Mountain Lion vs. WalMart Bag

In my previous post, I mentioned that I participate in a sport no one has ever heard of.  Endurance Riding is like cross-country marathons for horses.  What that means is that my idea of a fun weekend is traveling to the middle of nowhere and riding (generally at a trot) my horse 25 or 50 miles a day for 1, 2, 3 (sometimes more) days on challenging trails in remote wilderness areas (one time I did a 100 mile race, but I would have to have a really good reason to do that again).  Yes, many people think endurance riders are crazy.  We are the butt of jokes about wearing brightly colored spandex instead of “refined” show clothing, our horses have the reputation of being wild and dangerous and too much to handle.  If this were a blog on a sport that is about the HORSE and not the RIDER, I could go on for pages about the wonderment of endurance.  Since it’s a blog on mental health issues, I’ll skip to the relevant part.  To be a serious competitor, a horse must be physically fit, which translates into lots and lots (and lots) of hours training on the trail, to the tune of 10-15 miles a day and 25 or so on the weekends.  (That was me BC – Before Children.  Lucky to get 10 miles in on a weekend these days . . . hence had to drop out of the ranks of “serious competitor.”  My horse doesn’t seem to mind.)  
  

Take a look at the attached picture.  In this moment I would CLEARLY identify the life threatening danger to be stepping off the trail and tumbling tail over teakettle into the vast nothingness below – not that I ever actually entertain those thoughts . . . of course not.  My horse Max, the poster child for the “fight or flight” instinct, has different thoughts.  Trail riders often joke about the fact that a horse will jump off a cliff to avoid having to walk by a Wal-Mart bag flapping on a bush … or a rabbit … or a stick … or nothing I can see … it’s a little bit of an exaggeration fortunately and the actual jumping off a cliff is rare, but you get the point.  My horse is a herd animal and a prey animal.  His survival for centuries has depended on his ability to flee from danger – but these days, most horses live in nice safe barns.  His instincts haven’t caught on to the shortage of actual physical danger however, and he is just SURE that that vicious hungry squirrel WILL, WITHOUT A DOUBT eat him.  Since I can’t stop being a therapist entirely when I ride, the parallels of this annoyance to how we deal with anxiety were not lost on me.  We so frequently go to extreme, and sometimes damaging lengths to avoid relatively harmless stressors.  In context, the fight or flight response is important, and vital to our survival. If I am hiking in the mountains and come upon a mountain lion, I definitely want my adrenaline pumping.  I want increased blood flow to my heart and lungs so I have the strength to either fight or run really fast.  However, in dealing with an angry spouse or cranky bank teller, that same fight or flight response isn’t very helpful!  (Although I do get a kick out of the image of running screaming out of the Holiday melee in ToysRUs when I go do my shopping.  Usually that's how I pass the time waiting in line.)  In that moment, I want to be working out of my cognitive, logical, mind and making decisions about how to handle that situation.
 

Clients often come into therapy with the goal to “be less stressed.”  I believe it is important to emphasize the difference between stress and anxiety.  Stress is inevitable.  It is a powerful, and often positive force.  Stress pushes us to do something different.  Learning to deal with stress without anxiety is the key.  Anxiety is driven by the meaning we make of a stressful situation, which is often based more on past experience and lack of coping skills than on the current event.  We experience an “Amygdala Hijack,” according to Daniel Goleman, and react with fear to a situation which poses no true physical danger.  Selye’s Appraisal Theory suggests that level of distress is determined by the interaction between our assessment of how bad a situation might be and our assessment of how equipped we are to handle it.  (More to come on these subjects – stay tuned!)    

It is important to recognize that the physical process of anxiety is a normal and healthy part of being human, not something to fear or be ashamed of (if I put something in parenthesis here will you not notice that I ended a sentence with a preposition?).  There are truly not very many situations in today’s world where we legitimately need our fight or flight response.  However, there is an expectation that there is a straight line between stress and anxiety:  “Oh, I couldn’t handle it if that happened . . . “  “that would be horrible . . .”  Learning to identify that while we may not want to face a situation, and that facing it may be uncomfortable, in fact we HAVE faced difficulty, we CAN face difficulty, and we WILL get through it.  This decreases the chance of a fear-based REACTION and allows a considered, conscious RESPONSE.  Ta-DA!!!!  Isn't that what we're looking for? 

What sets me apart from my horse is that I have the cognitive skills to evaluate a situation and apply this knowledge, leading to a different, less anxious outcome.  Next time I am on the trail, however, I am certain I will have occasion to say to my horse “OH FOR PETE’S SAKE, MAX, IT’S A WAL-MART BAG!!!”