05/07/2021
Today I am thinking about the TYRANT MIND. Oh what an unrelenting task master that can be! I’ve shared a bit about the two mares that are living with me now, Bree and Sha-Sha. So much to learn from living with and closely observing and experiencing the outer and inner lives of horses. It continues to astonish me how many layers and layers of insights can be revealed just by being in their presence, listening and observing closely.
So Bree and Sha-Sha are both beautiful vibrant thoroughbred mares. Both were rescued at relatively young ages and have lived for a few years at a sanctuary. Both were adopted out for a period of time, and both returned as being “too hot to handle.“ So back to the sanctuary they went. They came to live with me at Blue Harbor Farm a couple of months ago. I knew that I would only be able to keep them for three or four months since I will be going back to NY to spend the summer. But the hope was that it would give them a respite and time for some deeper healing. My commitment was to give them love and attention, to do some kind of gentle but slightly challenging training work with them 3-5 days a week, and just generally help move them forward in their journey of healing. Sounded simple. Of course it’s turned out to be a lot more complex than that!
The emotional unfolding that occurs between a horse and human when they’re in sustained, close contact can be both exhilarating and quite unnerving. Especially when you bring together a horse and human who both have extensive trauma in their backgrounds. Having met quite a few people who work with rescuing and rehabbing abused, traumatized or neglected animals, my sense is that most people that are drawn to this kind of work have some history of emotional trauma themselves. Makes sense. Our bruised, wounded hearts resonate on the same frequency with each other. And there is a desire - often unconscious – that by “rescuing” an innocent, powerless being, we can somehow rewrite our own history of abandonment.
So from experience I’ve learned that whenever a new traumatized horse will be arriving, it’s going to be yet another opportunity for me to go deeper into my own healing. Not exactly what I had envisioned when I first felt called to do this work! Often when I share pictures of the farm and me with the horses with friends who are not in a position to share time with horses, I get responses like “oh my god you’re living the dream! I’m so jealous! It must be amazing!“ When I read these I always chuckle ruefully. Sometimes I try to explain – it’s not romantic or glamorous or blissful…If you only knew… But mostly I’ve come to see that it’s nearly impossible to convey the reality of what looks externally like a magical dream come true, but internally is often experienced as a harrowing journey into the depths of my own shadowlands.
When our sons were little, like most parents Paul and I read them bedtime stories every night. It was a ritual I loved. And as they grew into that mysteriously liminal phase that is now referred to as the tween years, I discovered a series of books called the Deltora Quest, and its sequel series the Shadowlands. Written for young people, it followed the archetypal model of the hero’s journey stages that Joseph Campbell mapped out so brilliantly.
1 - The CALL to adventure, which is almost always brought on by some sudden terrible trauma in the young hero’s life. 2 -The SEPARATION, where they are required to leave behind everything that is known and comforting and dear to them, and set off on a lonely solitary journey. 3 - The INITIATION, where they are thrown into a series of often seemingly impossible ordeals and tasks with the goal of retrieving some lost precious and vital treasure. 4 - And finally the RETURN, where they come back and re-join the community in order to share the great gift they have recovered, and restore peace and joy.
In this particular story, the heroes were a trio of young people, all of whom in their own way had been cast out of their communities. They found each other, banded together, and set off to retrieve the seven jewels that when put together into a magical belt would restore peace and harmony to the desolate, despairing kingdom. Familiar storyline. I started reading it to them thinking it would be just another fairytale/myth kind of story. But what I found by the end of the nearly dozen books, which took us about a year to read through, was that I had been deeply, deeply penetrated – actually shaken to my core - by going through the journey with these young heroes.
The final books were the most intense – when they were called to brave the terrors of the outer fringes of the kingdom, which were known as the Shadowlands. The place where all of the demons lived, where not only was there no guarantee they would return, but in all probability all signs suggested they would not. As warning they were told that the very air in the Shadowlands contained only traces of life-giving oxygen, and the majority of the atmosphere was composed of despair. They would be breathing in despair. They were trained in how to take very small sips of breath, just enough to sustain themselves, but not enough to be overwhelmed by the crushing feeling of futility and hopelessness that despair brings on. It was, to say the least, a Herculean ordeal for all three of them. And the only way they could get through it was to rely heavily on each other, but most importantly on the training they had received to prepare them. Of course, as with all great myths, the outer journey is a metaphor for the much more treacherous inner journey of reclaiming our own lost treasure - the vivid joy, passion, aliveness, and deep sense of meaning and connection that we came into this world with but somehow lost contact with along the way.
How does all this relate to working with traumatized horses? To working with my own history of trauma? Well here’s what I’ve been discovering by living with Bree and Sha-Sha.
Both of these beautiful ladies, being thoroughbreds, tend toward what we call hot-blooded temperament. They are high-strung, spirited, inquisitive, exuberant, demanding, easily startled - in other words very HIGH MAINTENANCE! But within that temperament type, there are vast ranges. And it just so happens that Bree and Sha-Sha are on opposite ends of the continuum. Bree is a fairly calm, centered, gloriously self-possessed and proud thoroughbred. She is a Queen and she knows it! Sha-Sha on the other hand is the epitome of the stereotype of a semi-hysterical thoroughbred who spooks at the slightest thing and is always ready to bolt at the least provocation, creating a danger for herself and everyone around her. Why is that, I often wonder? And what made these two so different?
From my college days as an anthropology major many years ago, I remember one professor writing endlessly on the blackboard “NURTURE VS NATURE???“ It seemed to be the most important question that anthropologists, and perhaps other social scientists, we’re grappling with. How much of what we see as personality - and even culture - comes from the basic nature of the individual, and how much is shaped by their early environment, experiences and influences? Impossible to know in the case of these two horses, and in fact most horses that I get to work with. I didn’t know them when they were babies to see what kind of personality they came in with, and I don’t know enough about their past history to make assumptions about what shaped them. All I know generally is that they have had some trauma in their lives, sometimes fairly benign neglect, other times extreme prolonged abuse. Whatever the cause, Sha-Sha has a deeply ingrained fear response to life in general.
As I have lived with them day after day, spending long hours together, the teachings have seeped deeper and deeper into my own inner Shadowlands. The places within me where vestiges of those old demons of fear and mistrust of life still lurk. I watch how Bree has a strong startle response, but it is only for appropriate things, like me forgetting to announce myself vocally as I’m coming around the corner of the barn and suddenly appearing there out of the corner of her eye. She jumps a foot or two at the sight of me, but quickly settles herself when she realizes “Oh it’s just her.“ And she goes back to calmly munching her hay. Sha-Sha on the other hand, startles at everything! I have to be so constantly mindful of the slightest movements and sounds that I am making when near her. Not only that, but I have to be environmentally aware at all times, like a huge satellite dish that is taking in the slightest possibility of something that may be coming to alarm her, like a distant plane overhead or a red fox trotting quietly through the far back pasture, or the rustling of the upper branches of the loblolly pines that tower over the back of the farm. Anything - and I mean anything! - can send her into a full-blown panic.
As I putter around them, doing my chores or gently grooming them, I take in these differences in their responses to life. And it occurs to me that Bree is like a mind that has been trained to recognize what is true danger and what is being conjured up by our imagination. She knows that there is danger in the world. She has the ability to protect and defend herself by moving into fight or flight mode. And she has the tools to calm herself when that is not necessary - to self-soothe in psychology lingo, and bring her nervous system back into balance.
Sha-Sha on the other hand, is like what I referred to as the Tyrant Mind. An untrained, undisciplined, rampaging tyrant that has never learned how to distinguish between what is a real threat and what is being conjured up from our past fears. There’s a saying - “If it’s hysterical it’s historical.” These hysterical panic-filled responses to the slightest disruption around her are most likely being triggered by something in her traumatic past. The hysteria is historical.
So my task when working with a horse like Sha-Sha, is to help her learn how to self-soothe. Since her mind is literally “blown” I have to become the external calm mind that can re-regulate her frayed nervous system. Neuroscience has taught us about the phenomenon of “Entrainment” – which “is defined by a temporal locking process in which one system's motion or signal frequency entrains the frequency of another system.” In other words, the energy that is emanating from my body/mind, if strong and steady enough, can begin to pull her system into lockstep with mine. By not panicking myself, often by not even responding to her sudden terror, but just remaining calm and steady and continuing on with whatever task I was in the middle of, barely even acknowledging her startle, it helps her to see that in fact there is nothing to fear. And slowly she comes back to some semblance of balance. What I’ve experienced in working with horses like her is that over time, with enough of the steady calm outside presence, they can begin to internalize their own self-soother.
And how this relates to myself and my own healing journey, and the Tyrant Mind… As I watch these two horses and see their different responses to startling phenomena, I am reminded how often I allow my mind to become like Sha-Sha. It has taken decades of steady, consistent practice - yes I’ll use the dreaded word “discipline!” - to train my mind that it does not have to panic and bolt at the sight of every crow landing on the back fence or the sound of every criticism aimed at me, or the perception that I am not good enough, or … on and on and on… For me it’s not been enough to just understand where this response comes from, to know the details of my trauma history, to tell and retell that story. It has also required lots of support in learning techniques to release the trauma that still lingers in my body. “The issues are in the tissues“ is something that I have learned on a deep gut level. That as much as I want to THINK my way to healing, I’ve learned that my body - my very nervous system - needs a lot of time to release these old ingrained patterns of bracing against life. This is one of the aspects of PTSD that is both challenging and also hopeful. That when we can get into the deep physical responses to something that triggers an old trauma, we can slowly help the body to release it.
So my task always it seems is to slowly and steadily help myself, train my mind, to become more like Bree. To notice the intense fear that rises up in me when faced with something triggering, but then to be able to take the time to step back and discern whether this is something that is actually threatening or is it coming from past conditioning. For me that training comes in the form of things like a daily routine of self-care and energy management. I have a morning routine that I am pretty religious about, which includes some yoga, some breath work, some meditation, and here’s the most important one - laughter and dancing. There is actually a practice in the Taoist tradition called the “happy baby belly laugh.” You just create laughter in your body by pumping your belly in and out the way a very young baby laughs. It’s sort of like it tricks the mind into thinking that you’re happy and the body begins to be flooded with endorphins in response. I’ve developed this morning routine over many years, and sometimes I do it in as little as ten to fifteen minutes, sometimes I stretch it out over an hour or two. But on those days that I skip it, I pay the price.
Mostly it’s taken a deep commitment to nurturing that frightened little one that still lives within me. Just as I would never punish, belittle or shame Sha-Sha for being a “scaredy-cat” I have needed to learn to not treat myself in ways I would cringe if I saw a frightened, traumatized horse being treated. One of my most important “practices” I’ve learned for when I am feeling overwhelmed and overrun by terrorizing thoughts and projections, is to just go to my bed or couch, place pillows all around me so I feel held on all sides, with a soft fuzzy blanket covering me, and allow a great soothing presence to gather me up in her arms and rock me into safety. I remember when my sons were babies, how I adored having them in the snuggly, right up against my chest and belly, snug and warm and safe. I couldn’t get enough of gazing at their soft, relaxed faces as they drifted into peaceful sleep, all of their cells relaxing, releasing, knowing that nothing could harm them. It wasn’t just them receiving the immense comfort of that body-to-body contact – my own wounded inner child was bathing in the soft bliss of feeling finally cradled in sweet refuge and shelter. I think that’s what called me to name this farm Blue Harbor. Blue for the comfort and peace I feel when I gaze at the ocean or sky. And Harbor for where our battered ships go to find shelter and mend their broken parts.
Slowly, sometimes excruciatingly slowly it feels, my mind – and spirit - are moving from being a Sha-Sha to being a Bree.
