The barn was ice cold. My family was no more than 5 feet from me, but I could not hear a word they were saying.
Clearly, I was doing this all wrong.
For a while my girls - as girls are likely to do at some point - fell in love with horses and the idea of learning to ride. So, there were riding lessons. I’ve written about this in An Anxiety Story and I’ve talked about the whole riding lessons thing from time to time as it did figure into my recovery journey. Today I’m gonna talk about it a bit more.
On that particular day it was time for another riding lesson in freezing cold barn a few days before Christmas. My dad was up for a holiday visit so everyone thought it would be fun to go watch the girls ride. Fabulous. If I go, I know I’m gonna spend the whole time at or near panic. If I don’t, I’m gonna hate myself and feel like a failure. I was already feeling like a failure most of the time so in a moment of inspiration I made the choice to get in the car and go with the family to riding lessons. Really, some of that choice was made based on the idea that not going meant I’d be home alone for a couple of hours and …. no. We could not have that, right?
I grabbed my headphones and made sure for the 1000th time that I had my phone loaded up with Claire Weekes audio. I had also loaded a silly panic cure program onto the phone so I had those recordings too. I had water. I had mints. I had a snack. I had a paper bag (in case I hyperventilated). I had lots of layers on so I could quickly adjust for when I got too cold, then too hot, then too cold again. You know the deal. Temperature change? On the horror!
I left the house already shaking and loaded up with crutches and safety devices and “just in case” ideas about what I would do if it got too bad and how long it might take to get to the nearest hospital.
As expected, I was a nervous mess the whole time. I was there. Physically. But mentally I was literally in my own universe. I had my headphones on listening to some truly awful anxiety coach spew nonsense about how to calm myself down. I was sipping water every two minutes, starting to worry that I would run out soon. I was pacing and fidgeting and intently focused on every twinge in my body at all times. Being firmly planted deep inside my own head, arguing with myself and trying to convince myself that I was OK, I was there with my family, but I was totally not there.
At one point the girls came over to the rail, excited because the instructor thought they were ready to get on a larger horse. They were full of chatter and smiles as they waited for the other horses, but I didn’t care. I was hoping that the voice of a stranger in my headphones was going to fix me and make me feel better. I could see what was happening around me, but I heard none of it and really experienced none of it.
In one moment, I could see my kids talking and smiling, but I could also see that they were not talking or smiling … at me. I was checked out and they clearly knew it. I may as well have not been there.
I was clearly doing this all wrong. What was the point of just doing this thing if I was going to do it like this? I was not participating. I was just surviving. I was not there for my girls at all, and I was certainly not there to help myself. That barn in December was just another place for me to try desperately to micro-manage my body and thoughts, and none of it was working. In that moment, having that realization, the feeling of failure got loud. But in that loudness there was a helpful message. It felt horrible, but I was actually learning something in that feeling.
I’d like to tell you that I miraculously got better over the next two weeks, but that is not how it worked. What I can tell you is that in that moment, in the cold, with the horses and the headphones, I could see that it wasn’t enough to just do things. I had to start doing them in a different way, or I was clearly going to be stuck for a very long time. Logically, I already knew that I had to leave behind my safety devices and my crutches, but until that moment I really didn’t FEEL that. Now I did.
I felt a little angry. I felt frustrated. In some ways, I felt a sense of disgust at the way I was living and “recovering”. I’m not advocating for self-flagellation in any way. I see no nobility or purpose in that. But that feeling informed a slight course correction in my recovery. In wasn’t dramatic. I didn’t smash my headphones and vow to never bring a bottle of water with me ever again. The change was slow and incremental, but it was change. From the outside looking in, without any context, the changes I started making would be barely noticeable, but they really did matter.
Over time as I did my work, I started doing it in a different way. I became more open to actually having those negative or distressing experiences because I knew I had to learn something from them. I started setting limits on the use of my “crutches”. When those limits got bigger and bigger, I’d start dropping the crutches completely, one by one. It took time, but in hindsight I can see what a critical moment that really was in my recovery journey.
Would I have come to that conclusion and made that change anyway at some point? I hope so. I’d like to think so. But the point of the story was that for me, this moment where I felt so low but finally saw the truly ridiculous nature of what I was doing, was a pretty big deal.
Sometimes we need moments like that - with horses and headphones - to turn slightly in the right direction. Even when that turn is small and nobody else can see it, it counts.
Hey it’s Monday and that means that today at 2 PM Eastern I’ll do my “Recovery Monday” livestream on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitch. Come join in!
207. Horses and Headphones