Introduction: The Fear of Being Found Wanting

​

Some riders are more frightened of looking frightened, than they are of the thing they’re frightened of.

​

Think about that for a moment.

​

You might be perfectly happy to admit that your horse is sharp, that a particular fence looks imposing, or that the conditions aren’t ideal. Those are reasonable observations, and most people wouldn’t question them. But admitting that you’re frightened? That you’re not feeling capable? That you’d really rather not do something everyone else seems perfectly happy to do? That’s quite another matter.

​

And sometimes the lengths we go to in order to avoid that admission are extraordinary. We’ll agree to canter when we’d rather walk. We’ll jump a fence because everyone else is jumping it. We’ll continue riding when every instinct is telling us to stop. We’ll apologise for asking people to slow down, for needing help, for making mistakes, or simply for not being the rider we think we ought to be. And sometimes we’ll go to great lengths to find an excuse not to ride at all. All because of what somebody else might think.

​

That’s fascinating. Because you are an intelligent, competent, experienced person who would never dream of making similarly questionable decisions in other areas of your life. Yet as soon as you’re on a horse, with the possibility of somebody questioning your ability, your priorities can change dramatically.

​

The fear of being judged can become more powerful than your own judgement.

And that’s worth understanding, for reasons that will become clear in the chapters that follow.

​

When nobody has said a word

​

I recently asked riders what affected their confidence most, expecting the usual range of concerns. Falls, unpredictable horses, traffic, jumping, hacking alone, competition nerves. Those things certainly featured, but one theme kept emerging: judgement.

​

Being watched while schooling. Worrying about holding other riders up. Feeling embarrassed about what they could no longer do. Wondering what people thought of their riding, their horse, their ability, or their decisions.

​

And what struck me was how often the judgement hadn’t actually happened. Nobody had necessarily criticised them. Nobody had told them they were incapable. Nobody had suggested they were making a fool of themselves. They were anticipating it. Imagining what somebody might be thinking, interpreting a look, a silence, an expression, or even the absence of a compliment as evidence that they weren’t good enough.

​

Of course, sometimes the criticism is very real. Equestrianism has never suffered from a shortage of people willing to offer unsolicited opinions, and some of those opinions can hurt deeply, sometimes even when they’re kindly meant. But the brain doesn’t necessarily need an actual critic present to produce the same response. It has evolved to be alert to any sign of criticism, embarrassment, rejection or disapproval. And once that expectation is confirmed through experience, it can influence our behaviour without us consciously deciding to allow it.

​

I should have known better

​

I know something about this, because I’ve experienced it myself.

​

I’d already ridden at a level most riders will never need to reach. I’d competed successfully, dealt with difficult horses, and had years of experience making decisions in the saddle. Yet when I lost my confidence in my late forties, none of that experience protected me from what was happening in my own head.

​

I remember going on a hack with two very competent, perfectly lovely riders who were more than happy to accommodate me. And I spent much of the ride worrying that they might want to canter. Not because they’d suggested it. Not because they were putting pressure on me. They weren’t. I was doing that all by myself.

​

I was so concerned about holding them up, spoiling their ride and admitting that I was frightened that I eventually announced, rather dramatically, that I couldn’t do it anymore and had to go home.

​

Fortunately, they laughed. Not unkindly, but because I’d made such a production of something they hadn’t considered a problem in the first place. Looking back, it’s actually comical. But it certainly wasn’t funny at the time.

​

And perhaps the most revealing part is that my anxiety wasn’t simply about cantering. It was also about what my inability to canter might say about me.

​

I had gone from being an accomplished rider to someone who couldn’t contemplate doing something she’d once thought nothing of. And I was struggling with the gap between those two versions of myself. There was the rider I knew I had been, the rider I thought I should still be, and the rider I had become.

​

I was judging myself long before anybody else had the opportunity.

​

The judge we carry with us

​

We tend to think of judgement as something that comes from other people. And sometimes it does. But I suspect many riders would recognise an internal critic who is considerably less forgiving than anybody standing at the arena fence. That’s the one who reminds you that you used to jump bigger fences. That someone half your age wouldn’t think twice about hacking out alone. That you ought to be able to cope with your own horse. That you’ve spent a fortune on lessons and still can’t seem to get your act together. Perhaps you’ve even caught yourself thinking that you’re letting your horse down.

​

Why?

​

Part of the answer may lie in experiences that have nothing whatsoever to do with horses. For some people, being criticised or embarrassed became associated with something deeply uncomfortable long before they first sat in a saddle. Perhaps making mistakes attracted ridicule. Perhaps being vulnerable meant being dismissed. Perhaps approval depended on achievement, or asking for help was treated as a weakness.

​

The brain is extraordinarily good at learning what appears to keep us safe, accepted and out of trouble. And it doesn’t stop to check whether those lessons still apply. Behaviours that once served a useful purpose can become so automatic that we barely recognise them as learnt responses. We simply assume that’s who we are. Our identity becomes the perfectionist, the worrier, the one who can’t bear to disappoint anybody, the person who always has to appear capable.

​

Except these aren’t necessarily fixed characteristics. Sometimes they’re adaptations to circumstances that no longer exist. And they can follow us straight into the saddle.

​

When the fear of judgement affects your riding

​

There’s another consequence of all this, and it’s one I think deserves far more attention. Fear of judgement can interfere with the very abilities we’re frightened of being judged for lacking.

When we anticipate embarrassment, criticism or failure, our attention can shift away from what we’re actually doing and towards what might happen, what it might mean, and how we’re going to be perceived.

​

Muscles tighten. Movements become less fluid. We hesitate, overthink or try to control things that would ordinarily happen quite naturally. And horses, of course, respond to what we’re doing, not what we intended to do, and so a rider who becomes tense through fear of making a mistake may inadvertently make the horse more tense. A rider worrying about looking incompetent may struggle to access skills that are normally well established. And now the rider has something else to criticise themselves for.

​

It’s a distinctly unhelpful cycle. And telling somebody to stop worrying about what others think doesn’t necessarily break it. They probably already know that other people’s opinions shouldn’t dictate their decisions. They probably understand perfectly well that their instructor isn’t judging them, that their friends are supportive, or that nobody expects them to be perfect. But understanding something consciously doesn’t automatically prevent a learnt threat response from occurring. And being told to stop doing something over which you have no conscious control can add a layer of shame to the existing anxiety.

​

This is one of the reasons I became so interested in how the brain creates and maintains automatic responses, and ultimately why I trained in BrainWorking Recursive Therapy, or BWRT.

​

In BWRT, the area of the brain responsible for these rapid, automatic responses is called the Reptilian Complex, which BWRT defines as the brainstem and cerebellum. You may have come across the term used more loosely elsewhere, but in BWRT it refers to a physical part of the brain. It works quickly and below conscious awareness. It doesn’t stop to weigh up the evidence or consider whether the person leaning on the arena fence has the slightest interest in your riding. It responds to what it has learnt to recognise as a threat, and it does so before the thinking part of your brain has had the chance to weigh in with an opinion.

​

My work involves helping people change responses that no longer serve them, without requiring them to repeatedly relive or analyse every experience that may have contributed to the problem. And although fear of judgement is only one of the reasons riders lose confidence, it can be an extraordinarily influential one.

​

What this book is really about

​

This isn’t a book about learning to ignore everybody else’s opinions. Some opinions are valuable. Good instruction, constructive criticism and an honest assessment of our abilities are essential if we’re going to ride safely and improve.

​

Nor am I suggesting that every riding fear originates in childhood or that a rider should disregard genuine concerns about their horse. Sometimes concern is telling us something important, and we would be foolish not to listen. But there is a difference between anxiety and logical apprehension.

​

What this book is concerned with is what happens when the expectation of judgement begins to dictate our behaviour, particularly when we know that our response is disproportionate to the situation.

​

Why does an experienced rider feel ashamed of being frightened? Why do we find it so difficult to admit that we need help? Why can somebody else’s imagined opinion carry more weight than our own considerable knowledge and experience? And perhaps most importantly, why do we continue to judge ourselves by standards we would never impose on anybody else?

​

Over the following chapters, I want to explore where these responses come from, how they become established, and why they can be so resistant to conscious reasoning.

​

We’ll look at the difference between being criticised and expecting criticism, the pressure to appear competent, the influence of our earlier experiences, and the extraordinary ways in which the brain attempts to protect us from perceived threats.

​

We’ll also look at how those responses can change. Because riding should never be about continually proving that you’re good enough to deserve to be there.

​

And perhaps the greatest freedom isn’t learning to ride without anybody judging you. It’s learning to ride without constantly judging yourself.