For the last few weeks, I’m been toying around with the idea of keeping a weekly training journal. Somewhere I can process my rides from the week, think through my successes and challenges, and set goals for upcoming week. I had intended to start that today, but insecurity got in the way.
I feel like a different rider today than I was eight months ago, and somethings not always for the better. I don’t remember feeling utterly sore and weak, I don’t remember obsessing over my leg position and feeling like a floppy fish in the saddle, and I certainly don’t remember experiencing a twinge of fear in anticipation of a jumping lesson.
Recently, I’ve been frustrated with my riding. I don’t feel strong enough. I don’t feel stable enough. I don’t feel confident enough. Not-enoughs are clouding my brain, and while sometimes these not-enoughs are motivational — they drive me to do better — sometimes they’re downright depressing. It’s thoughts like these that perpetuate an awful cycle of self-doubt and anxiety.
Today, I found myself in one of those cycles.
I had left my dressage lesson yesterday feeling just okay. While I knew that Cuvée and I had gotten some good work done, I couldn’t help thinking I hadn’t ridden my best. Something just felt off, and I wasn’t confident in my own performance in the arena. Watching back a video from the day raised my spirits. “Huh,” I thought. “That doesn’t look nearly as bad as I thought it did.” I fell asleep feeling better about the lesson, but that tiny critic inside my brain was only momentarily silenced. Jumping was coming up.
So today I drove to the barn with anxiety rising in my belly. I tried to catch and reframe my thoughts. Deep breaths. Positive affirmations. It worked well enough, and by the time I stepped into the jumper ring, I was calm and collected.
All things considered, the ride went well. Cuvée jumped everything, and was… calm…ish. He seems to have traded in his refusals for charging down the fences. 🙃 Still not a great habit, but at least he’s jumping OVER the fences now. Today we played with some rollbacks, jump a simple three-fence line, and even soared over some “very scary” flower box jumps. All things considered, I left the arena feeling successful.
But, as I untacked my horse in the fading sunlight and the adrenaline of jumping faded, that voice in my head came back.
“If you were a better rider, you would have remembered to use your inside leg more.”
“You were really too hard on his mouth in some of those halts.”
“There are a lot of girls at this barn that could handle Cuvée better than you.”
The maddeningly unhelpful inner-critic was back. And this time, she brought backup — that bitch called anxiety.
Sad, cold, and hungry, I drove home and gave in to the thoughts and feelings of insecurity. Resisting anxiety is exhausting, and I didn’t have the willpower to keep it at bay any longer. I spiraled.
Small unhelpful thoughts, turned into big ones and somehow I found myself questioning everything I knew about horses and whether or not I could ever feasibly make a career out of it someday. Slight insecurities like “my lower leg is too floppy in the trot” turned into hurtful commentary like “you’ll never be good enough” and “you’re a disappointment.”
It’s incredible, really, to look back at the way we treat ourselves in moments of vulnerability. I would never, ever, say that to another human being, yet I found it so easy to say to myself.
After a long, meandering, teary-eyed phone conversation with my boyfriend, and 45 minutes of Queer Eye wholesomeness, I was feeling more like myself again. Food was in my belly, and my anxiety had come down considerably. I was better. Insecurity still floats through my mind as I write this, but the overwhelming wave of it has passed.
Truly I wish I had a more definitive end to this entry. A neat little bow to tie up this story arc. But the insecurity I felt today, and the anxiety that followed, is not one-and-done. It is something that I will continue work through and learn from. And hopefully through my rambling, you can too.
So I guess I want you, dear reader, to take away the following from this story:
- It’s okay to feel down. It’s okay to feel insecure. And it’s even okay if you’ve found yourself in a downward anxiety spiral. Be kind to yourself and find a way back out.
- Reach out to someone you trust. Truthfully, I’m not sure what I babbled on about to my boyfriend in our more than hour-long phone conversation. I was a ball of nervous emotion, and I needed desperately to let it all out. Find that person who will let you babble, vent, and cry. Find that person who listens and offers words of advice and affirmation where they can.
- It’s going to be okay. Just as it’s okay to feel down and insecure, it’s also important to remember that it is going to be okay, as well. It’s hard to believe that in the moment, I know. I’m just here to remind you of that because I’ve been there and made it to the other side.
Now that I’m in a clearer headspace, there’s something from tonight’s episode that I actually deem quite positive. Passion.
I care A LOT about riding and horses. There’s a dedication and drive to succeed there that doesn’t present itself in other areas of my life. (You don’t see me spiraling into fits of insecurity when I don’t vacuum the floors to their cleanliest state, for instance.) So with that dedication and drive comes high standards and expectations. When I don’t meet them, it hurts. And that pain and feeling of failure comes from a place of passion — a passion for the sport, and a drive to succeed.
