20/01/2023
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✨The Myth of The Therapy Horse ✨
Horses are not divine unicorns capable of intuitive healing.
They are not therapists.
Horses are very pretty prey animals whose concept of connection is largely about survival. They are sensitive and fast livestock.
They are capable of extremely subtle communication and focused listening. That's it.
This does look like magic to humans. In fact, I would argue that it looks more and more like magic to us all the time. This is because the human condition is evolving away from connection with self and others. Let me explain:
In many ways, this is the best time for humans to be alive. Advances in medicine, technology, transportation, communication, etc are making us capable of what was once unfathomable success. We have become a society of very effective problem solvers. We want to solve ALL the problems. We also want to use this kind of thinking to solve mental health issues.
Unfortunately, we’re failing. Miserably.
In 2022, the World Health Organization announced a 13% increase in mental health conditions and substance use disorders in the past decade. Su***de rates, eating disorders, depression, anxiety..... you name it.
We are struggling.
But I would argue that it is the struggle itself that’s the problem. We want to solve mental health like it's a Rubik's Cube, but we can't. We want to numb psychological pain with medications, but we know it's still there. We think we can treat psychological pain like it's a bad rash.
Our caring nature also wants to fix psychological pain in our loved ones - we try to send them an insightful meme, wrap them in a blanket, send them positive affirmations. Because we care, pain in others causes pain in us and WE. DON’T. LIKE. IT. We have to FIX IT so that no one hurts.
But wait a minute, when a loved one is in pain, this causes you pain. Why?
As Steven Hayes puts it:
"We hurt where we care, and we care where we hurt"
Your hurt about your loved one's pain tells me you care. Your grief tells me how much you loved. Your anxiety tells me how important something is to you. Your pain has a purpose.
And yet, we want to medicate it, shut it down, bottle it, fight it. With our loved ones we want to stay away, isolate, text instead of call, disconnect because we feel like "your pain is too hard for me".
We don't want to feel. Feeling is hard.
We've lost the capacity to be okay with pain, to connect with our pain, and to connect with the pain in others.
But pain is part of us, and if we have disconnected from our pain, we have disconnected from ourselves.
And then there are the horses.
Horses are not as advanced as us. They can't write long posts about the human condition, let alone the equine condition. They don't have this complex world view.
They don't even have the neurological complexity to argue with psychological pain. Here's why:
Horses can't notice their thoughts. Horses are only IN their thoughts. They can't struggle with psychological pain - they only know how to be in psychological pain and react accordingly. Their survival also depends on noticing the subtle cues of the horses and humans around them, and reacting accordingly.
They have minds that react to the subtle cues of others in the present moment. What a novel idea.
When our minds are disconnected from our own experience, our horse is standing right there, observing. And it's in their reactions to us that bring us back to the present, that force us to self-reflect and connect with ourselves. Asking ourselves “what am I doing to cause this reaction?” magically brings us back to ourselves.
Horses are not magic therapy unicorns; they are just anxious, connection-driven livestock that have retained the skills that humans have lost.
And we need them now more than ever.
