All in my head

How I'm finding my nerve again after anxiety almost got the better of me.

Andrej Lišakov/Unsplash

This is not exactly a post about being single — okay, maybe a little — but I wanted to share the story anyway.  

One day in July 2022, I almost had a panic attack. I knew the signs of panic attacks and somehow, I prevented the symptoms from spiraling into a full-blown attack that afternoon. I knew exactly what triggered it and that day kicked off an almost two-year battle with my own brain. 

There was a lot going on personally at the time that was pushing my buttons, and slowly over the months I was losing myself in my thoughts. I was losing focus. I couldn’t sleep but then was taking too many naps. I was thinking and overthinking. I was making mistakes. For someone who usually felt in control of her life, I very quickly felt like I was losing it.

I worried about what my single status would mean for my future. I worried about money, about surviving on my own, about my daughter’s future. At one point, I found out the house where I live might be put on the market, driving us out to find a new place to live. I worried about finding an affordable place to rent. Suddenly I thought I’d be one of the housing crisis stories that I write about.

I remember one day just sitting in my car after parking it in the driveway, overwhelmed with thoughts of not only having to move, but everything else. I couldn’t get out of my car. I was losing my nerve and my ability to handle shit.  

Then later in the summer, I started getting twitches in my muscles, like the twitches you get in your eyelids when you’re exhausted. First it started in my legs, and I thought it was restless leg syndrome. Then the twitches started in my arms. I could see the muscles in my bicep bubbling with twitches under my skin. It felt like my heart was pumping so hard the blood was rippling through the muscles. The twitches continued to my face and everywhere else. One night the twitching was so bad I asked my daughter to lie in bed with me until it stopped.  

A month before that panic attack, I started horseback riding lessons at a new stable with a new trainer, who offered more professional and structured lessons than the previous stable where I started riding just two months before my 50th birthday in 2020. 

This farm is a lovely spot in the country about an hour’s drive from my house. I looked forward to going every day in every kind of weather. Also, the twitching seemed to stop when I moved, so the horseback riding helped. So did ballet classes that I signed up for in September.  

But the anxiety followed me to the farm.

In October 2022, on my way to a lesson, every muscle was twitching, and my anxiety was through the roof. I wasn’t sure I should even be riding at all, knowing horses can read and react to a person’s energy and emotions. I told my trainer about my anxiety that day. She said yes, horses do sometimes react to a person’s anxiety, but the horse I was riding that day wouldn’t give a shit.

But the anxiety was still there, and the twitches came back when I stopped moving. I couldn’t move all the time, right? I went to my doctor a few days after that riding lesson.

She prescribed Mirtazapine, which is used for depression or anxiety. The first dose knocked me on my ass, and I hoped that wouldn’t be my permanent state. Fortunately, that side effect didn’t last long, but as the months wore on, the anxiety didn’t subside completely. The Mirtazapine acted more like a sleeping pill. While sleeping through the night helped, the anxiety was still there during the day.

Through the winter months, I worked Monday to Friday, slept through most Saturdays, and went riding every Sunday morning. That’s how it was for months.  

Over the spring of 2023, my brain was riddled with so many bad thoughts, which I can’t even write here. I looked for ways to distract myself, but that wasn’t working. I was most certainly in catastrophic thinking mode. The thoughts were so bad I’d start vomiting from worry. Only a couple of my friends knew what was going on.  

In August 2023, I went back to my doctor again. I needed something stronger, an extra boost. My own attempts at distracting my brain or ignoring my triggers weren’t working. My doctor prescribed Cipralex, an antidepressant from the serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) class.  

Now, almost a year later, I feel completely different. I was just telling a friend about it today. While I do occasionally have bad thoughts, they don’t spiral out of control. The meds are enough to take the edge off, to ignore or deal with the triggers, to bring my brain back from the catastrophic thinking. For the first time in months, I feel like I can once again handle anything bad that comes my way. The anxiety is all in my head but the meds help keep it tucked in a place where it doesn’t distract me from what I want and need to do every day.

Horseback riding helps, too. My lessons aren’t equine therapy, but I know now why horses are considered therapeutic. Horses are highly sensitive animals and perceive everything as a threat that might eat them. As a rider, you have to learn confidence and strength to help the horse learn what is a threat and what isn’t. You have to train your horse to focus on you. Horses are like people with anxiety: everything seems like a threat, but you have to learn what’s really the danger and what isn’t.

Horses are also funny, strong, independent, peaceful, and fast. They teach you how to communicate in quiet ways. When you’re riding you don’t think about anything else but being with the horse and staying in the saddle. When you’re in the arena with a horse, even just for a couple of hours, nothing else matter. You’re also outside, surrounded by nature, and learning new skills. Horses also teach you boundaries, which I desperately needed. They also remind you of your own strength. There’s nothing more powerful than working and silently communicating with a 1,200-pound animal that could knock you on your ass. You and your horse become a team.

My lesson horse is named Delilah. She’s a quarter horse that is smart, funny, and loves snuggles. She’s also fast and very bendy. I enjoy every lesson with her. We are Team Delilah.

Not long before I started the new meds, I had lost my nerve in riding. I wanted to go faster, but something was holding me back. I told my trainer about this mental block several weeks ago, and she said I needed to work on my confidence. In that moment, something clicked. I started trotting again. I still need fine tuning mind you, but my nerve is coming back.  

Every morning before I start work and before that first cup of tea, I take my anxiety meds. Every Sunday I go riding. I even started doing barn chores at the farm. I get an extra riding lesson in exchange for every barn chore shift. It’s not work, even if I am shovelling shit. Horses are my peace.

This morning I went to my usual horseback riding lesson. The rain was falling hard by the time I arrived to the farm and the horses were in their shelters trying to stay dry. Delilah was all fired up from the energy in the air. The rain pounded the arena roof and it felt like we were inside a tin can. The trainer had to yell so we could hear her over the sound.

Delilah and I started our usual warmup of groundwork, exercises on the ground before you get in the saddle. In one ground exercise, I held Delilah on a lead rope tied to her halter. I had her walking, then trotting and loping, in circles around me. But Delilah’s energy this morning was all over the place and she started bucking and kicking her feet, and jumped over the lead line, yanking it out of my hand. She started trotting away from me. This was the first time I let go of the lead line in a lesson. 

My trainer suggested we work on more groundwork to keep Delilah distracted from the rain that continued to beat down on the roof.  

I started moving Delilah in a circle in one direction, and then we’d switch and go the other way. Then we’d switch back again. It was like a wobbly carousel with a real horse. Eventually, Delilah started lowering her head and snorting, a sign she was starting to relax.

My trainer taught me new tricks to guide Delilah with a training stick, a whip with a small lash on the end that’s just used to move the horses around (but not to hurt them). Moving the stick up and and down creates an invisible wall that gives the horse a sign to go the other direction. Small flicks of the stick tell her to move ahead. Tapping the ground with the stick tells her to bend her head and focus into me.

After what seemed like dozens of circles at all speeds, Delilah’s focus started coming down toward me and she wasn’t distracted by the energy in the air. Maybe I just wore her out. I spent the last 20 minutes of the lesson in the saddle. She wasn’t distracted by the rain that continued to pound on the roof.

I mentioned to my trainer that at some point I wanted to sign up for a show. Two years ago, I never even thought about doing a show.

My nerve is coming back, thanks to some meds, perspective, and a horse named Delilah.

As always, thank you for reading! 

Suzanne 

Horsewoman getting her nerve back