The Internal Art of Confidence

Overcoming fear with a brain-based approach. First of two parts.

By Kara L. Stewart

Reprinted from the September/October 2024 issue of USDF Connection magazine.

Do you feel fearful when you ride? Or when you even think about riding?

Do you get queasy before you enter the ring for your dressage test? Does your mind go blank and you forget your test at every show?

Do you seemingly forget how to ride or lose focus—maybe even shed a few tears—when an instructor barks a command?

Have you had a traumatic accident, and you’re ashamed to admit it but the thought of getting back on your horse terrifies you?

If you can relate to these situations, then read on for five easy hacks to kick your fear to the curb.

Oh, wait.

That isn’t this article.

Because fear isn’t a simple thing.

It’s caused by chemicals in your brain creating a potent concoction that you’re being forced to consume— but the feeling isn’t anything like the fun of cocktail hour with friends. And because fear (as well as anxiety, stress, and the aftereffects of trauma) deserves respect. Its goal is to keep to you alive, after all, and a more thoughtful approach can actually bring you to the other side of fear by remapping the pathways in your brain.

If ignoring, overriding, or trying to shout down your fear isn’t working, read on for a look at brain function, how stress affects your brain, answering the eternal question, and a gentle guideline that may help.

The added benefit? You’ll discover that the same things that help you alleviate fear and build confidence will also help your horse.

Fear, Confidence, and Your Brain

“Over millions of years, our human brain has evolved into a complex structure that can process enormous amounts of input in a split second,” says Stephen Peters, PsyD, ABN, a Colorado-based board-certified neuroscientist and horseman, and co-author of Evidence-Based Horsemanship. Recently retired, for over a decade he’d been chief of neuropsychological services in a large neurology practice, and he is the founder and former clinical director of the American Fork (Utah) Hospital Memory Clinic and the Utah Valley Hospital Clinic for Brain Health.

According to Peters, two key components of the brain’s limbic system (the part that regulates emotions, behavior, motivation, and memory) are the hippocampus, which is associated with memory; and the amygdala, associated with fear. The amygdala is attached to the hippocampus, “and what we’ve found is that in a person who’s had trauma or a history of abuse that has been repetitive over time, the hippocampus shrinks and the amygdala gets enlarged.” As a result, even ordinary activities, such as going to a movie or driving to the barn, can become highly stressful events. Affected individuals “live their life with a very busy nervous system and a very busy brain,” he says. “Even at rest, their brain is hyper-aroused.”

And guess what? “You can generalize that what I’m saying applies to horses, because they have similar structures as we do,” says Peters, who is also a noted equine-brain researcher who has given seminars on equine brain science seminars and performed horse-brain dissections around the world for the horse-owning public as well as for veterinarians and veterinary surgeons.

Cocktail, Anyone?

When you’re at a cocktail party, you can stroll up to the bartender and order what you like—wine or martini, water or soda. The point is that you’re in charge. You get to pick what you want to drink.

When it comes to our brain chemistry, however, sometimes we don’t get to choose. A situation may hand our brains a chemical cocktail we didn’t order—one that can be way too strong or unbalanced.

Like a bartender with many bottles and elixirs on hand to mix customers’ drinks, your brain has an array of neurochemicals ready to “pour” depending on the situation.

“Just as with the autonomic nervous system, each neurochemical is not good or bad inherently,” says Peters. “Each serves a vital purpose. It’s the amount of a chemical or the imbalance that can turn it from helpful to not helpful or even harmful.”

Peters gives an example of how neurochemicals work together:

Let’s say you’re a school student who has to take a test. You studied hard, and your brain produced sufficient norepinephrine that you were alert and focused on what you were learning. Unfortunately, you have test-taking anxiety. As soon as the test begins, your anxiety kicks in and you’re flooded with norepinephrine, without enough other neurochemicals on board to help calm your nerves. As a result, your mind goes blank and you can hardly remember any of the information that you worked so hard to learn. All you know is that your heart is pounding and you’re breathing rapidly and shallowly, and you can’t seem to do anything about it.

The test finally ends, and you know you didn’t do well. You go outside and sit quietly for a few minutes. Suddenly you remember all the answers that evaded you just a short time ago.

What happened?

Blame the anxiety-caused norepinephrine spike, which prevented you from accessing the information stored in your brain.

The same thing happens when fear arises around riding, like during a dressage test or when you’re frightened by a sudden spook. When norepinephrine skyrockets, your brain literally can’t think rationally and you start looking for self-preservation.

Once the cycle starts, the only thing to do is to let the neurochemicals run their course. As Peters points out, levels of the stress hormone cortisol typically remain elevated for several hours following an upsetting event. In people suffering from long-term chronic stress, cortisol levels can remain elevated for months.

Fortunately, the anxiety and the fight-or-flight response that norepinephrine can provoke can disappear almost as quickly as they arise. Within a minute or two after the brain ceases the norepinephrine infusion, its action on the nervous system stops. As the norepinephrine leaves your system, you begin to feel safe again, even confident.

Your horse experiences the same phenomenon, says Peters. When a horse is stressed (which in many cases mirrors the rider’s or handler’s stress), he can’t learn and access things he’s done before. This can be the start of a downward spiral between the two of you.

The Autonomic Nervous System

“Depending on the task at hand, our body is always activating or deactivating a little bit,” says Kyle Dern, MA, LMFT, BCN, a psychotherapist and horse enthusiast in Utah who specializes in utilizing applied neuroscience to address anxiety and depression stemming from developmental trauma. “For example, every time I inhale, my heart rate increases a little bit, and as I exhale, it decreases a little bit. This is caused by our autonomic nervous system, which self-regulates and organizes our internal functions, like breath and digestion.”

You’ve likely heard the terms sympathetic (“fight or flight”) and parasympathetic (“rest and digest”) used to describe integral components of the autonomic nervous system. Neither of these systems is wholly desirable or undesirable on its own. They work in conjunction with each other, and ideally they’re in balance depending on our activity.

“With the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, we want to fluctuate between being a little bit activated in certain moments and being able to rest a little bit in others,” says Dern. “When our system goes too far in one direction, that’s when problems can come up.” Many athletes and performers, for instance, say that they need just enough nervous energy to be “up”—too relaxed and they won’t have sufficient arousal or alertness to achieve peak performance— but not so much nervousness that they choke.

An accident or other traumatic incident can cause the sympathetic nervous system to take over, thereby triggering the fight-or-flight response. And “it’s not just in their organs that they’re experiencing it,” Dern says. “It’s really every major system of their body, including skin cells. When this part of our nervous system kicks in, our brain changes. It organizes differently. The change is far-reaching.”

Acute stress, according to Dern, can lead to something called sympathetic withdrawal, which can actually make the parasympathetic nervous system overactive. It’s a less well-known phenomenon, but it proved to be the answer to why the usual advice to those feeling anxious—“take slow, deep breaths”—doesn’t work for some people.

“This approach didn’t work with several clients, and I started researching why,” he says. “It turns out their nervous system actually needs a different approach.”

Dern discovered that, following a big jump in the sympathetic nervous system triggered by an acute stress, some people slide into sympathetic withdrawal, actually becoming too parasympathetic. The nervous system goes into “a collapsed state. Our lungs constrict, our heart rate slows—known as fear-induced bradycardia— and we can feel nausea, foggy, really disorganized,” he says. “And even though our nervous system is going into a shutdown, we feel super anxious; our mind starts to race. It’s extraordinarily uncomfortable.”

For those who experience fear-induced bradycardia, after a stress Dern recommends taking four quick, deep inhales and exhales, as if you’ve just sprinted up a hill and are trying to catch your breath. Alternatively, hold something very cold, such as an ice cube, in your hand for as close to two minutes as you can. These techniques can help to reactivate the sympathetic nervous system and bring you back to a more balanced state.

In part 2 of this series, you’ll learn more about fear and your brain, plus a gentle process that can help you move beyond fear and into confidence you can take with you wherever you go.