nearest few hundred people, do you? And yet, that’s what many of us are doing when we post our lives online.
The pressure to have an Instagrammable, status-worthy life (or at least to make it look that way) must make actual life seem very mundane to some.
I once read that the equation for a happy life is as follows:
Happiness = Expectations – Reality
And boy ain’t that the truth?
Whether it’s a meal out at a hyped-up restaurant which ultimately falls short of the mark, or a dressage test that felt Dujardinesque at the time but, actually, the video reveals it was little better than an average learner rider, then you can maybe forgive yourself for beginning to get disheartened.
Perhaps it’s that pressure to dazzle and excel at everything that’s part of the anxiety problem.
As I was listening to the speaker, I started taking copious amounts of notes. Not only did what he was saying make an awful lot of sense in terms of some of my students but, also, on a more personal level. I could also see how it applied to many-a-situation involving horses. The physical manifestations he mentioned – the nauseating butterflies; the increased heart rate; the jellified legs; the lack of focus; even the unwillingness to try properly at something for fear of failing, were just some of the things I know many riders experience. Not just in the warm up at a competition either, but any and every time their horse behaves in an unexpected way.
Having also been to see Monty Roberts recently, I was able to relate these physical reactions to the response of the horse. Roberts explains that horses and ponies can sense a heightened pulse rate; so a state of anxiety, it seems, will have a direct impact on your horse – resulting in a vicious circle of nerves and ‘undesirable’ reactions from him, in an attempt to control the situation when a nervous human cannot fulfil the confident leader position.
I must stress however, that there is a difference between an ‘authoritarian’ style, which may leave horses feeling bullied and their emotions left unaccounted for, and a calm, confident leader style, which we can all aspire to.
So, I’m writing this in the hope it can help some people understand the way they’re feeling – and, that they’re definitely not alone. And if like me, you’re fortunate enough not to suffer with anxiety yourself (at least not on any great scale anyway), I hope it might help you understand and support someone you know and love instead – whether they ride or not.
Our Three Zones
We humans operate within three major ‘zones’: the Comfort Zone, the Stretch Zone and the Panic Zone.
While the Comfort Zone might sound rather lovely and make you think of dressing gowns and fluffy socks, or if we relate this to riding, plodding round your favourite, well-worn tracks, did you know it’s possible for your Comfort Zone to shrink if you never venture beyond it?
The Stretch Zone is where all learning, growth and progress takes place. If I apply this to my own start to 2018, I know that if I hadn’t forced myself to book a string of lessons focusing purely on dressage, I’d never have managed a 5% increase on our test scores over a couple of months. Or, if my instructor didn’t make me jump 1.10m sometimes at home, the 85cm course I jumped at a competition recently wouldn’t have felt quite so small. All sounding very positive in the Stretch Zone so far, isn’t it?
However, we can only cope with so much constant learning and change; and if we push ourselves TOO far, remaining in a constant state of stretch, it’s possible that ‘overwhelm’ can occur – at which point, we can slip into the Panic Zone.
Framing the Butterflies
Whenever we’re confronted with something that pushes us beyond our comfort zone, there are two main reactions: Excitement or Fear.
Imagine you’re hacking out with friends and, all of a sudden, a row of perfect XC logs appears on the track ahead. No matter what the confidence level of each rider on the hack is, it’s likely that some level of butterflies will appear in everyone’s stomachs. The difference between each of you will be how you frame them. Are they fear butterflies, or excitement butterflies? This is where we can maybe begin to con our own brains. Telling yourself that you’re excited about something can sometimes make the difference between a good and bad performance when riding.
Internal Feelings (butterflies in stomach as fear or excitement) lead to Internal Thoughts (death or fun!), which lead to External Behaviour: a nervous, inhibited performance, or a positive, confident performance.
If you struggle to control your thoughts in this way, and anxiety is becoming a real problem that breathing techniques etc don’t seem to be making a dent in, there are a number of ‘reframing’ therapies you can try. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), for example, helps re-structure memories and your responses in certain circumstances, leading to more confidence in otherwise scary situations – namely, situations that have previously resulted in a fall. In this way, NLP might allow you to be a more confident, positive partner to your horse, so you can reap
When I’m not writing, I’m teaching. Not teaching riding, by the way - but teaching A level English. As part of a professional development day recently, we received training on mental health issues - specifically, on anxiety – and I found it so useful, that I’m sharing it with you now.
The number of young people passing through our classrooms who experience anxiety on a whole spectrum of levels; from mild forms to debilitating panic attacks – even an inability to leave the house some days - is definitely on the increase. I say ‘definitely’ - whether it just seems this way because more people are talking about it now, or it’s a genuine societal epidemic, I’m not qualified to say. But, I would imagine that the way we ‘consume’ life nowadays, through a social media lens, cannot be helping.
Not many people post the rubbish stuff, do they? And those who do sometimes find themselves accused of attention-seeking, or having chosen the wrong forum to air their dirty laundry. After all, if something bad (or good, for that matter) happens to you, you don’t usually scream about it through a megaphone to the nearest few hundred people, do you? And yet, that’s what many of us are doing when we post our lives online.
The pressure to have an Instagrammable, status-worthy life (or at least to make it look that way) must make actual life seem very mundane to some.
I once read that the equation for a happy life is as follows:
Happiness = Expectations – Reality
And boy ain’t that the truth?
Whether it’s a meal out at a hyped-up restaurant which ultimately falls short of the mark, or a dressage test that felt Dujardinesque at the time but, actually, the video reveals it was little better than an average learner rider, then you can maybe forgive yourself for beginning to get disheartened.
Perhaps it’s that pressure to dazzle and excel at everything that’s part of the anxiety problem.
As I was listening to the speaker, I started taking copious amounts of notes. Not only did what he was saying make an awful lot of sense in terms of some of my students but, also, on a more personal level. I could also see how it applied to many-a-situation involving horses. The physical manifestations he mentioned – the nauseating butterflies; the increased heart rate; the jellified legs; the lack of focus; even the unwillingness to try properly at something for fear of failing, were just some of the things I know many riders experience. Not just in the warm up at a competition either, but any and every time their horse behaves in an unexpected way.
Having also been to see Monty Roberts recently, I was able to relate these physical reactions to the response of the horse. Roberts explains that horses and ponies can sense a heightened pulse rate; so a state of anxiety, it seems, will have a direct impact on your horse – resulting in a vicious circle of nerves and ‘undesirable’ reactions from him, in an attempt to control the situation when a nervous human cannot fulfil the confident leader position.
I must stress however, that there is a difference between an ‘authoritarian’ style, which may leave horses feeling bullied and their emotions left unaccounted for, and a calm, confident leader style, which we can all aspire to.
So, I’m writing this in the hope it can help some people understand the way they’re feeling – and, that they’re definitely not alone. And if like me, you’re fortunate enough not to suffer with anxiety yourself (at least not on any great scale anyway), I hope it might help you understand and support someone you know and love instead – whether they ride or not.
Our Three Zones
We humans operate within three major ‘zones’: the Comfort Zone, the Stretch Zone and the Panic Zone.
While the Comfort Zone might sound rather lovely and make you think of dressing gowns and fluffy socks, or if we relate this to riding, plodding round your favourite, well-worn tracks, did you know it’s possible for your Comfort Zone to shrink if you never venture beyond it?
The Stretch Zone is where all learning, growth and progress takes place. If I apply this to my own start to 2018, I know that if I hadn’t forced myself to book a string of lessons focusing purely on dressage, I’d never have managed a 5% increase on our test scores over a couple of months. Or, if my instructor didn’t make me jump 1.10m sometimes at home, the 85cm course I jumped at a competition recently wouldn’t have felt quite so small. All sounding very positive in the Stretch Zone so far, isn’t it?
However, we can only cope with so much constant learning and change; and if we push ourselves TOO far, remaining in a constant state of stretch, it’s possible that ‘overwhelm’ can occur – at which point, we can slip into the Panic Zone.
Framing the Butterflies
Whenever we’re confronted with something that pushes us beyond our comfort zone, there are two main reactions: Excitement or Fear.
Imagine you’re hacking out with friends and, all of a sudden, a row of perfect XC logs appears on the track ahead. No matter what the confidence level of each rider on the hack is, it’s likely that some level of butterflies will appear in everyone’s stomachs. The difference between each of you will be how you frame them. Are they fear butterflies, or excitement butterflies? This is where we can maybe begin to con our own brains. Telling yourself that you’re excited about something can sometimes make the difference between a good and bad performance when riding.
Internal Feelings (butterflies in stomach as fear or excitement) lead to Internal Thoughts (death or fun!), which lead to External Behaviour: a nervous, inhibited performance, or a positive, confident performance.
If you struggle to control your thoughts in this way, and anxiety is becoming a real problem that breathing techniques etc don’t seem to be making a dent in, there are a number of ‘reframing’ therapies you can try. Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), for example, helps re-structure memories and your responses in certain circumstances, leading to more confidence in otherwise scary situations – namely, situations that have previously resulted in a fall. In this way, NLP might allow you to be a more confident, positive partner to your horse, so you can reap
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