"When you stop putting yourself on the line, and you don't touch your own heart, how do you expect to touch other people?" This quote, accredited to songwriter Tori Amos, is a great description of what is the key to unlocking blocks caused by long-term trauma, and the essence of deep healing. .
The fact is, emotional blocks happen. It's a natural coping strategy for all of us and animals are no different.
The trauma response
Take a 5 year old boy witnessing his parents fighting. The feelings he experiences might include fear, panic, helplessness and confusion. In the absence of prior experience in dealing with such strong, complex emotions, the boy buries those feelings away deep inside.
This is what we are biologically predisposed to do. If our ancestors had sat down and cried the moment a sabre-tooth tiger walked up to their camp-fire, we wouldn’t be here!
In this boy's case, by burying the bad feelings he is able to cope rationally in the face of immediate threat, freeing his brain up to make life-saving decisions and ensure his survival. In psychology we call this ‘suppression’ or, when it goes so deep we can't even remember having those feelings at all, repression. The fact is, the intense feelings have gone from his conscious awareness, which immediately feels better.
The next time the boy faces uncomfortable feelings, he may unconsciously think, "Hey, this shutting off thing worked last time, maybe I'll do it again." So something closes down inside and, having found a coping strategy that works, life becomes bearable again. At least the bad things don't hurt to the same life-threatening degree.
The problem is, with everything on shut down, the good things get shut down as well, which can affect us in a variety of ways:-
1. Our relationships may suffer as we never really feel connected with another person.
2. We may feel a loner in the group and tend to avoid social interaction or anything that exposes us to potential humiliation or rejection.
2. Our work suffers as we never really feel connected to it.
3. We have lost touch with things that used to give us pleasure.
4. We ‘people please’, hoping that by making others feel better we’ll make ourselves feel better, but we end up feeling resentful, helpless and directionless.
4. We may feel angry or depressed for no reason.
5. We may feel we're living someone else’s life, having lost the way to know or express our own selves.
What is so interesting, is the sheer number of animals who feel and behave in exactly the same way.
Animals (particularly prey animals like horses) can be so sensitive that one single event can potentially be enough to traumatise them, even when that event was perceived by the humans around them as being untraumatic. A few examples are:
A rider/trainer backing a horse
Introducing a new field mate
An unexpected event
Taking a dog in the car for the first time
Taking a cat to the vets for a check up
Meeting a hostile dog on a walk or at the vets
A sharp, negative comment while training
If an animal reacts badly to an event or situation, it’s possible that some aspect of it triggered the memory of a previous trauma. But quite often this isn't the case, and it's just something about the event that initiates a trauma response. It's just too much, too soon or too scary to cope with right now, so just like the little boy whose parents are fighting, the animal shuts down.
A horse I worked with in the last few months was an extreme example. Kahuna was a deeply traumatised and troubled horse, with extreme trust issues and a ‘hatred’ of people. His human was desperate to know what had happened to him and how she could help him heal.
When I connected with him, I could immediately feel the area of his body where all his own feelings of repressed anger, frustration, sadness, hopelessness, helplessness and lack of control had been pushed down.
The problem was, Kahuna wasn't prepared or able to go down there to find out. It was just a pain he was used to. And his past mistreatment by humans made him even less likely to believe that I could help him. Even the concept of having a conversation with a human was alien to him.
Dealing with trauma
Dealing with these blocked emotions can be tough. But here we go back to the quote. When you stop putting yourself on the line, and you don't touch your own heart, how do you expect to touch other people?
So when I truly connected with him, and could feel in my own heart just what he was feeling, I instinctively did the most natural thing in the world. I took him back to his mother.
Regressing him to his early days and weeks as a foal, we were able to incorporate colour, sounds, imagery, feelings, touch and, most importantly, scent, to bring back all those feelings of love, comfort and unconditional acceptance that he'd experienced with the mare before “It” happened. Note at, at this point, I wasn't even thinking about what “It” was, because suddenly making him look at "It" would only have created the shut-down of emotions that by now he had practiced to an art form.
Returning to his mother softened him, and in the next session he became more open. It was as though I had magically lifted a wall and he was now prepared to let me in.
As we began to look at the past, several times he cut me off. But gradually he was able to describe his fear of being controlled or manipulated, and of his long periods of isolation, and the boiling rage he felt towards the man who repeatedly beat him in rage and frustration, just because he wouldn’t do what he wanted him to do.
Dealing with all this trauma was not straightforward. During the course of therapy we also undertook a Shamanic journey to recover something that he had felt was missing, which included his own self-respect. And we released an energy or entity 'attachment’ that had been exacerbating his feeling of anger, hostility and resentfulness.
Closure
Ultimately, the focus of any trauma work has to be positive and forward-moving. The aim is to resolve the past, but not dwell on it.
With Kahuna, releasing the energy attachment was the point where his anger and hostility seemed to dissipate and we both felt a sense of calm. We then used visualisation to connect more closely with his human and complete the session in a positive way.
This doesn’t mean that after therapy he turned into a perfect horse with a shiny white smile. It meant that a block had been cleared, he became more relaxed and he and his human felt more connected. After our first session together, his human wrote to me:
“Kahuna walked into the barn more relaxed than usual.
Then he did something quite unusual for him. He
walked up to me and put his head quite close to mine
and looked deeply into my eye. He didn’t act hesitant,
as usual, and seemed very intentional with his actions.
For the first time, I actually heard a statement from
him. He simply said, “You would do this for me?” and
continued the intense eye contact. It was a bit
overwhelming for me and I actually had to look away.
I was a bit overwhelmed with emotion by this
connection. I just rubbed his forehead and said, “Of
course”. I also rode him out yesterday and he seemed
a bit better and more relaxed than he has been.
Perhaps a bit less pre-occupied?”
AIT cannot perform miracles. But in any positive change with a horse that has been resistant to all other treatments, change itself is the miracle.
Love to you and your animals,
Brige
Brigid Reilly, D.Hyp, MBSCH
Animal Intuitive Therapist
