Why Have I Suddenly Lost My Confidence Riding When Nothing Has Actually Happened?

One of the most confusing forms of riding anxiety is the one that seems to arrive for absolutely no reason. You haven't had a terrible fall. Your horse hasn't suddenly become dangerous. You haven't forgotten how to ride. In fact, you may have been riding confidently for decades.

And yet something has changed.

You find yourself looking for reasons not to ride. You feel apprehensive before getting on. Things you would once barely have noticed suddenly matter. You start wondering what your horse might do, what might happen on the road, whether it is too windy, whether the bins are out, whether somebody is going to judge you, whether you're actually as good a rider as you thought you were.

Sometimes the thoughts are perfectly sensible.

Sometimes they're ridiculous.

Unfortunately, your brain doesn't necessarily make that distinction.

“But nothing happened”

This is the bit that causes many riders the most frustration. If you'd had a frightening accident, perhaps it would make sense. You could point to the incident and say, that's why I feel like this.

When there isn't an obvious event, riders often turn the blame inwards instead.

• Perhaps I'm getting old.

• Perhaps I've lost my nerve.

• Perhaps I'm not good enough for this horse.

• Perhaps I need to make myself ride more.

• Perhaps everyone else can see what a dreadful rider I've become.

I know this particular version of riding anxiety extremely well because it happened to me.

I'd competed at a high level. I'd ridden difficult horses, dealt with pressure and spent most of my life assuming that if something happened on a horse, I would deal with it. Then, at 47, during perimenopause, my confidence disappeared. HRT helped, but didn't remove the anxiety.

There wasn't one dramatic riding accident responsible for it. There wasn't a horse I could blame. I hadn't suddenly become incapable. But my reaction to riding had changed.

And once that reaction appears, it can create a remarkably efficient vicious circle.

Your riding ability and your fear response are not the same thing

This distinction is important because you can be an excellent rider and still experience an automatic fear response. Riding skill sits in one part of the equation. Your brain's threat-prediction systems sit in another.

You can therefore consciously know: I've ridden this horse hundreds of times.

while another part of your brain is already producing: Yes, but what if...?

That response happens before rational thought has had much opportunity to intervene.

Which is why telling yourself to “stop being silly” tends to be spectacularly ineffective.

You already know you're capable. That's what makes the whole thing so infuriating and sometimes really very sad.

The alarm doesn't have to be about falling off

This is another misconception I see frequently.

People assume a rider who has lost confidence must be frightened of being injured. Sometimes they are, but the alarm can attach itself to almost anything.

It might be:

• the horse spooking;

• traffic;

• riding alone;

• open spaces;

• cantering;

• jumping;

• mounting;

• riding in front of other people;

• being watched in a lesson;

• holding other riders up;

• embarrassing yourself;

• being judged;

• letting your horse down;

• discovering that perhaps you aren't the rider you thought you were.

And then there are the endless what ifs.

• What if he spins?

• What if I can't stop?

• What if everyone else notices I'm frightened?

• What if my horse can feel I'm frightened?

• What if I've ruined him?

• What if I'm simply not good enough anymore?

The trigger may look insignificant from the outside. That doesn't mean the resulting response is insignificant.

Judgement can make the whole thing worse

Fear of judgement deserves far more attention in riding confidence than it usually gets.

Riders are often surrounded by people telling them what they should be able to do.

“You've ridden for years.”

“He's never done anything.”

“You just need to get on with it.”

“Don't let him win.”

“You need to ride through it.”

None of which is especially helpful when your brain has already decided there is something to protect you from.

Now you aren't just worrying about riding!

You're worrying about being worried about riding.

You start monitoring yourself.

Am I tense?

Can they tell?

Does my instructor think I'm useless?

Is my horse picking up on me?

And the more attention you pay to the alarm, the larger it can become.

I experienced this myself. Feeling that I might be judged didn't make me ride better, it made me ride considerably worse.

Why “just ride more” doesn't always work

There is a commonly repeated idea that confidence comes back by accumulating positive experiences and sometimes it does if the response is mild and circumstances are right, repeated uneventful rides can help the brain update its prediction. But this isn't guaranteed.

If every ride begins with significant apprehension, tension and hypervigilance, the brain may not interpret the experience as: See? Riding is safe.

It may instead interpret it as: We survived again because we were extremely careful.

That's a completely different lesson.

This is also why riders can have a perfectly good lesson, feel enormously relieved afterwards, and then find themselves just as anxious before the next one. The ride went well but the underlying automatic response didn't necessarily change.

It isn't always about the horse

Naturally, horses matter.

A genuinely unsuitable horse, uncontrolled pain, poor training, unsafe traffic or an objectively dangerous situation shouldn't be explained away as “just anxiety”. So yes, sometimes your brain is warning you about something worth listening to.

But there is an important difference between sensible risk assessment and an automatic alarm that is firing in situations you consciously know you can manage.

And that distinction is one of the most useful places to start.

Because if the horse hasn't fundamentally changed, and your riding ability hasn't suddenly disappeared, endlessly trying to fix either of those things may leave you solving the wrong problem.

So what has changed?

What's changed is the brain's prediction. For one reason or another, it has started anticipating threat where it didn't before; that can follow an obvious incident, but it doesn't have to.

Hormonal changes, accumulated stress, witnessing somebody else's accident, a frightening near-miss, prolonged loss of confidence, a change of horse, changes in life circumstances or even repeated smaller experiences can all alter what your brain starts expecting.

And sometimes there is no neat story at all, but that doesn't make the response any less real. And nor does it mean you need months of analysis to discover precisely why it began.

The question instead should be:

What is triggering the response now?

That is where my own approach changed completely. Rather than continually trying to manage the anxiety once it appeared, once I'd found BWRT, I realised the question needed to be when the automatic response was generated.

Was it the thought of riding? Hacking? Schooling? Competing? Showjumping? Being watched?

And then with the resolution of my own anxieties, it eventually led me ultimately to becoming a Registered BWRT® Advanced Practitioner myself, specialising in rider confidence.

You haven't suddenly become a bad rider

This is perhaps the most important point. Fear can change your riding, as you will undoubtedly know. A rider who normally makes decisions instinctively can become hesitant. Someone who normally rides forwards may start holding. You may become physically tense, over-monitor your horse or hesitate at precisely the moment you would previously have acted automatically.

That does not mean your riding skills have disappeared, only that they're being interfered with.

That's an enormous difference.

And that is why confidence work shouldn't simply consist of repeatedly telling a rider how to ride. The problem is accessing whatever the rider's ability is without an unnecessary alarm going off first.

Confidence doesn't have to be rebuilt from scratch

I often hear riders talk about having to “build my confidence back up”.

I understand what they mean, but I don't particularly like the phrase because it suggests everything you once had has vanished and you're starting again from zero.

That's not the case at all.

Your experience is still there.

Your riding knowledge is still there.

Your physical skills are still there.

The rider you were hasn't been deleted.

Something has simply begun getting in the way.

Your confidence hasn't disappeared, its only withdrawn.

I didn't need to become a different rider, I needed the automatic response that had started interfering with my riding to stop triggering.

And once it was stopped, there wasn't a long, painstaking process of trying to persuade myself to be confident.

I could simply ride again without my brain constantly producing reasons why I shouldn't. If you've ridden confidently and suddenly find yourself frightened, hesitant or avoiding things that used to feel ordinary, don't automatically conclude that you've lost your nerve or become a worse rider.

Instead, ask yourself: What is your brain now reacting to - and why is that reaction still necessary? Anxiety never helped anyone do anything.