Rider Fear

This article earned first place in the 2023 GMO Newsletter Awards for general interest articles for GMOs with 75-174 members. It appeared in the June 2023 St. Louis Area Dressage Society newsletter, Hoofprints.

By Taffy Ross

Because I don’t have a truly independent seat and tend to go fetal when things go south, I have come off my genial Fjord, Linden, numerous times. On some of those occasions I’ve gotten seriously hurt, but for whatever reason, there’s been considerable lag-time before any resulting fear and anxiety truly blossomed. I’ve always been phobic about horses bolting. But lately I’m haunted by an array of irrational what ifs’. I worry that Linden might spook, or go galumphing off, or get heavy and rush as we attempt to negotiate a particular dressage maneuver or pattern.

Of course horses can always hurt us, intentionally or not; they are after all large prey animals. But my growing anxieties are not entirely rational as Linden is quite a calm, phlegmatic horse. In any case, my experiences with him have prompted me to think a bit more about rider fear. We commonly view young riders as fearless. It is often said that children and teenagers are entirely unaware of their own mortality. As we age, the realization dawns that we are somewhat fragile. Many woman riders come to dressage after hunter/jumper or eventing careers because they have become increasingly nervous about leaving the ground! I have also heard of equestriennes re-assessing their priorities after giving birth, as the roles and responsibilities associated with motherhood make them more cautious. They want to be sure to be around for their children. Circling back to the opening of my article, perhaps the most natural reason to develop rider fear is the experience of falling off and getting injured.

At first I thought I would reach out to various SLADS members and invite them to share their tales of anxiety and fear. But I figured this would be old news for many Hoofprints readers. More important, I was made aware of not one but two psychology professionals who have developed specialties pertaining to my proposed topic. So I have redirected my focus and now aim to produce a dual profile explaining how both of these women ended up developing this special area of expertise. Darby Bonomi is a clinical psychologist who evolved into a sport psychologist and consultant, Sandy Venneman is an experimental psychologist. Both are riders themselves. Darby’s practice has evolved so that she now deals exclusively with equestrian clients. Sandy has an academic appointment and her research does not pertain directly to riding, but she has offered presentations at multiple USDF meetings. I reached out to both of these experts and arranged for brief phone interviews. Here are some highlights from our conversations.

Darby started riding at age 10 and focused on hunter-jumper pursuits. After earning the relevant degrees and credentials at the University of California-Berkeley, she carried on a traditional clinical practice for many years. Things changed when a couple sought her help with their young daughter’s riding-related anxieties. Darby found herself taking on more and more sport and performance clients and now deals exclusively with riders.

Though she is based in CA., Darby conducts her wide-ranging practice over the phone. Prospective clients are invited to take part in an initial 20-or-so minute call where they can tell their story and lay out their concerns. Regular calls are then scheduled during which the actual therapeutic work gets done. Darby maintains a robust website that gives visitors a very good sense of her approach. I had thought that riding-related injuries and subsequent fear would constitute the bulk of her encounters, but to my surprise a great many competitors came for help with perfectionism rather than fear. Darby suggests these are often intertwined. And on reflection, it does seem clear that overarching perfectionism can be a blight, preventing riders from finding pleasure and satisfaction in what should be rewarding situations.

Darby publishes a series of blogs on her website, and the list of 15 topics covered — see list to the right. It gives a good sense of the problems she is hired to address. Competition predominates here, though there are also blog entries discussing the disruptions due to Covid. Other themes running through the collection include positivity, gratitude, finding community, and owning one’s ride. Since Darby also includes a generous number of case-studies and testimonials on her site, visitors can get a good sense of the advice she offers. Anxious riders are encouraged to engage in meditation, visualization, breathing exercises — in short, key components of the mindfulness trend that is wildly popular at present. Above all, Darby counsels riders to stay in the moment and not get sidetracked by all manner of debilitating worries about what might happen in the near future. As she put it to me, we need to use our fear as it can tell us when to get off or perhaps not even get on, but above all we need to stay in present time with our horses.

Because visitors to Darby’s website can reconstruct the advice she dispenses to troubled riders, I posed this question: why can’t we just take in the material she has made available and then use it to heal ourselves? I think in essence her answer was that this would side-step the therapeutic relationship that generations of practicing psychologists have perfected. That is, good results come from Darby coming to know her clients and her clients coming to know and trust her. She said of the resulting relationship: “That’s the magic.”

Sandy Venneman is a St. Louisan who also grew up riding and loving horses. She now lives near Houston where she runs Sunshine Stables and holds down an academic position at a branch of the University of Houston. She has collected an impressive number of degrees along the way, starting with an associate degree from Meramec and a biology degree from UMSL. While overseeing chemistry labs at St. Louis University Sandy realized she could take courses for free. She used that perk to acquire first an M.A. and then a Ph.D. in experimental psychology with an emphasis in neuroscience, which she topped off by doing a postdoc at The Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA. She later followed up with a nursing degree as well as a teaching certificate. But Sandy has admitted that her initial motivation for studying psychology was a version of the self-help puzzle I presented to Darby. Sandy found herself blocked in her horse showing career. Her discipline was jumping, and as she honed her skills a maddening pattern developed. She always performed stunningly at competitions, made it to Bridlespur’s feature yearly show where the prospect of prizemoney made the event especially attractive, but then without fail she and her horse would take down a rail on their very first jump. So Sandy started taking psychology courses in the hopes of fixing herself!

While Sandy’s academic situation doesn’t allow her to design and run extensive experiments relevant to her main equine avocation, dressage, she has been a featured presenter at a number of USDF annual symposia. Her themes include animal behavior—why does my horse do that? How do horses learn?— as well psychology for equestrians — mastering the mental game of showing; taking the fear out of riding. Her recent presentations have been slightly more arcane, exploring the importance of REM sleep for both riders and horses!

One of the lessons Sandy is eager to impart is that riders are always training their horses, even when they don’t realize that interaction is taking place. All too often inadvertent training can put undesired behaviors in place. So Sandy is eager to help riders realize how and when they are unwittingly reinforcing those behaviors. Addressing the mental aspects of riding, she echoes Darby’s point about staying in the moment and urges riders to practice what she calls thought stopping. Rather than fixating on future perils, Sandy suggests that riders choose something positive to think about. She said her personal example — “I’m going to sit up and be elegant” — came with this bonus: it helped her assume the correct open-chested posture that dressage requires.

Both Darby and Sandy offer counsel intended to prevent riders from defeating themselves through self-fulfilling prophecies. I believe both would also agree that riders’ bodily tension is communicated to their mounts, so the riders must attempt to break the cycle by working on themselves. And both psychologists mine the resources of their discipline to facilitate this process. Readers who would like to learn more about possible interventions are encouraged to explore the materials available on Darby’s website (www.darbybonomi. com), the website for Sandy’s stable (www.sunshinestables.net), and Sandy’s podcasts and presentations archived by the USDF.

Since we’re in the midst of show season, I’ll close with these tips from Sandy on how to best memorize dressage tests. Learn them by chunking, i.e., fixing on subsets of the prescribed movements. Practice those movements out of order. Don’t always start at the beginning and progress to the end or you will remember the beginning (“primacy effect”) and end (“recency effect”) but be more likely to forget crucial movements in the middle. Last of all, mentally run through your tests every night in bed just before you fall asleep!