A Voice for Horses - Issue 3 (Emotions) - Online

EDITORIAL

Emotions are everywhere! We feel them in ourselves; we notice them in others, and we sense them in our horses. Expressing an emotion is one way to deal with it, but more often than not, we suppress our emotions—and that’s where we differ from our horses and often get ourselves into trouble.

Most of us have been socially conditioned from an early age to suppress our emotions to get the love and attention of our parents. Subconsciously, we were being taught to hide our emotions to be accepted and fit in—a natural coping strategy for a child who needs its parents/caretaker in order to survive.

This behavior became so ingrained over the years that we unknowingly carried it into adulthood, even when we no longer needed our parents or others for our survival. I lived this way for a long time until I had my own horses. Suddenly, I could no longer hide my emotions because my horses not only picked up on them but often mirrored them back to me. That was not much fun either, so I found a different way to work with my emotions. A pleasant side effect is that I’ve become more authentic in my own life, more trustworthy for my horses, and that I have a deeper connection with them.

What about the emotions of our horses? How do we deal with them? And what happens when we suppress them as well? What happens when we accept both our emotions and those of our horses and learn from them, so we can move forward together in a healthy way?

In this issue, you will learn a lot about emotions: what they are, why they are here, how they impact connection and communication with your horse, what the physiological impact is, how we deal with them, and how healing trapped emotions can happen in both humans and horses.