"I'm sorry" and "dramatic"...tales of avoiding emotions

I hear "I'm sorry" in my office quite often. Which would be cool if my clients had reason to apologize to me. But usually, they don't. They are apologizing to me for crying, for being mad, for being sad, for showing any emotion other than happy, other than "fine." And that's sad. It's sad that we, as people, have learned that it is not quite right to show emotions in front of someone else, that to do so is burdensome. And, probably on a related note, it seems we, as people, have not necessarily learned how to respond when someone does show emotions. I don't know which is the chicken and which is the egg, but I feel pretty confident the two phenomena are likely related.

A linked idea is that of labeling feeling, or expressing emotions, as being "dramatic," or the like. Ask yourself, how often do you see someone showing emotion, and brush them off as being dramatic. How often do you think that versus say it out loud. Now, I live with a teenager, so I most certainly know that sometimes, someone showing emotion is, in fact, being dramatic. But, I also see that we, as a society, default to the "drama" label when really it is that we are having a hard time accepting/dealing with how the other person feels.

Almost without fail, when a client first starts to tear up, they quickly say, "I'm sorry," often with, "I don't know why I'm acting like this," or something of the like. And often, they label themselves as "stupid," or "dramatic." And yet, it never bothers me when people show emotion. In fact, I feel pretty confident that feeling is what makes us human, rather than robots.

So, how do we get to the point where we are no longer showing emotion? I am hesitant to say this next bit, because the last thing I would want to do is come across as the therapists of old, who seemed to default to the "easy answer" of "it's the parents' fault." It's most often nobody's "fault." Things are passed down intergenerationally, and so many different experiences can lead a person to shut down emotions. But, it is true that having parents that are not comfortable with emotion indirectly teaches kids to not be comfortable with emotion. It's generally not the intent, but instead, the fallout.

Certainly, there are some parents that might be very direct about it. They might directly tell their kids, and others in their lives, to stop feeling the way they do, or at least stop showing that they feel that way. They may respond with anger or maybe it is shame that leads them to tell others to "stop it." But the vast majority of the time, it's way more subtle. And it is likely that the parent doesn't even realize that he/she is uncomfortable with emotion, and thereby is teaching their child to be uncomfortable with emotion.

Kids learn to deal with emotion by having role models that show them how to handle them. And, oh my, there are all those memes out there now, from all the child therapy people, that illustrate perfect responses to your child's emotions. Those things make me shudder as the expectation is SO HIGH! I don't personally think the average person can have those perfect responses when his/her 3yo, or 16yo, is having a meltdown of epic proportions. So, please don't hear me as saying you should have those perfect responses. (And, you may respond in shock or dismay in the moment, but you can always go back and "fix it.") But, outside of those epic meltdown moments, your child will learn how to handle emotion as you prove that YOU can handle their emotion. If you are uncomfortable with your own sadness, then you likely will communicate to your child, by accident, that you are uncomfortable with their sadness. That might sound like trying to talk them out of how they feel, just as you try to talk yourself out of how you feel. It might sound like, "Oh, it's not that bad! Look at how lucky we are. There are people who have it way worse." It might sound like, "Oh, don't over-react." It might sound like, "I'll give you something to cry about." And, it might sound like dead silence. I'd say that, a lot of the time, it sounds like trying to talk someone (or yourself) out of the emotion that has arisen. I talk about this in therapy as using the brain to override the heart.

Now, where it gets tricky is that it's not an either/or, so I'm not saying we should never use our brains to manage our emotions. But, I would say that cognitive part, that rationalizing and talking ourself through it, often comes AFTER experiencing the emotion. Not as a means for avoiding experiencing it. The goal is to have both...both the ability to feel, and also the ability to soothe ourselves when our feelings might a little bit off. Anxiety, for example. Anxiety tells us all sorts of lies; we may have fear about things that might really happen, and often we have fears about things very unlikely to happen. So, in those moments, the goal is to feel the fear, not suppress it, but also be able to reassure ourselves of how unlikely our fear is. Same with talking to kids. Your goal is to listen to their fears, so you can truly understand where they are coming from, and THEN help them to see how unlikely their fear is to happen. Those who are blocked from dealing with emotion will go straight to the rational argument, skipping the emotion that is present.

This is feeling hard to explain, for some reason, so I really hope it is coming across in an understandable way. The one thing I will say about "being dramatic" is this...because some of you who put this label on yourself need to hear it...in my experience, those who actually are "being dramatic," do not see themselves as dramatic. Yet, those who label themselves as dramatic, rarely are.

In the end, you have to take advantage of the help you are offered

Particularly in severe eating disorders, it is often the case that the client has been a therapy a long time. And, here's the thing...I really think that eventually, being in therapy, particularly with the same person, for a long time can eventually become counterproductive. Now, I don't have a set definition for "a long time;" it varies from case to case. But, whether it's multiple admissions to a treatment program, or meeting with the same therapist with little progress, I think the ED can accidentally become reinforced. Or maybe not the ED, as much as lack of progress with the ED. If not getting better becomes the norm, will you ever get better?

Eating disorders are hard in that I am quite confident nobody actually wanted one, and nobody chose one. I say frequently, "I'm pretty sure you didn't wake up one day and say, 'An ED! That's a brilliant idea!'" So, I'd never tell someone new to treatment that their ED is their fault, or that they haven't tried hard enough, etc. And again, this is a thing that doesn't have a defined timeline, BUT I would argue that somewhere in treatment, recovery DOES become the responsibility of the person that has the ED. There comes a point where everyone else has done almost all they can, and all that remains is the person with the ED choosing differently. This certainly still doesn't warrant any commentary about the ED being anyone's fault, or someone not trying hard enough. From what I see, it's often not that people who struggle to get better are not trying hard enough. It usually is that their ED is so obnoxious that their efforts pale in comparison to the efforts of the ED voice. BUT, even in that reality, the only way out still is to do the really hard therapy work (not just the changing behaviors work, though that is a huge part of it), so that eventually their efforts do overpower the ED. Even as I write this, I can see how confusing this all is. I can imagine some of you might be thinking, "Seriously, what is she even trying to say?!" Yep, it's that confusing.

Now I know you were just waiting with bated breath to see how I'd tie this to horses. Never fear! I have done it! But only because I really was pondering this on horseback.

I have two horses. One, I fit with hand-in-glove. She's been a real challenge to ride, but we are well matched and, the best way I can explain it is, even though I was heavily involved in backing (aka, breaking) her, she, in 5 years, has only gotten me off her back once, very early on (note: I just jinxed it). Now, mind you, there were rides where she tried (or perhaps she wasn't trying; it's probably not fair to blame her) a number of times, but she and I are just in sync enough that she was never able to unseat me (except in that big extended trot in a national level show when she was 4, LOL; nope, wasn't embarrassing at all, and no Mr. EMT, I didn't need you...hahahaha!). That's Violet. But then there's Daisy.

Now, Daisy is my heart horse. I chose her because, well, she chose me. She is my baby girl. But she has gotten me off a number of times. I mean, rearing does increase the chances of success when you are a horse (but rider was to blame), but overall, she and I just don't sync as well when I'm riding. She also is the first horse I rode consistently, and my first horse. What this means is she is the horse I ruined. I'm told we all ruin our first horses, but I hate that I ruined her. She had to suffer through years of really poor riding, and a couple years ago, she made it clear that she was DONE. And so I retired her. But then, as I came to understand how poorly I had been riding, and changed, I started to pull her out of retirement, to see if I could fix the damage I caused.

I never put her back in training with anyone, and have only taken a few lessons with her. Instead, my approach has been to take lessons on Violet, and then challenge myself to take whatever I have learned on V and train Daisy myself. I say almost every ride, "I broke you. Only I can fix you." Not that "she" needs to be fixed. Our relationship needed to be fixed. My communication needed to be fixed. And until this year, I truly did not learn much from lessons. I would do what I was told, because I'm super good at that, most days. If I rode with a big name trainer, my local trainer had to be there because I'd be so tense (in every way) during the rides that I would not remember a damn thing I had been taught, and the money would have been wasted.

And then I took my horses and went out on my own. Which had its pros and cons, but at minimum, required me to actually start thinking like a trainer when I was riding. I was either going to really learn what I needed to learn on V and apply it to Daisy, or I needed to quit. Now, this was assisted by eventually starting to ride with a big name trainer who was kind and taught in a way I totally get. And so I started to take all that I learned on V, and think about how to apply it to Daisy. I had to choose to really "get it," and I HAD TO if I wanted to fix all I had done to Daisy. (And V, to be fair.)

The coolest part is that I am now proving to myself that I do "get it," and I can train Daisy. Soon we will actually take a lesson again, because you can never figure out everything without eyes on the ground; but all in all, I have done what I set out to do...to actually take advantage of the help I have been given to truly LEARN how to train my horses (and myself). I didn't choose one day to ruin my horses. Hell no. But, I did. I cannot deny that if I want to change it. I, and only I, ruined my horses, particularly Daisy. And now, only I can "fix them." In the end, once you get help, only you can fix/get rid of your eating disorder. In the end, only you can choose whether you will seek a better life (even with its potential cons that your ED babbles on about all the time), and only you can choose to stay sick. You will need lots of help and support to help you get louder and more powerful than that ED voice, but the decision to get better will come in all the small moments between meeting with your providers. But, you can do it. It's possible. And, since I can guess what your ED might have just said to you...you are not likely to be the one that cannot be "fixed" (note: I don't believe there is anyone whose ED cannot be fixed. All EDs are treatable.)

It's Been a Long Time

I must admit...I forgot I had a blog. So much so that it just took me 30 minutes to figure out how to log back into it! So, to catch up...

I don't know why I stopped writing blogs for my business. I will assume I got distracted, and eventually just forgot. But it came back into my mind after making some changes recently. Well, for years I have thought about writing a book. But then, conveniently, Jennifer Gaudiani has now written the book I would have written. It's called Sick Enough, and it is excellent.

But, a few weeks ago, I decided to get off social media. Now, I'm not off off it, as I swear you cannot actually know what is happening in the world if you are not on social media. So, I still have a profile, but I don't follow anyone, and just use it to keep up with companies and groups from whom I need information. And that step freed up some time, so I pretty quickly started to ponder the idea of writing a book again. I have a few topics I considered, but there's some barriers.

I could still write a book on eating disorders, and I think I know enough about them to pull it off. But, it seems 21 years of school burned me out on wanting to dive into the research and summarize some of it, etc. So, that kind of rules out the generally accepted book on an important topic.

In the intervening years since I last wrote consistently on this blog, I have become very involved in the sport of dressage. It is my absolute passion outside of work. And, oh, what a ride it has been. Through a series of events, I have ended up riding by myself the vast majority of the time, and that (is lovely and) gives me a lot of time to think. Over the winter, I started to think of the parallels between eating disorder treatment and dressage training/riding, and I thought, "I could totally write a book on this." But, let's be honest, who is gonna search for the topic "dressage and eating disorders."

Ok, so no book on EDs, no book on the parallels between the ED world and the dressage world. And then, lastly, this week, I decided I should write a book on "all the things your first trainer taught you that were wrong." Ah yes, another good one to do a Google search on, right? I suspect it would be an immensely helpful book, but perhaps not widely accepted, and it probably should be written by someone who knows way more about the sport than I do. Which cycles me back to really only knowing enough about EDs to do a book justice.

And so, painfully slowly, the dots finally connected in my mind, and I remembered this blog. I spend a lot of time on the road between work and the barn, and, as I said, I ride by myself, so I am fortunate to have a lot of quiet time to counterbalance my work life. I absolutely love my job and the real and genuine relationships I have with my clients, and I love my quiet time of riding, and, well, pondering life. I do think a lot about how training of horses overlaps with eating disorders, or treatment of eating disorders. (I really should probably just leave it at, "I think a lot." Because I do. For better or worse.)

I chose to get off social media after I accepted all it really did was increase my anxiety. I easily admit that I social anxiety, and I'm just not convinced social media can be good for that. But more so, I realized I didn't actually care about social media. What I care about is actual relationships. Actual communication. And that it was more important to me to have a couple people that I actually talk to, than 100 people who I didn't really talk with much at all (yes, even while on social media, I had very few "friends"...I tried to make social media as real as possible, only "friending" people I actually knew). So, that's how things are now. I have a couple people I talk with on the phone and go to meals with, and a few more I talk with through messaging. And, I have to tell you, my social anxiety is way less activated. But I miss using social media to express my humor; well, I guess that's really all I miss. In short, I recommend getting off of it. I think relationships between humans really could only be improved by the end of social media, which, I know, won't happen.

So, I'm not sure what topics I will be writing on moving forward. I can say, they mostly will be cooked up while driving on I-15, or while sitting on horseback. Yesterday, I had this whole half-baked idea about writing about fears because I have one horse that is usually unflappable, but girlfriend senses cold fronts and FREAKS OUT. My other horse spooks at....well....air. Literally, air, I promise you. She's a fun one. But this one (Daisy) is chill, except when a cold front is coming in. And so, my usually calm horse turned into a horse kite yesterday. What in the world do I mean by that, you ask? It's when your horse is so high-strung and freaking out about nothing that you swear she is no longer connected to the earth and instead is a 1000lb kite you are attempting to keep connected to the ground (you) by a measly lead rope. This used to be frightening to me. But now I know she's just having a moment, and she has zero intent to hurt me during her moment. And so I hold onto my kite string, and we walk calmly, and distract, and get her focused on work rather than....the wind, or barometric pressure, or whatever she was reacting to. And I guess that does parallel to ED treatment/recovery, because, so often, EDs lead you to "freak out about nothing." Or at least react to something that others do not understand, but it still scares the crap out of you. I couldn't remove the cold front for Daisy, just as we cannot remove facing food. Instead, she had to figure out how to be calm in spite of whatever was scaring her, and we did that through healthy distraction and focus on something else. And, in the end, that cold front came in, and she kept four feet on the ground while I hung out on her back. Whew.

Ah ha! Maybe you thought I couldn't do it (I wasn't even sure where I was going)...this tying of dressage training and eating disorder treatment. But looky there! It all came together in the end. ;) More to come. Because as I said, I think a lot. :)