FEAR Face Everything and Rise!

FEAR-Face Everything and Rise

A listener requested we talk about fear.  We feel this when we think something bad is going to, or might happen.   Jess talks about where that that fear lives in our brain—in the Limbic region.  It does not speak a language there—it messages us with images or sensations.  Our brain wants a story and sometimes it confabulates something that could be false.  We can change and re-write that story so we don’t get triggered.  Cathy talks about fear and how it can get in the way of the rider.  She wants to know if there is fear and then it can be talked about. Preparation in our riding and in other things in our life can help us not let the fear take hold and control what we want to do, or how we want to live!

Theme song and host introduction. Jess and Cathy welcome listeners to There You Are, introduce themselves, and share what the show is about and who it's for.

Theme song and closing words from Jess and Cathy, including a call to action to share the episode, leave a review, and tune in next week.

Cathy is a professional at training and teaching the sport of Three Day Eventing. Her website is: 

https://www.cwevent.com

Jess is a licenced clinical social worker.  She see's clients in her office in the back of the house here at the farm.   

Her website is:

https://www.jessicabollinger.com

Transcript

Jess and Cathy 1:38

Hello. Good morning, everybody. There you are, Cathy There you are, Jess. Here we are around the kitchen table. It's a beautiful morning. After our workout. Cool. Yeah, yep. Nice cool morning. Feels good. It's been a little humid the last few days. Yeah. You walk outside and that wet washcloth's like over your face. Yeah. Yeah. Or you're tacking up your horse and he's already sweating. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, it's all good. It's the time of the year. Yep. And we got- we've gotten rain. Everything's lush and green. I love it. Yep. Our summer grass seed I think might- Be taking off hopefully be growing. It's all good. And life is good. Yeah we're gonna talk about fear today. Fear was suggested by our listener, and there's two acronyms for fear. We could... it could be false evidence appearing real. Right? Yep. You just looked that up. Yeah. Or we could or we could just face everything and rise. There you go. Yeah. Okay. What do you think helps you when you feel fear, Cath? When I-- What helps me when I feel fear is Usually it's unfounded, no pun intended. In a sense that I know and I'm talking about fear, like when I used to compete and, you walk those courses or you can make up stuff that might go wrong, and you just gotta push that out, and you have to know that you're prepared and go out. And as my mom used to say, "Ride like you know how to ride." I think that preparation is huge. And if there is a fear coming up for you... and again, I'm just referring to the student and riding, and me being a teacher and addressing the concerns of a student, I would hope they would tell me. And a lot of times that there might be a fear in that, in admitting, "Oh, I'm afraid of this jump," or, "I'm afraid of the course," or, "I'm afraid to move up a level or something." And I think that number one, talking about it is gonna put it out into the universe. So you would like them not to have the fear of telling you they have a fear. Absolutely. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I say that when I teach clinics, a lot of times when I teach clinics, I'm walking in and I don't know the horses or the riders, and I don't know their history. You just met them the first time. I met them for the first time on a Saturday morning at 10:00 o'clock, and we're gonna jump, and then the next day... Usually when I do clinics, we don't-- I don't just go cross-country. We usually practice show jumping exercises of some sort, and then the next day we go out and jump cross-country. But I tell the riders, I said, "If there's anything that you don't wanna jump or you're worried" I say worried, I don't say you're, that you're afraid of, Yeah. Why do you use the word worried, I wonder. Is that your mom's word? I don't know. Worried. Sounds a little English. She wasn't English though. Cathy's- But she lived there a long time. No, but Cathy's parents lived in England for 27 years. Yeah. So I don't know why I say worried. But anyway I ask the riders that, to let me know, because I'm, based on what I saw them do the day before, and I'm just speaking about clinics I'm gonna put together some jumps or exercises that we talk about and jump, and if there's a jump out there that they're worried about or fearful of, I need them to let me know so that I can give them more information a- and prepare them to be successful. Yeah. Does that make sense? That makes total sense. Your world makes sense to me. Yeah. So our brain- Yeah what I know about the brain- Is it can make a lot of confabulations Okay And those confabulations can be like, "Oh, this could b- happen or that could happen." Exactly. It's binary. It connects things that, that we've seen or experienced to it, it does just like binary, just like a computer. Okay. So it's always comparing and contrasting. And it wants to, it wants a story, and the story might not even be true- Okay as long as the brain has a story. Okay? So the brain really, and our thoughts really- are not our friend unless we get it all untwined. I'm li- I'm thinking about it- Unraveled Unraveled. Yeah. Yeah. And say, "Wait, what is that? No, it's because I didn't have my tire iron that I sat on the side of the road for a while last time." I wasn't able to change a tire or whatever, yeah. That wasn't the horse I have now. The horse I have now is like this. Exactly. Yeah So yeah. And the limbic part of our brain holds all emotional memory. So the limpic part of our brain holds- Limbic lim- It's got a B. Limbic. Yeah. I always thought it was limpic. Limbic. Anyway. No. The limbic- Limbic part of our brain. Limbic. Yeah. That's w- in the middle there. Yeah. It holds all emotional memory, and the thing about that part of our brain is it doesn't speak a language. It's images or sensations. Oh, okay. And they're like, "Ah, oh my gosh, it's a coffin." And just the word coffin- Is- That, you all that's the name of a horse jump, is a coffin. Do they not, do they call it something else? We don't call it that anymore. I don't on my courses. I call it- What do you call it? rails to ditch to rails or- ditch to roll or we don't call... They used to, yeah, in the old days call it a coffin. So just the word coffin. Or my horse doesn't like ditches. Yeah. Not necessarily. So if you say your horse doesn't like ditches- Yeah it's not gonna like ditches. Exactly. And that's not, that's not- Yeah a good attitude to have. No. So work out, do rope work with your horse over ditches so they're gonna love ditches. Yeah. Yeah. That- So that's where you, if you're the trainer, if you have that information, "Oh, my horse has had a problem with ditches" then you'll start off with making the horse comfortable with them. Absolutely, and the rider too, because it's so much what the rider makes up in their head about, Absolutely and it can happen in a nanosecond. So again, I go back to preparation. When I competed at the upper levels, I was here in Kentucky, and I, and so I didn't have a upper level rider to train with here, so I had to, go other places. And and I remember going to North Georgia one time, and I'd been kinda missing on my preparation. And I walked those courses and I just had a fear, and I said, "I can't go out and ride these horses on this course. I'm, I am not comfortable." And so I went and talked to Karen and David O'Connor- And they said, "Cathy, come in here and sit down," in their camper And they said, "We've been watching you for a while and if you can do it, we'd like to get you into our program because you just don't have the tools in your toolbox and your preparation of getting rid of that fear because you're not doing things correctly. You're over-slowing down, or you're, I would never go too fast, but you're not, y- you don't have the tools in your toolbox in order to make you and your horses successful. So I literally did scratch all, I had three advanced horses, I think. I didn't run any of them cross country. And then started, making the trips to Virginia or training with them in Ocala when they were there, and then s- and got myself back to where I was before. Did I have a specific fall or I can't remember that there was- a specific incident. It almost seemed to just be a little bit snowballing. And you can you can ride around a cross country course and go around what we call clear with no penalties. But is that a, was it g- a good course? Was it a good track? Does that make sense? No, it doesn't. Okay. Was it a good course or a good track? You mean w- did you actually have a good ride on that course? That, yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. Is that what you mean? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you could get the job done, but it didn't feel comfortable. It didn't- Yeah, and it, you could have some really scary moments. Exactly. And I remember back in our history together, you had a fall and you broke your you did something to your shoulder. Dislocated my shoulder. Yeah. Yeah. And that caused you to hold a little bit too much on cross country. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And if you have that fear in your mind, y'all, a horse, they use them in therapy- Yep 'cause a horse feels everything that you're feeling. Every single thing. Yep. Yeah. My f- my cousin Joan, she did horse therapy with people. She wasn't the therapist, she was the horse expert on the ground. But they, this one horse they had, if someone had a sexual trauma as a child, this one horse always went to that person. Wow. Yeah. Wow. But anyway, horses feel the- Yes what I'm wanting to say is horses feel everything you're feeling. Yeah. And there you are, you're on their back. They're feeling everything you're feeling, so if you have that fear- Yeah they feel it. And like you said, it's not doing you, I remember this specifically, you said, if you gotta take a tug, you're not doing right with the horse. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, I mean- say more about that. Rather than riding forward confidently. Yes, exactly. Yeah, if you start slowing down and trying to find perfect distances instead of being able to, keep galloping and prepare the horse's canter to jump the fence without- I don't know. You c- I can get into a lot of stuff. There's, what we talk about for cross-country riding, and we're specifically talking about cross-country riding 'cause a lot of people have the fear of jumping those jumps because they don't fall down. That's the, they're locked in, they're solid wood obstacles and and they don't fall over. And so if you're not prepared to jump the fence, you could, it, you could have a fall or an accident or something like that. So what we train is there are the phases of galloping. Okay. Which is so you're galloping your horse. And n- by galloping not galloping as fast as a race, as a racehorse but galloping, so you're carrying some speed. And then when you get ready to jump a fence, you have a preparation phase. Yes. And in that preparation phase is when you acquire, determine the speed at which you're gonna jump the fence and the balance that the horse needs to be in. Okay. Okay? That is directly related to what you're jumping. If you're jumping what we call an ascending oxer, the horse's speed doesn't necessarily need to change that much, but the balance needs to shift. Okay. And training the horse to shift that balance Training riders to teach the horse to shift the balance is a work in progress all the time So the shift of balance, but not necessarily the speed. Exactly. Like a galloping table- Yeah also. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. An ascending fence. Yeah. Yeah. But then if you're getting ready to jump an upright vertical or something downhill, then the change of balance also includes a change of speed. Gotcha. And so it's learning to do that in front of every single jump that you jump- Yeah and training the horse to respond to- Your aids your- That's telling them to do that that's telling them to do that. So does it take you 15 steps or strides, we call them, to get that horse into the canter that you need to jump the jump, or does it take you 25 strides, or does it take you, six strides? And so that's the education that the rider needs to do with the horse and the instructor needs to do with the rider to teach them that, so that- as they're jumping cross country, it is it looks seamless, but it's not seamless. Does that make sense? Yeah, this is really- We're getting into it a little bit. This is really interesting. And then you have some combinations on a cross-country course that you might even have to slow up and do a show jump to. Yeah. Like I said, y- you, your preparation phase determines the speed and balance at which you're going to jump the exercise. Yeah. Yeah. And you have to get that done. Yeah. Yeah. So- okay. Well- Go ahead. I'm following you. So a fear that can come up is you don't get it done in time, and you're like, "Oh, I'm still going too fast," or, "My horse's head is on the floor, and he's not looking-" The horse is not responding. The horse is not responding. Ding, ding, nobody's home. Exactly. So that f- that fear can come up there because you're like I'm SOL." And then you just lean a- I say just lean away from the fence and sit still. The horse, the horses are amazing athletes. Lean away means sit up. Yeah, exactly. But it's to, again, we go back to preparation, training- Yeah The riders and the horses. And you can learn to to do that with the horse really without even coming to a jump. You can- Absolutely be out there in the field and then practice those different signals to the horse, those aids to the horse to get them- Yes to- And you can practice going forward and slowing down, and you can practice cantering down hills and asking the horse to stay in balance and things li- I, I'm- Put a video out of one of my students, David who's learning and he's a great guy, but we go out in the field and can you canter a big circle in the field and stay on your line of direction and s- and- be in a good balance. And I think that that exercise for riders and a exercise for horses is something that's really huge. And a lot of times it's hard to do. Or you have people that compete down in Ocala and it's so flat there, and then all of a sudden they come to Kentucky and there's hills, or you go to Virginia Horse Trials and there's even bigger hills. And so it's hard to, sometimes it is hard to practice- Yeah what you want to do. Yeah. So you're talking about, you're talking more about the preparation- Absolutely that can help so much- Yes with the fear. Yeah. And then the other thing is that you have to trust, I would hope, excuse me, you could trust your instructor. Because I say at the clinic, I said, "If there's something that you don't wanna jump or you're worried about or fearful of- T- tell me- and then we'll talk about it. Because a lot of times you don't have the knowledge or your horse isn't in the right balance, and that is what creates the fear. And if you can get the horse in the right balance and you have the knowledge, then the horse can answer the question and you feel less fearful. And I remember when you did get hurt bad once and you were taking too much of a tug on a horse- Yeah because of the fear- that you weren't just riding the horse for the jump. You were, like, taking a little bit too much- I was- of a tug. Yeah. You went and did some EMDR, which was- the protocol at the time that was good. There's other better ones now that I know of. But you did that, and it took you back to being run off with as a five-year-old. Yeah. I got run away with. Yeah. And so you processed that- and that helped you go back out and- Yeah and be able to gallop the cross-country without taking inappropriate tugs. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And when we say tugs, you can slow the horse down too much or wait too long to try to see the perfect distance, and then at the upper levels anyway, you're not giving the horse the speed in order to answer the question. A good teammate with a horse, a good partnership, is you're gonna be the partner that allows the horse to jump underneath you with the best ability. And that's the speed and the direction and the rhythm. Yeah. And allowing that. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's one gal at the barn that's that she's just jumping little tiny stuff every day- Exactly to help overcome that fear. Yeah. And then- And that's the other thing. That's a good point. I let people jump here, without being in a lesson. And even if it's small jumps, it's just practicing that instead of just one lesson a week, for jumping is not enough. I say, "Go, set the rails out or make them small cross rails or just so that you're cantering and practicing some of the things that we do in our lessons so it's not just one time- a week that you're doing this. You won't get good at anything doing it one time a week, so- Yeah right? Yeah. True. Yeah. True. Yeah. And then some people you send to me, Yep confidentially, I don't even tell you if they came to see me- or not- Yeah to work out if they had anything happen to them that causes a fear while they're on the horse. Yeah. A trauma. A trauma. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And that's- That l- yeah I'll tell people maybe you need to go do a session with Jess and she can help clear out what's going on. And so- And it might not even be something that actually happened to them. It could be something they witnessed or something like that. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's an awesome, resource that I have, because then I can And sometimes I'll ask them if they did a session with you, and they'll if I'm curious about it, and they'll, they'll tell me. Or they'll volunteer, "Hey, I did a session with Jess, and, this is great, and what are we doing today?" Yeah. Yeah. So that's really good. Yeah, so for them to be able to show up as that true partner for their horse and not bring any of their own baggage that's gonna affect the horse is gonna feel it. Exactly. That's what you're trying to eliminate. Yeah. Cool. What I know with my work that I do with my clients that come in my office is that we all need to feel safe and feel loved. And things can happen to us where it could be environmentally, it could be stuff that's happened to our parents, it could be financially anything. It could be direct physical trauma. Emotional trauma, physical trauma that, that are, that the brain then adapts itself and becomes vigilant And runs into this and then becomes in this state of vigilance, like 24/7, which causes a lot of the fear. Is something gonna happen? Is this person- Okay safe or not? And it's not a comfortable, easy, nice kind of relaxed way to live. No. And they've been living with that for so long, and they've adapted to it, they don't even realize that it's there. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And it could maybe pop in later on in their life. Like sometimes when they have children or they have a child that was that age that happened to them, then all of a sudden they realize what happened to them. And they, and the type of therapy, the accelerated resolution therapy, they don't have to know the details of it. Their brain can process it without them talking about it and stuff like that. That's kinda cool. Yeah, it's really cool. Yeah. But the, so anyway, that limbic part of the brain is there for our protection- to alert us. But it might be it doesn't have to stay that way. Exactly, yeah. Yeah. And we don't, it doesn't have to keep 'Cause the trauma might have happened once or it might have been over a period of time being around that uncle or the whatever. Whatever happened to them. But it could have been once. And living, thinking, and living in that vigilance, it's happening all the time. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, so it's like fireworks. If you light a firework, okay, that, that firecracker went off. Yeah. But it's oh no, it just keeps going off. And so trauma lives on and it's reoccurrence in our brain. Okay. And more stuff can get added in that causes us, trepidation or, And trepidation is fear? D- don't people use- It's like being scared they say fear and trepidation. Okay. Trepidation. And to- and toget- together in the same sentence. Yeah. Well- So just being scared. Yeah. Okay. But we don't even know we're scared sometimes. We're just not living life fully- at ease. Yes. And they say, "Okay, we can live in fear, we can live in love," right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so like I say, adult trust is knowing that I can take care of whatever I need to take care of. If something happens, I don't have to live in the fear. And that goes back to what we talked about before was about preparation. Absolutely. If I know I have what I need to change a flat tire on my boat trailer or my horse trailer- I've got it in there. I'm not gonna be all, "Oh, what if I have a flat tire?" Got a spare, I've got everything I need to change it. Exactly. Yeah. And you've got your Trail Guard, you know- insurance- Yeah. to call somebody if I can't. Yeah. Or I have somebody that I can be resourceful and get h- the help that I need. So I love it when my clients or your students are resourceful, and they say, "Oh, I've got a problem with that," and then you can help them with that. Or if it's something stuck, then you can say Jess has some stuff that can help you with that." Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So fear is just really icky to live with. Yeah, but okay, I don't disagree with you. To, to constantly... it can say, "Okay, you need to work on this preparation." Okay. Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. We can notice it, but- but living with it all the time- Yeah. No, exactly is very stifling. True- for sure. Yeah. Yeah, and it doesn't have to be hard to work through it. It can be slow and easy. Exactly. Baby steps. Yeah. Don't, yeah. Jump the little baby logs. Jump the baby log and- practice your preparation phase so that you're in the correct balance and canter to jump the jump, and then you can take it to the next biggest thing or a- Yeah more complicated question. Yeah. Yeah, when Cathy talks about going advanced there's all these different levels of difficulty, and you just start at the lower levels. And then when they start looking easier, then you can move up a little bit. Yeah. And if you don't ever move up, that's okay, too. Yeah. Everybody is- Yeah where they are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but I used to, when I rode at Kentucky and stuff for the big events, I would, I would be fearful, and I would... But I would be able to control it and breathe through it and say, I know my stuff. I know how to do this." "My horse knows how to do it." "We're prepared." So if that would creep in- I would just put it in a, take it out of my brain, kinda like emotion, take it out, put it up in a little ball, and send it up into the atmosphere, 'cause I don't need it. And that was just a little action that I did. Go away. And that- and Dan Millman is- Yeah, is an author. The Peaceful Warrior. The Peaceful Warrior. Yeah. And he didn't believe in, what was that? He didn't believe in bad luck. You gotta wear these same socks for every- competition. Yeah, so that, I think that's when I was going through a little bit of that stuff, and I wrote him, 'cause I read his book, The Peaceful Warrior, and I wrote him and said, maybe I was gonna go to a workshop or something that he did. But anyway, I wrote him, and he wrote back to me and he said, could, I compare it to, based on what information I probably gave him, he said, "I compare it to walking across a balance beam. And if you walked across, you could walk across a balance beam that's two inches off the floor." What, and then, and said, "And now walk across that same balance beam between two skyscrapers. It's still the same balance beam." You know how to walk across the balance beam. So- That's what he told you? Yeah. So it's all your perception. What, just, that, just do the balance beam. Put everything else out of it. Yeah. Yeah. So it's kinda cool- Yeah that he wrote me back. Yeah. You can false evidence appearing real. Yep. Face everything and rise. Yeah. Yeah. And learn what you need to learn- Yeah and grow from it. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. What, what- Prepare the- More preparation- is gonna get rid of that- for sure in my world- Yeah in the horse riding and eventing world. Hey, we really appreciate you. We love you. There you are. Be all of who you are. And if you have something that you want us to talk about, we'd love to chat. Yeah. You can join our conversation. Absolutely. Shoot us- Yeah a text if you have our phone numbers. Comment on the podcast. Yeah. And we'll- Yeah we love to talk about it. Yeah. Peace and love. And and subscribe and share it, please. We're trying to boost our numbers. Take care. Have a great day, everybody. Bye.