ARMY MP, 2010-2018 — Equine therapy in Texas, from a skeptic

Eight years as a military police officer. Two deployments. The second one ended badly enough that I left the Army on a medical separation. I had cycled through standard talk therapy and medication for three years with limited progress when somebody at the local VFW post mentioned a free equine therapy retreat in central Texas. I went in skeptical. I do not have a horse-girl background. I had never been within ten feet of a horse before. The notion that brushing a thousand-pound animal was going to do something for my combat trauma struck me as the kind of thing well-meaning civilians come up with. Three-day retreat. Ten of us. Each of us got assigned a horse. The horses were not trained therapy animals; they were ranch horses with the temperament for the work. The therapist was a licensed clinician who had been doing equine work for fifteen years and had a husband who had been in Marines. What I did not understand going in is that the horse is a mirror. The horse picks up the regulation state of the handler and reflects it back. If you are tense the horse is tense. If you are dysregulated the horse will not let you near it. Learning to lower my own arousal in order to approach the horse taught me, in my body, what regulation actually felt like. I had been taught this in talk therapy for three years. The horse taught me in two hours. Three years later I am still doing follow-up equine sessions twice a year. The skeptic has been converted by the data.