Don’t hide the fear
Many people manage their fear by trying to hide how they actually feel but there is little point
denying how you feel as it will only make matters worse down the track. Instead learn ways that
you can accept your fear and control it. Not long after I got my current horse, Gio, I had a fall from
him and broke my pelvis, I couldn’t ride for three months and during that time I denied to myself
how nervous I actually was about riding again. I kept pretending that the accident didn’t affect my
mental state when actually it had really knocked my confidence. I was really excited to ride him
again but when the day finally came I had denied how I actually felt so much that by the time it
came to hop on I was a shaking mess! I ended up getting on and I had a great ride but my internal
voice had ruined it for me simply because I had tried to ignore it instead of deal with it properly.
Identify where the fear is coming from
Before you can control your fear ask yourself where the fear is coming from in the first place. For
me I was always a bit more nervous than my other riding friends after having a few nasty falls. I
don’t bounce quite as well as some people do! I got to the point where I was so fearful I found it
difficult to even walk my horse out in the paddock and if I did and he even looked at something a
funny way I would burst into tears! Every day I felt really upset that I couldn’t ride my wonderful
horse because I was afraid of what might happen. I soon realised that at this point that if I didn’t
overcome this irrational worry then I wouldn’t be able to keep riding and that thought alone was
scarier than riding! Understanding that at times things will go wrong made it a lot easier for me
to deal with and control. For me it just took time. The more I educated my horse, the less over
reactive he was and he became very rideable. We helped each other because he was feeding off
me- the more worried I was, the worse he would behave- he wanted to have confidence in me and
for that to happen I needed to let go and have some confidence in him. I started to realise that it
wasn’t him I was afraid of it was that I didn’t have faith in my own riding ability that I could handle
it when things went wrong. By n