Life Lessons: Not Always Easy To Learn :)
As you know, I’m using this blog to share some insight in to how and why our program works and the types of things we are doing with our clients. Due to confidentiality we can’t share their sessions so instead you get ours (not sure if sharing the real stuff is a good thing or not, but heck we are all human so hopefully it isn’t a shock that we are all works in progress!)
To do trauma work well I feel it takes a couple of things – the ability to hold the space for the client with openness and being authentic, the ability to be non-judgmental, and also a working knowledge of what is happening with the client’s mind and body due to the impact of trauma (there are other things but I think these might be the top characteristics from my point of view). In order to do these things well I personally believe that we have to be willing to do our own work. For me this is a constant working process – because if you are going to show up as your authentic self to be supportive to your clients you are going to be constantly looking at yourself in order to stay non-judgmental and keep from your stuff inadvertently spilling over onto your clients and in our case the horses too. At times this might be as simple as debriefing for 5 minutes with your supervisor or teammate for us. Other times it means doing the same work on looking at negative belief systems that might have been triggered in the session or in life in general, just like what we are asking our clients to do.
Over the past 3 years I have been going deeper and into the next level of my personal work. You might have notices a theme to my blog – connections and being present in your life. A great quote that represents this for me at the moment is, “It is what it is, but it will become what you make it!” I’ll be most likely sharing pieces of my journey but for now I would like to share a re-patterning of my thoughts I just had the opportunity to “learn” and “feel” this past week. The lesson came from Ginger…
Last Friday morning I received an early morning call from one of our barn staff saying that I needed to get to the barn ASAP because one of our horses, Ginger, had done something to her back right leg and couldn’t move. Instantly, my stomach dropped, I lost the ability to take a deep breath. The first thought that popped into my head, “I knew that something bad was going to happen! My life is on the track I want it to be, I’ve been making great progress accepting and giving connection and this is the universe slapping my ass back down and telling me I don’t get to have it all – with every bit of good twice as must bad will happen.” This is my old friend…this negative belief has been with me for as long as I can remember and it feels at times to be 100% true. It feels that for some crazy reason I don’t get to be the one to have lasting connections, the universe wants me to remain off line so to speak. I thought I had made a lot of progress on truly getting this belief down in how it felt on a scale of 1-7 (7 being it is 100% true in both my thoughts and body to 1 is where it doesn’t feel true at all) If you had asked me where this belief system fell 2 weeks ago I would have told you it was down to about a 2, which is pretty good in my book. But at that moment it felt like it was raging it’s ugly head and back up to a 7.
I tried to bring awareness to what was happening. I self-talked that maybe our staff was just overacting and it wasn’t that bad. And this was not going to be like what happen to one of our other horse’s years ago when one of our minis had somehow managed to break his right hind leg and we had to put him down. No this was not going to be the case…that was my “top down” cognitive thinking as I rushed to the barn. The top down thinking was not have the desired effect on my body – it was yelling you are losing a horse today…
So, just in case I called the vets office to give them a heads up I might be needing our vet sooner than later and I would call them back once I was at the barn and looked at Ginger myself. My body was winning the fight – I was starting to believe – you are going to have to lose another connection – get on board with this – you do not get to be happy 100%.
As I walked out to the paddock Ginger didn’t look to be bad. I didn’t see sweating, I thought she had the leg loaded with her weight. As I got closer this was not the case. They were right, she wouldn’t load it. It was crazy swollen from her stifle down, no obvious sign of trauma though just a few scratches. We couldn’t see a kick mark or even a place in the paddock that was disrupted from a struggle. Thoughts – “What the heck! You have got to be kidding me, I’m not doing this again! I’m not putting down another horse for a freak accident that I can’t even find a cause for!” I tried to ask her to move, she almost fell over so I called the vet’s office back and asked if there was any way to get her out to us sooner than later, I think she might have broken her leg.
Clue number one that I was going to have a chance to re-pattern my belief system – the vet was already out in Boones Mill at another farm getting ready to give spring shots. They agreed to move their shots around and let her leave to get to us in just a few minutes. Okay that doesn’t happen. I started to be open to what was the whole picture in that moment – not just my good old friend’s point of view. Ginger was not sweating and was open to letting myself and Cami stay with her and comfort her. Again not typically for Ginger.
After about 10 minutes of letting in the whole picture of what was happening in front of me – not my old belief’s perception, I was able to share with Cami my negative belief out loud. I haven’t said this one out loud to anyone…my fear was if I said it out loud it would be true. In my heart I didn’t want it to be true. Sitting there stroking Ginger’s head and neck I asked her to please not let it be true. But I was preparing both myself and therapist for the reality that it might be true and we were saying good bye.
The vet came and examined her. After getting some pain meds on board we were able to really move and look at the limb. Good news she didn’t think her hip was compromised. It looked like she somehow got it caught in something and just really jerked the crap of out it and maybe just maybe will be okay. She wouldn’t go any further than that and still said that it could be fatal injury we would just have to wait and see. For precaution, we put her on antibiotics, separated her from the herd so she wouldn’t have to move around too much, wrapped her legs to help support her and also hold back swelling and started hydrotherapy to help the muscles heal. She couldn’t walk straight at all and I was worried if she got down she wouldn’t be able to get up. So the waiting game begun – side note waiting is a lesson I’m still working on too, lol!
Long story a bit shorter – I keep telling myself that my belief wasn’t true. I held on to what was happening in front of me – the vet said she might be okay, Ginger was open to my help and comfort, I was aware what was happening with my belief system in my body and I wasn’t trying to block it but instead ask it what it needed. Call it whatever you want. But my prayers were answered. I checked on her a couple of times that evening and many times over the weekend. Every time she met me with perked ears. Her swelling was going slowly down and every little bit she was walking straighter. I would feel the nagged thoughts, “well it might be better this time, but when you come back she’ll be down in the corner and you will have to call the vet.” I would acknowledge the thought and in the next breath breathe in gratitude for her doing well, ask my body what it needed to believe what was happening in this moment and not putting a “what if” into play in my mind. The answer from Ginger – keep believing in me and our connection. Well ok, I didn’t like it but I tried to not brace against the small bit of hope that I can be wrong.
I have never been so happy to be wrong! Ginger has been getting better and better each day. In fact, today just one week later there is hardly any swelling, she is walking fairly well, and even back to being a little mareish with the other horses when we let her out for a bit in the paddock with a buddy.
This morning as I was driving to work it all hit me at once. I am living my work! Tears came to my eyes as I realized the positive belief system had won and it felt true – I can trust in connection, I can feel happy and not be waiting for the horrible backlash that I believe will happen. Things might not be gumdrops and roses but I have the skills to work through the good, the bad, the ugly and not be derailed by them. Well wow! So this is what the next level of my believe systems might look like. I can take that deep breath again!!!
Working with Ginger through this gave me an anchor to ground myself in as I looked into how this negative believe system really felt in my mind and body. I know her connection to me. I trust her to be truthful in her interactions with me. I allowed myself to stay in the moment with the feedback she was giving me in each moment. Luckily the result turned out to be good. The road back from a stifle injury is a long one for a horse and if I know her personality she will not be happy taking the slow road, so we still have a journey. The difference is now I’ll be trying hard to maintain the positive belief that she can recover I can maintain my connections with her and maybe even improve it through the life stuff.
Why do I have overwhelming gratefulness and gratitude right now? It seems to be my pattern in life that in order for me to re-pattern and learn my “life” lessons that in the past I had to be hit in the head with the preverbal 2×4 multiple times to get it. I tend to be a little resistant to change – which is slightly ironic because I named my organization – Unbridled Change! Fingers crossed that this go round I might have cracked open a life lesson without the carnage this go round – wouldn’t that be a nice pattern to start, lol!
I hope this entry shows a little glimpse into the path of self-acceptance and awareness we walk. Thus showing the process we might help our clients learn to walk and how the horses walk that path with them too.
Peace and gratitude – Michelle
