Emotional investment in my own horses stops my progress

[Flyingsolo]

Hi all,

I am struggling with something I have realised has been ongoing throughout my life.

I am a competent, qualified coach, specialising in biomechanics and work successfully with many horses and riders through kindness, compassionate training and helping riders develop feel. I’ve been doing this for 20 years.

I have three horses of my own, all with various quirks and issues which require managing as we all have I’m sure.
But my issue is, I’m so emotionally attached to my own horses I can’t see the wood for the trees and I end up so full of despair when things don’t go well that it halts my progress. I literally stop. I’ll have a ‘challenging’ session and then spend a week feeling like a huge failure and that I’m completely incompetent that I should rehome all my horses to people who can actually do something with them. I have a lot of knowledge and am really good at finding out new solutions for problems but it just doesn’t transfer to my own horses.

It is crippling and a very destructive mind set.

Any challenging sessions or behaviours I deal with in clients horses, I just deal with and we work through and look for the positives then come out the next day and start again and it doesn’t affect me in a negative way. But with my own horses, I end up in the depths of despair. Then I start thinking I will give it all up and have a complete career change and stop inflicting myself on my poor horses.
This may sound extreme and yes my response to my own horses challenges is extreme and very destructive. Feeling like a continual failure is just devastating me personally and leaves me very depressed.

Can anyone offer any words of wisdom please?

 

[BBP]

Looking at your second to last sentence, are you sure it is that way round? I.e. feeling a failure leaves you depressed? Or could it be that you suffer from depression and it is the depression which affects the way you view your work with your horses?

That is certainly how it was for me. I didn’t realise that my thoughts and the way I was feeling was the result of the illness of being depressed, rather than the other way around. Once I got help for the depression, everything else started to come into better focus and life started to get better.

I know we are all different, but I wondered if you had thought about it that way round? Often we think that depression has to come from some major trauma, and it certainly can, but sometimes it can be just a bio chemistry mess that needs help to sort out.

 

[smolmaus]

I can't add much more to BBP, but I will say that coaches still need coaches and therapists can still need a therapist. External work and internal work are completely different and there is nothing strange or shameful in getting yourself the same help you would give to others. Very much easier said than done I know, but you deserve it.

 

[AntiPuck]

I would agree that a coach or therapist would be a great idea to help you build healthier thinking patterns around this.

 

[tristar]

you have three horses, you ride in a kind way, just get on them and go, ride the horse underneath you, stop projecting your expectations onto the horses, stop listen, let them show you something, be natural, stop thinking about training for a while, go for a pleasant trot, and a fun canter, pretend you are a child just having fun, with no narrow thoughts on how it , SHOULD BE, forget about the technical aspects of riding, for a while anyway

our horses should be our therapy, we should allow them to enjoy our company and time spent with their devoted owner is their good time too

remember how you felt before you learned too much and how it all seemed uncomplicated, sitting on a horse and just feeling like a child

perhaps you are a little run down, looking after three and helping others, try a week or two off riding, till the nights are a bit lighter, let your brain relax about it all, try something different with your own horses, or , just brush them and talk to them, stand back and empty your mind, you may be surprised what answers will come into an open mind

 

[Cortez]

Do you have an instructor?

 

[Trouper]

It may just be the age old problem - family never listens to family. I agree with others - look for some help from outside either for the horses, for you or both.