The Brightside: Equine Psychotherapy
LINCOLN, Del. – When you’re stressed out or working through mental health issues, you may consider different forms of therapy. One place in Delaware uses horses, but it’s not riding like you may think.
“Most of what we provide here ends up being about relationships, it’s relationships with self, with others, and with a higher being if that’s your belief system,” Rosemary Baughman, the Executive Director of Courageous Hearts, said.
One step onto the property at Courageous Hearts in Lincoln, and you’re greeted by open fields, room to roam, and a handful of beautiful horses. It’s those horses that the staff here use to help you find yourself.
“We take traditional psychotherapy out of the office, where it can be often intimidating, especially for our people who come with huge trauma, ‘I don’t want to touch that, I don’t want to look at that, it’s too painful,’ and walking on the property often will reduce the anxiety of someone enough to walk out into the arena and find out about themselves,” Rosemary said.
It works like this: clients come to the property for a session and they have the chance to go into the arena and simply hang around the horses, naturally finding one they bond with. Rosemary says that natural connection between a horse and a human says a lot about what that person could be looking for.
“We often hear ‘he sees in my soul,’ and there’s this connection that happens,” Rosemary said.
Outside of therapy at the arenas, therapists and equine specialists at Courageous Hearts are constantly finding ways to help people grow into themselves and learn healthy habits and attitudes. One way of doing that is by hosting a female empowerment group for young women.
“It targets young girls that struggle with anxiety, self-doubt, and expressing themselves, and the goal is to help them build resiliency skills and protective factors,” Alexis Truco, one of the women who organized the group, said.
Attacking that anxiety or self-doubt starts with a conversation.
“Our group will start off with different topics, such as self-esteem, body image, confidence, even teamwork, all different skills, so we’ll discuss the topic out here in the barn and then we will go out into the arena with the horses and include them in an activity,” Alexis said.
And through those programs, the horses are right there alongside participants, helping them relate to relationships or even traumas they’ve experienced in their own lives.
“The more that our clients get to know them and see the different behavior that they do or how they interact with each other, sometimes they put the mouths on each other, sometimes they run fast, sometimes they are licking, just those different things, they’ll say ‘oh well that one is pushing that one around, that one reminds me of my dad’ or something,” Rebekah Baughman, another organizer, said.
The staff that recognition, that connection, is the first step toward confronting any trauma or anything weighing you down. That, they say, helps these clients, and the women in the empowerment groups, make changes so they can live a strong, happy life.
“We believe that our young girls are brilliant, bold, and brave and we’re going to teach them to practice these skills in their every day lives,” Alexis said.
Courageous hearts also offers programs for veterans and other groups of people. You can find more information by visiting their website or Facebook page.
