Crash.

Sometimes I can anticipate it.  I guess I should have guessed yesterday — the morning was fine, then anxiety spiked, short-term memory dropped, and headache started.  I did use meds to try to drop the anxiety, but I did not take enough, or did not take it early enough.  Bedtime was a battle.  This morning I felt like I hadn’t slept in days, I had a severe headache, and had to get up long enough to take the day off work, take something for the headache, and feed the dogs.  I was in bed until 3pm.

I still feel pretty rough, but the headache has eased, which helps a lot. Instead of focusing on the day or whether I’ll be able to function through tomorrow, I thought I’d share something that has been huge for me in dealing with my rumpus brain over the past few years.  I had to miss this activity today — I wasn’t sure I should be driving or riding.

A therapist with whom I worked for a year learning some DBT skills asked me the question, “We need an activity that you enjoy that was never connected to any trauma.  I know you used to ride horses — was that ever connected to anything traumatic?”  The answer was no.  I grew up riding horses, volunteered with a therapeutic riding center in high school, and served as head instructor and trainer for a different center early in my years of teaching.  I spent multiple summers as a camper and as staff at a camp and conference center with their string of horses.  Horses and the people around them helped me walk through a lot of tough times.

Enter NorthWest Therapeutic Riding Center (NWTRC), a local non-profit with a stellar reputation, excellent staff, and well-cared for, well-trained horses.  Having worked some in the field, I am picky, and this place and these people really know their stuff.  I started riding out there on and off a couple of years ago, and it has been powerful.  Julia, the director, started work with me using a method she was developing combining yoga and horseback riding.  Despite many years of riding, I was clear I was there to help my brain/psyche, rather than to work on riding skills.  I remember leaving after my first lesson there — I felt taller, stronger, calmer, more me than I’d felt in a long time.  My therapist once stated that if it was possible, she thought the most helpful thing for me right now would be to be able to ride out there every day.  Not possible right now, but I think I agree.

EAAT (Equine Assisted Activities and Therapies) are helpful to people with a wide range of disabilities.  There is information on NWTRC‘s site on some of the ways therapy with horses is beneficial.  For me?  It is a link to part of myself that is truly me — and a part of me that was relatively untouched by trauma.  It is one of the few times in my life right now when I can truly just think about what I am doing, and not have memories/voices/anxiety/whatever interrupting my experience.  The horses themselves are calm and personable, stable and reassuring.  The setting is quiet, with other horses moving quietly, chickens chatting amongst each other nearby, and lots of trees moving in the breeze.  Riding is very grounding — there are so many sensory experiences to keep me connected to reality — the warmth of the horse, the feel of Henry’s (the horse I ride) hair, the smell of leather tack and county breezes and equine dust.  The very soft sound of hooves in the footing of the arena.  The movement of the horse underneath me — steady, rhythmic, gentle.  It is magical.  I am so grateful.

With all those positive thoughts in my head, I think it is time for me to start the bedtime routine.  Despite an extra seven hours in bed, I know I need my sleep.  Which parts of you are that grain of truth and comfort that riding and horses are for me?