Cheryl L. Eriksen's Blog

No One Has Forgotten 9/11 Holding Space for your Horse (pt.2)

Holding Space – Lessons from the Journey (pt.1)

Do you ever have an extraordinary “a-ha” moment followed by a giant facepalm–as in “A-ha! I get it!” and then “UGH. How could I have been so unbelievably blind for so long?”

That was me the other day. Like, oh wow, seriously, how could I miss that? HOW?

Holding space is something I’ve learned about (through my social work education and work as an equine assisted therapy facilitator), thought about, and tried to put into my daily interactions for years. “Holding space” is a way of being, a way of interacting with others when they are suffering, grieving, or struggling in some way.

In western cultures, we humans are “emotional fixers,” we are extremely uncomfortable seeing those we love in emotional pain. However, when dealing with emotional pain, we sometimes give our own discomfort priority, which is pretty much the opposite of holding space. Let me try to explain…

For physical pain, we know what to do, take the person to a doctor, give them an aspirin, slap a Scooby-Doo Band-aid on their head — this stuff is helpful. For emotional pain, it’s not so easy, what we tend to do to make the person feel better often causes more harm than good. The things we often say (It could have been worse or he’s in a better place now or think of all the nice things you have, lots of people would be so happy to have what you have) often have the opposite effect by making the person feel invalidated, unheard, or as if they are doing something wrong (I should be over this by now).

[image error]Pexels.com" data-medium-file="https://peacehorsejourney.files.wordp..." data-large-file="https://peacehorsejourney.files.wordp..." src="https://peacehorsejourney.files.wordp..." alt="" class="wp-image-782" />(Holding space can be as simple as being together in silence, listening without offering anything except to have the person feel heard, or saying something that acknowledges their pain without trying to stop them from feeling it). Photo by Saeid Anvar on Pexels.com

Further, when we engage in “emotional fixing,” we are actually (albeit often subconsciously) trying to assuage our own discomfort–which is where I experienced my big a-ha moment the other day–that moment I realized that my discomfort with something my horse was experiencing, was actually making her feel worse. A-ha! This problem is about me, not her.

Farletta hates her stall most of the time. This is not a secret to anyone that knows her. It’s a little more complicated than that though. Sometimes she likes her stall. Sometimes she’d rather be in than out, but always she likes this to be on her terms. That I have the audacity to attempt to schedule her stall time is an atrocity to her. Farletta’s perfect world would have no fences, no gates, no boundaries. She would like to have the option to go in and out 57 times a day on the first Tuesday of every month with an “R” in it if that is what suited her fancy. But, that’s not practical.

If you’ve been reading this blog from the beginning, you know that Farletta has had some struggles with her heat cycles, and also with separation anxiety since she lost her eye. The separation anxiety doesn’t always follow a predictable pattern, at least not one I’ve been able to identify yet. Although I have observed that her anxiety becomes very intense during her heat cycles.

A couple weeks ago, Farletta moved to a new farm. She can be out many more hours a day than her previous farm and she also has three new friends. She is very happy turned out with her new friends, but, because of the lush grass (risk of laminitis), I need her to spend at least part of her time in a stall and off the grass. She has been really struggling with this. She wants to be outside with her new friends, not in her stall. So, while she is in the stall, she paces back and forth, calls to other horses, shoves her door, and overall gets pretty agitated.

I hate to see her like this. I hate to see her unhappy. I hate to see her in distress. I hate that the only thing I can do to help her feel better in these moments is to put her out with her friends–the one thing I can’t do.

I took this problem to a recent online group discussion with Kerri Lake the other day. As I told the story, and Kerri asked the kinds of questions that she is so good at, the kind that help me uncover what is really going on. As we talked, I found myself talking about how much I hated seeing her upset and in distress, how much I worried about her being so unsettled, and how I have not been able to find a solution. After hearing myself use all those “I” words, I realized Farletta’s problem was separate from a larger problem — me. I wanted to fix Farletta, to make her feel better, to stop her behavior because I was uncomfortable with her discomfort.

We’ve been taught for decades to stop horses from feeling their feelings. Behavior is communication. Read that again: behavior is communication. When a horse bucks, paws, spooks, rears, bolts, bites, cribs, paces, etc. they are trying to communicate. How do we respond? Yelling, hitting, bigger bits, “training” gadgets, cribbing collars, restraints, etc. Of course these things don’t actually help because they address the symptom of the problem, not the problem itself. I don’t want to take this post into a whole horse training philosophy rabbit hole but hopefully you get where I’m going with this–we respond in a way that will help assuage our own discomfort with what the horse is trying to communicate vs. holding space and listening.

Now, the situation with Farletta isn’t quite the same because I’m not yelling or hitting or trying to do something to stop her behavior. Or am I? What I am doing is bringing a lot of “please don’t do that you’re making me uncomfortable” energy to her when she’s already stressed. What she needs is time to work this out, a chance to feel and process her own feelings, and from me, she needs me to give her space to do it. Just like our grieving friend, Farletta needs me to just be there and not add my own anxiety and discomfort to hers. Not try to change her (she has the right to communicate her unhappiness), not send all kinds of “fix it” energy in her direction–just to be and to hear her. That is holding space–a wonderful gift we can give loved ones and our four-hoofed friends.

My next post will describe my ongoing experiments with “holding space” for Farletta. I hope you’ll join us on that part of our journey. If you’d like to receive new posts directly in your email (usually 1-2 times a month), please subscribe by entering your email address in the box below.

Email Address:

Until next time, peace to all of you and thank you for joining me on this journey. Cheryl