How To Heal Childhood Wounds with The Help of Your Horse

by The Love Guru Blaire

Everything in life can be looked at on the surface level or you can go deeper and look for the deeper meaning.

The latter is how I live and how I guide my horse healing clients. People come to me to identify, heal, and clear their horse who has experienced trauma and abuse. But people also come to me to heal and clear their riding performance issues, which stems back to their own  trauma, pain, and childhood wounds. 

Go Deeper Into You

You can go about riding and showing and continue to look at it as just that, “I’m riding my horse today,” or “I’m showing today,” and that would be classified as a surface level way to view your activity. Or you can go deeper and look at your riding and showing on a deeper, more spiritual level. Let me explain.

Say today you ride your horse and you notice you’re really annoyed. Maybe you’re having jumping  issues. Maybe your trainer says something and you get upset. Maybe your horse is not doing what you  want him or her to do. Maybe you’re just not in the mood.  

You can have those experiences and just say to yourself, “Today was an off day.” Or “I really suck.” Or  “Maybe I should give up riding.” Or “Maybe I need more training sessions…” Or “I need to be more  disciplined…” Or “Get my act together…” or whatever.  

Instead, you can stop yourself, grab your journal, write down your thoughts and feelings, and take the steps to go deeper in figuring out what the true issue is here.

Performance Issues are Never Just Performance Issues

You can say you’re having some off days. You can say you just weren’t in the right mindset. You can say  you’re being ridiculous or not focusing or whatever excuse you want to put forth as to why you’re not  riding or showing as well as you know you are capable of. Or again, you can look at the deeper issue.

In this example I just shared, you’re most likely being too hard on yourself. You’re being negative. You’re being critical and judgmental on yourself. You’re being a perfectionist and you’re most likely being a workaholic. And you know what?  This riding issue you’re having is not an isolated incident. You may think that you’re “just” having a  riding issue, but most likely this is a pattern that takes different forms in every area of your life.

For example, if you are hard on yourself when riding, then you are most likely hard on yourself in other areas of your life as well. If you are a perfectionist when riding, then most likely you’re a perfectionist in other areas of your life as well.

Same deal with being negative. If you have negative thoughts while riding or showing, then, yep! You  guessed it… you’re negative in other areas of your life too! Notice how you are when you’re riding and showing and you will notice who you are in life.

The good news is all of this is changeable and fixable because who you are today is a result of trauma  and pain, upset, frustration, and anger that you’ve experienced when you were young. You heal these wounds, you heal (and can change) your life!

Using Horse Riding To Heal Your Childhood Wounds

Being human, we all have experienced pain in our lives. Having wounds from our childhood is part of the human experience.  This is the case whether you have had a good childhood or a bad one. Everyone has childhood wounds. 

The difference here is that some people acknowledge and are aware that they have childhood wounds and take the steps to heal their issues and others just ignore them, deny them, are totally clueless that  they have them, and therefore just let them sit there.  

And when you deny or ignore your unhealed childhood wounds, that’s when things begin to fester.  That’s when these dysfunctional or off kilter ways of being in the world start to take hold.

And when you don’t do any spiritual, deep inner work on yourself to heal those parts of yourself that are  still wounded from your childhood and past events, the way you view yourself, others, and the world  begins to get distorted and clouded.  

You end up see yourself, others, and your world in a negative light.  

You end up talking to yourself negatively. You end up being hyper critical of yourself and others, while  viewing all of this behavior as “normal.” You end up having control issues, trust issues, abandonment and rejection issues.  

You end up having anxiety, fear, and depression.  

You end up being afraid to live your life, trust life, people and experiences. And yes, all of this because of unhealed childhood wounds!  

Childhood Wounds Effect Every Area of Your Life, Especially Horse Riding and Showing

So when clients come to me with riding issues, whether that’s anxiety when riding, a fear of falling, having negative thoughts, being a perfectionist or workaholic, or not having enough time to ride and have a balanced life, and more, I always go to the root of the issue — I guide them in healing their childhood wounds.

Because when you have a riding or showing issue, it’s just a surface way of looking at the issue. There’s usually something deeper going on that’s a result of unhealed mental, emotional, and childhood wounds.

Here Are a Few Riding Issues (“Presenting Issue”) and Few Childhood Wounds That Could Be The Root Cause (“Childhood Wound”)

Presenting Issue:

Don’t like the new person who is boarding or hanging around the barn.

Childhood Wound:

Trust issues (issues trusting yourself, trusting others, trusting life). Jealousy issues, self worth/insecurity issues. Fear of the unknown. Unresolved anger and sadness.

Presenting Issue:

Dealing with mean girls at your barn or while showing. Being picked on by your trainer.

Childhood Wound:

Self esteem issues. Pattern of being bullied. Not aware of how to assert yourself and put up boundaries. Not aware how to protect yourself from dark energy.

Presenting Issue:

Overanalyzing, self critical, judgmental of yourself and others, perfectionism.

Childhood Wound:

Critical and judgmental parents or authority figures. Self esteem issues. Unhealed mental, emotional, physical, verbal or sexual abuse. Unresolved sadness, anger, trauma, pain.

Presenting Issue:

Fear of hurting your horse.

Childhood Wound:

Fear of the unknown, unhealed anxiety or trauma, self doubt, not connected to your intuition or pattern of ignoring you intuition, not in your power.

Presenting Issue:

Anxiety and fear of riding after a fall.

Childhood Wound:

Abandonment issues, trust issues (of yourself, others, and life), control issues, fear of the unknown, pattern of negative thinking.

Surface Level of Deep and Meaningful?

You always have a choice. You can always choose to look at your riding issues as just that, isolated issues that you just have while riding or showing, or you can be a wise one and realize that everything in life is connected.

I suggest you look at your horse riding and showing as a sacred and spiritual practice that you can use to clear your blocks, heal your childhood wounds, and go deeper in getting to know the real You. The result? Not only will you become a better rider, your whole life will get better. In fact, healing these wounds is the only way you’ll ever find true happiness, peace, fulfillment, freedom and success!