I’ve written previously about how riding gets me out of my head and puts me back in my body, how it nudges me into the natural world when I’d otherwise hibernate, accompanied by book, blanket, and beverage. But I couldn’t adequately articulate how riding helped heal me until I read the following passage in Hope . . . from the Heart of Horses by Kathy Pike:
"Trauma, small or big, is significant. It shapes beliefs and perceptions and controls a person's ability to live a fully empowered and healthy existence. The human body holds the memory of trauma even when our conscious mind does not" (8).
The words soothed like a balm.
That the body retains trauma came as both a new and familiar idea. My mind startled awake even as my body nodded in recognition. My eyes glided over these words like any others, but once past, my brain called for an abrupt halt, dragged them back across the page to read that passage again, and then again.
Yes, I thought, I knew that, though I didn’t know it. Or, rather, I knew it though I’d never learned it.
**
Every personality assessment from childhood on placed me at the highest end of the scale for two traits: introversion and intuition. Those results didn’t surprise me. I recognized how social interaction drained my “battery” (and how alone-time recharged it) long before I could explain the concept. Later, I discovered that tendency defines introversion.
My earliest inklings of self-awareness displayed an image of antennae bobbing from my forehead. They scoured the environment for emotional current, serving as an early alert system for turbulence that might exceed my energy supply. The antennae also facilitated knowing things without proof or explanation. Later, I discovered that kind of knowing defines intuition.
Having invisible antennae seemed silly, even to the youngest versions of myself, so I never mentioned it to anyone.
Then I came upon Alice Miller’s declaration in Prisoners of Childhood: The Drama of the Gifted Child and the Search for the True Self that approximately 10% of people describe something similar. In fact, she actually uses the word “antennae” in talking about their experience. She then describes how the antennae play a role in a highly-sensitive person’s dramatic reactions to ordinary stimuli.
What a relief to discover others like me existed!
The more sensitive a person’s antennae, the more deeply impacted she is by things others brush off. One such event was discovering my first love had cheated on me, made my friends complicit, and taken advantage of my family’s financial generosity. That relationship’s end depleted a lifetime of deposits in my self-concept. I’d been so wrong about a person I knew better and cared for more than almost anyone else I’d ever met; how could I be right about anything going forward? I’d failed to notice signs flashing before my eyes; how could I rely on my vision from now on?
I no longer trusted anyone, least of all myself. I sought second, third, twelfth opinions about everything, from what to eat for lunch to which route to take home from school. I challenged my every feeling, second-guessed my every thought. Faced with a decision, I froze, paralyzed by uncertainty about everything except the fact that I’d choose wrong, just like I had in trusting that first boyfriend and then my friends' loyalty. My antennae had gone haywire—or so I thought.
Among the static, a faint voice insisted the subsequent decade-long descent into depression and an eating disorder could be traced back to my first boyfriend’s betrayal.
I heard but didn’t listen. I’d stopped believing my ability to know without understanding how. I now demanded incontrovertible evidence for every conclusion. In the absence of evidence, I clung to ambivalence, mistaking fear of committing for remaining open-minded.
A choir accompanied my every waking moment with proclamations that my boyfriend’s betrayal didn’t qualify as trauma. I’d been a teenager for God’s sake! It had been mere puppy love. I hadn’t been assaulted. I hadn’t entered combat. I hadn’t been married when my partner cheated. Therefore, my pain didn’t qualify as trauma.
“Get over it and move on,” soloists intoned, “lest you cheapen real trauma, detract from actual suffering.”
Before long, I joined the chorus.
But Pike’s statement about trauma gave me permission to grieve. In the grand scheme of things, my trauma proves less than insignificant. But within the scope of my overly-sensitive nature and very limited life experience, it registered as meteoric, left a crater and a gaping wound.
I read elsewhere that trauma watermarks the soul. The phrase seems apt. Science is beginning to show that not only our physical makeup but even our grandchildren’s DNA bears evidence of our emotional scars.
**
Acknowledgement is empowering, perhaps empowerment itself. That's what the passage from Pike's book taught me.
Upon reading it--and with therapy--I stopped believing I was warped and damaged beyond repair. What I’d experienced could be named—could, in fact, be treated!
Like Pike's, Alice Miller’s book kicked off in me a slow process of rebuilding trust in my intuition. It also ushered me toward riding horses, where I learned to re-inhabit my body.
**
While therapy helped me trust my thoughts and feelings again, riding helped me trust my body. My very safety required me to tap into and then believe what my body told me in the moment. I couldn’t question or deliberate when approaching two-and-a-half foot fences at a canter; there simply wasn’t time. I had to heed my body’s cues or suffer the consequences.
I also had to trust my equine partner. I had to invest faith in our relationship and believe my perception of its status at any given moment. I couldn’t rely on words, the tool with which I’m most comfortable. Horses speak with their bodies: Even exhalation carries messages. My every gesture communicates, too, whether I’m aware of it or not. I have to remain in my body, aware of what I’m saying—where I stand, how I grasp the reins, when I shift my weight, if I fidget in the saddle—or risk sending messages I don’t intend.
Therapy and riding recalibrated my antennae, refined my intuition, reunited my mind and body, redesigned my soul’s watermark into one I recognized and embraced.