Setting Boundaries by Getting Mad

I've never had a good relationship with anger. Growing up, there were only two things that I knew about it. The first thing is that you never under any circumstances allow that emotion to show itself, and the second was that raging out brings you a great deal of power. Needless to say, I grew up very confused about what to do with this very controversial emotion, so I ended up swinging back and forth between the two extremes. 

This was also why I never had any clear boundaries set for myself.  I grew up thinking boundaries were a thing for the selfish.  If I was to be a good person/Christian/friend/whatever, I would have to quietly (albeit, passive aggressively) sit and allow my boundaries to be repeatedly violated until I had mentally tallied up a sufficient number of violations to make raging out an acceptable alternative. It's not something I'm proud to admit to, but it's also very habit forming and tended to follow me in nearly every facet of my life.

Enter the Four-Hooved Diva.

I swear that mare made it her one and only job to find my buttons and push the shit out of them.

In our three or so years together, she figured out how to bully me pretty ruthlessly at times. She bit, shoved, bucked, pushed, and terrorized her way to the top of the food chain. I, like the good person/Christian/friend/whatever that I had learned so well to be, let her do it. I let her do it because, well, she had had such a hard life growing up as a PMU baby, and because she's so sensitive I couldn't discipline her, and because I loved her and wanted her to love me back. I told myself and others that I just hadn't yet learned the key to being a good leader for her, that she was just misunderstood.

Yeah, turns out that is all bullshit.

It's bullshit because when I finally decided to have boundaries and to get mad appropriately, I had an amazingly calm, obedient, and confident horse almost over night.

One of my favorite authors and horse people, Linda Kohonav, made an amazingly astute observation in her book, "Riding Between Worlds,"that I have tried to take to heart ever since I read it. She said that, "The fear of feeling blocks self-knowledge and true connection with others. Yet this particular fear has almost no chance of dissipating until people learn to treat emotion as information."

So, if this is the case, what message does anger provide? Linda believes that anger is a message that a boundary has to be maintained or rebuilt, and that if this message is not heeded right away it leads to rage, fury, and exploding at others initially, eventually turns to shame and guilt, and then finally to apathy. So, basically, by not setting my boundaries with my horse early and often, I was not only doing a disservice to myself, but to her as well.

Sydney and I had a "come to god" moment with this very concept very shortly after I got her home from our abbreviated training program. I was frustrated and feeling hopeless that Sydney was home, untrained, dead lame, and still a bully, but I was stubbornly determined to try to make the most of it. I decided to take some of what we had learned and implement it at the walk (the only gait that she was sound at) and in-hand to prevent any accidents. As it turned out, she had other plans, and 5 minutes into my brilliant training plan for the day, she gave me the proverbial finger (pretty sure I actually heard her tell me to fuck off, actually), spun around, ripped the rope clean out of my hands and at a dead gallop (quite spry for a horse in pain, I might add), took off through the park, across a busy street, and up to the barn where, as the very last straw, she ripped her expensive, custom, padded shoe off. 

(WARNING, RAGE ALERT)

When I finally caught up to Hell Bitch, I had worked myself into a lather that would make a rabid raccoon proud. As I grabbed the lead rope and let loose a barrage of profanity that would make a sailor blush, I also unleashed months of built up guilt from not knowing how to be a better horse mom, shame that others might find out my horsemanship skills were crap, and even the apathy I had felt by letting her languish in the pasture instead of getting up the courage to face the bad pony attitude head on. I backed her all the way up a 50 foot hill by swinging her lead rope wildly at her and screaming like mad woman. While I'm fairly certain I never actually made contact with her during the whole performance, I am pretty sure the neighbors believed that a crazy woman had escaped the looney bin and was running amok on their property. Sydney's eyes were the size of dinner plates, but she never once even made a move to rip out of my hands again.

I'm certainly not proud of how that went down, and as I drug Sydney back down to the barn to put her in her stall and call the farrier to come out and re-shoe her, a wave of guilt and shame came over me that I had once again let my temper get the best of me.

As bad as I still feel about that incident, it was definitely a turning point in our relationship. Partially, I think, because Sydney finally realized I had set a boundary and was dead serious about it, but more importantly because I vowed to never let myself be pushed so far that that level of rage would explode out again.

As part of my plan, I had Scott Purdum, a local natural horsemanship trainer, come back down and work with me on setting some proper boundaries with Sydney. (You can see the video of us practicing on Scott's Facebook page, Advantage Horsemanship, here.) 

During our training session that day, I learned a very interesting thing about getting mad. You can do it almost in passing, without it being a huge, hour-long performance. You can actually get mad, reset a boundary, and get back to your life in like 5 seconds. Holy crap!! What a concept!

It's been a few weeks since Scott came out for that lesson, and a few months since the Battle of Horsey Hill, and I'm proud to say that so far I have been able to approach my time with Sydney in a way that maintains my boundaries (no pushing, no biting, no rushing ahead of me, PERIOD), while also respecting hers. In fact, I've become even more aware of her state of mind, as well as the things that calm her and also make her fearful. She's more trusting of me, and while she does still push at times, she's pretty much dropped the bullying act altogether in favor of enjoying being around me. I am consistent with the boundaries I set, and I no longer view them as a selfish indulgence. This was quite an epiphany for me! Thank you, my dearest Hell Bitch, for being such an awesome teacher! :)