# I need to get over a traumatic experience, any help?



## Hazels (Jun 23, 2012)

(I wasn't sure where to put this, but this category seemed fitting. If this category isn't right, I apologize!)

I had my first bad experience on a horse three weeks ago, and I still can't get over it. We were just trotting, but I wasn't ready for her and she wasn't ready for me. She took advantage and took off. I'd never done anything more than a trot on a horse, and so when she broke into a gallop I freaked out. I fell off and did not get harmed, but it left many mental scars.

I stopped riding Lily and decided to take the safest routes and ride one of my instructor's horses, Kelly Jane. Just a week after the incident, my teacher told me to trot. No biggie, trotting was always easy for me. We were just going at a slow, leisurely trotting pace, but in my mind she was taking off. She was running away with me and I couldn't jump off. With all this playing in my mind, I finally decided I wasn't ready to trot yet, and pulled her to a stop.

This week we were trotting again. My instructor assumed I was over it, and asked us to practice speed control. We walked. Turned circles. ...Trotted. The minute Kelly started trotting, it happened again. This little image in my head played over and over...an image of me falling off. Or worse, not being able to fall off. I made her stop. I rested for a moment. I nudged her back into a trot. This vision was completely controlling me. I couldn't even trot, for gosh sake.

I needed to get over it, but I couldn't. I trust Kelly. She's trusts me. But honestly, I can't get over this! I need to move on and forget about that experience, but it always comes back to me when we start to trot. I need some advice besides "she's not going to hurt you"...any help? (Don't bother to comment if you aren't going to help, please!)

Thank you,
-Madi


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## BornToRun (Sep 18, 2011)

Post trauma experiences are hard to get over, I feel for you, and I'm sorry that you had such a bad experience and are struggling with it. You aren't the only one out there though. My mum, who had bad riding experiences when she was my age, now 45, still can't get over them and only walks and occasionally trots. I was in car accident about this time last year and I still have trouble getting close to the rear end of other cars, it makes me kind of not want to get my license now. Confidence building will take a lot of time. Have you communicated with your instructor that you're still struggling? Maybe you could stick to walking and doing some obstacle courses, or trot on a lunge line.


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## BlueSpark (Feb 22, 2012)

Make your self do it.
**I used to ride problem horses and start colts***
I have not found anything else that works. I have 3 broken bones, 4 concussions, 3 cases of severe whiplash, one case of severe tendon damage and more bumps and bruises than I can count. Each one comes with a traumatic experience. I was badly bucked off a mare, shattering my wrist. Just before she started bucking she pranced for a few strides. Every horse I got on after her that pranced sent me right back into panic mode. It took a few months, but I finally got over it.

Every time you go to trot, try imagining it going perfectly, make that the image in your head.


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## mls (Nov 28, 2006)

My suggestion would be to set up a course in the arena (cones, ground poles, etc) walk the whole thing. After a couple of times, pick two cones to trot between, then back down to a walk. Next time trot between a cone and the ground poles, etc. 

Your focus will be on the obstacles and not on your horse. Please think about singing or reciting the alphabet - out loud! That way you can't hold your breath and tense up.

Give yourself some time. There is not set time to 'get over' anything!

Best Wishes!


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## Charley horse (Nov 12, 2012)

Tell yourself that you are "Boss"
Take control, you will gain your confidence over time.

If anytime you feel uncomfortable you can stop it.


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## ThoroughbredJumper (Oct 30, 2012)

My old horse Gent, sweetest thing in the world, tried to take off with me all the time when i first bought him (i was an experienced rider however) and after a few tries he learned he couldnt do it with me. The most important thing is to make your mind Get Over IT! It seems difficult but the second you find the highlight of that experience "i did not get hurt" the whole thing seems easier. I had half of my face shredded by a horse kick, my eye came out and everything. By a paint. But i forced myself to buy a paint, and quickly fell in love with the Paint TB (Gent) which got me over that experience. Just get back into it. Force your mind to say "Hey, im safe, i know what im doing, im going to be okay."


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## Charley horse (Nov 12, 2012)

Wow, TBjumper...Glad your okay! That sound terrible what happened to you.

I went off the side of my mare for the first time ever three years ago.
We were loping up a hill riding western with my feet out of the stirrups ( Due to just getting out of a cast for surgery on a torn tendon )
Yup - shouldnt have been riding....
I seen a small decline ahead leading onto an old dirt road, I didnt want to take it at a lope w/my feet out of the stirrups so I PULLED BACK...Horse had a grip on the bit...
So off I went to ride her on the side for a while just hanging there trying to figure out what to do..I thought hmmmm ground isnt to far from my back so might as well let go?!
I did and went right up underneath her all I seen was her two front hoofs coming towards my head....
I blocked w/my arms ( She really really tried to not step on me my husband said who was ahead watching the whole thing on his horse )
Hoofs came down, but I didnt feel any pain only when she caught my arm and it was underneath her as she was stepping off..She then sent me a swift kick in the lower back to push me out from underneath her..I came out with a broken Radius and loss of confidence..
I am back into the horse world and I am teaching and raising another horse..My love outweighs the fear.
Confidence is gained again over time..

Hazels I am no teacher by far~ but what I would do if I were you is that if your horse starts to get out from under you by not doing what you want it to do then pull that horse's nose in.
You are in control at all times, breath and relax..Keep your head up.


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## ThoroughbredJumper (Oct 30, 2012)

The full story is very graphic.. i have to recall it every time i open my eyes (i cant see out of half my right eye). BUT it was worth it because now i adore paints and LOVE TB's.  hahaha Confidence in yourself is key in any situation regarding another animal and a bad experience.


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## Catpeedontherug (Oct 23, 2012)

Try this~ when you get on, fake confidence. Pretend you are a confident rider, and you just might find yourself slipping into that role.
I know it sounds odd, but I've seen it work for several people.


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## Charley horse (Nov 12, 2012)

ThoroughbredJumper said:


> The full story is very graphic.. i have to recall it every time i open my eyes (i cant see out of half my right eye). BUT it was worth it because now i adore paints and LOVE TB's.  hahaha Confidence in yourself is key in any situation regarding another animal and a bad experience.


With my experience I reacted to late...I all of a sudden felt vulnerable w/my feet being out of stirrups and I panicked.

Sorry to hear that you can only partially see out of that eye TBjumper.

Cat thats what I do..Fake till you make it! Good advice


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## Bluebird (Jul 20, 2011)

Same thing happened to me on my Clydesdale. First time on him, he tanked off with me. I was so scared. It took me a while to build up my confidence and I know exactly what you mean about trotting. Your stomach starts to turn somersalts! You really need to be honest with your instructor and let him/her help you get your confidence back. Take it easy, baby steps and if you don't feel confident trotting on your own horse but you are ok with another, then use another horse until you feel better. In the meantime, when you ride your horse, just do what you are comfortable with. Eventually your confidence will return but have patience and don't push yourself too hard. Its a bad fright you've had but you will get better.


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## littrella (Aug 28, 2010)

I am working on similar issues. I didn't ride for 6 years after my wreck. I started lessons this spring. My trainer put me on the most wonderful, quite, 23 year old gelding. My first lesson was in the round pen, just walking. She later told me she thought I was going to pass out cause I was holding my breath so bad! She slowly let me build confidence on him, pretty much let me go at my own pace, but gently pushing me at the same time. She has gradually put me on more chalenging horses. I had one bad lesson on a mare that did shake me up pretty bad. She took me back down to an easier horse, to get my confidence back up. It takes time, but you can do it


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## QOS (Dec 8, 2008)

Hazels,
Been there and done that. I was trying a horse after not riding for 26 years. Used to be a terrific bareback riding young person. Horse took off bucking and I came off at the end of the arena. I was hurt badly but still wanted a horse. 

I should have bought a well trained trail horse but I got a gentle gently former race horse. He was a sweet boy and did what I asked but every little think would upset me and scare me and that would upset and **** me off. I would remember how I rode well as a kid and young adult. The accident for just over 4 years ago. I trail ride all the time and have a different horse. It took loads of slow rides for me to get where I now canter (and my boy doesn't really canter well - he wants to go faster as he doesn't have the control to go as slow at a canter as hubby's horse).

I can't tell you how many rides I went on that I was in turns scared or thrilled or both at the same time. 

MLS had a great suggestion of trotting a certain space and stopping. Knowing that YOU control that will help you bring back your confidence. And Time. Lots of time. Lots of rides. I have always said the worst that horse did to me was rob me of my confidence. It has taken lots of time and effort to get over it and I still get a little nervous at times before I ride and it may take a mile or so for me to totally relax. Take your time, don't beat yourself up over it. Walk and then a trot for 10 feet. Stop. Walk around the arena. Trot 10 feet. Walk....walk....turn in circles. 

Hope you gain back that confidence soon and are riding again on your own horse. Best of luck and let us know how you are progressing.


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## Saddlebag (Jan 17, 2011)

Are you game for fixing the horse? When you ask her to trot the moment you feel something is different, her body tightens, her ears turn back to you, turn her toward the rail. She'll stop but just conplete the turn and walk in the opposite direction. Each time she starts to speed up turn to the rail. She will quit stopping unless you ride closer than 6' beside the rail. These tight turns mean more work for her and she'll soon be happy to stay in the trot to avoid the extra work. Horses have survived for millenia by conserving energy so this is built in and she won't want to expend any more than she has to.


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## Bluebird (Jul 20, 2011)

littrella said:


> I am working on similar issues. I didn't ride for 6 years after my wreck. I started lessons this spring. My trainer put me on the most wonderful, quite, 23 year old gelding. My first lesson was in the round pen, just walking. She later told me she thought I was going to pass out cause I was holding my breath so bad! She slowly let me build confidence on him, pretty much let me go at my own pace, but gently pushing me at the same time. She has gradually put me on more chalenging horses. I had one bad lesson on a mare that did shake me up pretty bad. She took me back down to an easier horse, to get my confidence back up. It takes time, but you can do it


Absolutely agree with what your instructor did. Sometimes it is all about the horse teaching us and I can tell you that there are some wonderful horses out there who are the best therapists and psychiatrists in the world! Its so important that you build up confidence again on the RIGHT horse until you feel ready to ride your own again. What a lovely story.


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## egrogan (Jun 1, 2011)

Could you have a few weeks of lunge-line lessons on the horse that took off on you? That way, ultimately the instructor is there, attached to the horse, and can prevent her taking off again. Over a series of lessons, you can work on trotting while on the lunge, and gradually working on trotting with no stirrups, trotting with no reins, etc., until you are truly controlling the horse in all these different scenarios with the instructor on the end of the lunge "just in case." 

As an adult re-rider, I can't tell you the number of lunge-line canter lessons I had where I was holding on to the saddle for dear life, so much so that my fingers, hands, and arms ached more than any other part of my body at the end of the lesson because of my death grip. That death grip sure didn't help me get in the right position for riding the canter, but after a couple of weeks, I was confident enough to hold on with just a finger tip, and then not hold on at all, and eventually canter on my own without my instructor even in the ring. I'm a huge believer in the lunge-lesson as a confidence builder if you have a horse and instructor who can help.


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## AnrewPL (Jun 3, 2012)

Trauma can be a hard thing to get through, and depending on your personality and frame of mind, it can be easy or hard. I will relate a couple of experiences I had, both were instances of me nearly being killed while on a horse, one affected me bad, the other not nearly as bad as the first. 
When I was 14, I was working for my uncle who had just sold his cattle station and we needed to clean muster it as he was moving the cattle to another place he had just bought. The place was in North Queensland in the Great Dividing Range north west of Charters Towers and was in some pretty mountainous country. I was cantering diagonally down the side of a mountain after a cow that had made a break for it and as I went after her we got into some thick bush, mainly small Ironbark trees, about 8 to 10 inches across. As we went among them the horse dodged around one and I didn’t, the tree got me under the jaw and broke it, I nearly bit off my tongue and cracked a bunch of teeth. This pulled me out of the saddle but I was hung up in the stirrup and it kept me on the horse behind the saddle, I slowly rolled off the the near side till I was horizontal from the horse and a full sized Ironbark tree took me across the chest breaking a bunch of ribs and skinning me up bad. I kind of came too and found I couldn’t breathe, I eventually managed to breath again and found my mouth filling with something and spat out a mouthful of blood and realised I had nearly bitten clean through my tongue. I figured if I stayed where I was no one would find me so I managed to climb back up to the top of the mountain where the guys with the heard of cattle should come by. They found me and my cousin galloped off to find my uncle who had already found my horse, saddle missing a stirrup, he knew from that something bad had happened. My uncle and cousin hoisted me back on the horse and my uncle left the guys with the cattle and we set out to get me to hospital, about 6 hours away. We rode for about 2 hours to the truck, then another 2 hours back to the house, where my aunty, for some reason, decided I couldn’t go to town in such dirty clothes and made me take a shower and wear my town clothes. 2 hours after that we were in the hospital. 
The second time I nearly got killed I was 18 or 19 and working on a massive cattle station in the northern territory. There were about 60,000 to 90,000 head of cattle on it and all mustering was done with a combination of horses and helicopters. Helicopters would go across the paddock and get them moving we’d come across on the horses in a line as best we could and try to get the stragglers, stragglers that were adept at evading helicopters and horses. One of their tricks was to crawl under these giant clumps of grass, kind of like pampas grass, and hide. If you went by the grass however and managed to get above it you could often see down into it and see the sneaky cattle hiding, at which time we’d try to get them out. Me and one of the other ringers were trotting along a couple of cow pads looking through this grass, unfortunately for me I was on about the clumsiest horse I have ever ridden. There was a log across the path I was on and as we trotted along, me standing up in the stirrups looking down into this grass, the horse, instead of jumping the log, just tumbled over it. She fell with her head down between her front legs, I went straight over in front of her, with me off her she jumped back up and ran me clean over, and I had only put a new set of shoes on her the day before. I got a hoof in about my right eye socket and got all smashed up then another hoof in the back of the head. The other guy got the head stockman who wasn’t far away and they both dragged me to an open space and got the helicopter down, loaded me in and he took me back to the station where they got the NT equivalent of the Flying Doctor to come and get me, by about, actually I was mostly unconscious, I can’t remember how long it took. but eventually they got me to the Darwin hospital.


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## AnrewPL (Jun 3, 2012)

On both occasions I got pretty badly smashed up physically, but it was only the first one that affected my confidence badly; it took years before I could go ploughing through bush again after a cow. I have fallen off plenty and been thrown more times than I care to remember, but those occasions I kind of take as a “it going to happen if you ride a horse” scenario. But getting wiped out on the trees really messed with me. 
Probably the way I guess I got through it, and how I think it might help you, was by having more confidence in: a) my ability to ride and: b) confidence in the horses I was riding; and the good thing is that they will come together so you really don’t have to work at two different things. As a kind of starting point I’d suggest you try, as hard as it might be, to try to convince yourself that falling off is part and parcel of riding horses, we don’t want to fall off, but it happens, if you normalise it in your mind it won’t be so traumatic when it happens. The best thing to do though is to get a really good independent seat this takes time and hours on the horse, and when you get that you will be much more secure on the horses back, you will feel everything the horse is doing better and you will, importantly, stick when that horse jumps away on you. And the up side of it all is is that as you get more confidence in you ability to stick, your confidence will get through to the horse, and as long as you have its respect it will stick with you more and more and you will grow to have confidence in the horse. 
Start off slow, get a good seat etc at a walk, and when it gets a bit boring for you it will probably be about time to incrementally increase to a slow trot. Like someone else said, if you are in an arena, set up an obstacle course to walk the horse through, once that’s too easy, try a gentle trot, and so on.
It is definitely easier said than done, but the point is to be very secure and confident at the easy part then increase the challenge only so fast as you can control your panic and make it through. Take it slow go by small increments, and you’ll get there soon enough. You might even find that, before you know it, you are feeling nervous going from a canter to a gallop, and realise that that is well beyond what you were afraid of in a trot. Sorry for the long post, but sometimes it can help us to see that our bad experience is something others understand too, you are never alone with it. Good luck, I hope you get through it.


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## tempest (Jan 26, 2009)

Something similar to this happened to me. My gelding was just a disobedient brat with no respect for anyone if they were on his back. He bolted twice at the canter on me within a five minute period, I fell off both times. After that day I refused to get back on the horse. I was petrified to canter. But I was put back on that particular horse because he was only one available for me to work with. I was so scared that at the slightest shift in the horses movement that I didn't feel was natural I panicked and a some times screamed. 

Eventually my riding instructor realized that the horse couldn't be retrained she had even tried working with him, he was uncontrollable half the time. I was put on a school master for a year to help rebuild my confidence at the canter. That was over five years ago. I still get slightly nervous at the canter, not enough to cause even the slightest bit of problems but I've also got a trustworthy, steady horse now. If she's going to pull anything it will be when I'm completely relaxed.

It's going to take a lot of practice and patience to get your confidence back, also a good horse or two. The best thing you can do for yourself is just keep riding at the gait that scares you the most, the trot. I had to that for the canter, it was two years before I finally let go of my horse's mane at the canter. The day I didn't grab the mane at all I felt so proud of myself. It's going to take baby steps but as a Marine once told me, "You know how became unafraid of heights? I stood on top of a 70ft tower on watch for four days." That's the best advice I can give.


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