I have recently brought my horse Gymmie back into work after he and I had an accident that involved a gate. I was trapped underneath, and he was on top of the gate. It was frightening but although we were both a little bruised and battered, we were ok. To be clear I was not riding him at the time, I had simply made a judgement error as I led him through the gate.

It took me 2-3 weeks to heal and Gymmie had a physio out to him about 4 times over a period of about 6 weeks before he seemed better. I lunged him a couple of times to check he seemed to be moving normally, both without the saddle and then with it and all was looking great.

I was really happy that it looked like he could return to being ridden. So, I put the saddle on and got myself ready, the usual, helmet, chaps, then bridled him. What caught me a little off guard was how much anticipation anxiety I felt.

For the sake of being clear, “anticipation anxiety is a type of worry about the future and the fear that you might not be able to successfully accomplish what you are setting out to do. It is the anxiety we experience when we are anticipating a difficult decision, action, or situation. It feels very much like a warning.” Definition is from psychology today magazine.

Here is an example of anticipatory anxiety it is the third layer of fear: If we look at a common situation with horses, the first layer is “I hope he doesn’t spook”, the next layer is the fear of feeling the fear, because “I might get so frightened I have a panic attack, lose control, do something stupid” and the third layer is being afraid of the panic attack. Just to ensure we take it all seriously our brain offers images that support our worst-case scenario prognosis.

In my experience of anticipation anxiety with Gymmie, I had images of him refusing to go through a gateway, rearing, me trying to control him and failing, people yelling at me, telling me to stop what I was doing, that it was my fault he was scared of gateways, me not knowing what else to do and realising this was all my own fault. Now everyone will think I am a fraud. I experience in my imagination the humiliation and shame of those same people talking about me behind my back, about how stupid I was and not really being my friends and Gymmie (the horse) hating me and that I will never be able to ride again.

No wonder I was feeling the way I was with this happening in my head because the brain does not know the difference between what is real and what is imagined. This thought process might feel extreme under the circumstances but that is exactly how we know we are having a “panic attack” ahead of time.

When I stepped back and looked at what was going on inside my brain, I was torn between laughing and crying.

Honestly as crazy as it sounds anticipatory anxiety is really common and most of us only notice the first layer and don’t understand why we are feeling so much fear when our circumstances, thoughts and feelings don’t seem to match. However, when you see all the layers it makes sense that the feeling would be big.

This third layer drives us to considering not doing what we want or looking for ways to change or control it so that we can avoid the feeling that we think we are going to feel when the imagined worst-case scenario happens. Anticipatory anxiety is primarily a fear of feeling a feeling and it is not limited to panic, it could be shame, guilt, humiliation, overwhelm any strongly unwanted emotion.

Anticipation anxiety starts as soon as we start considering or thinking about a specific scheduled event or action.

So, in relation to the anticipation anxiety, I experienced with Gymmie it began when I started to think about bringing him out of his paddock to ride. It can start when you begin to consider if it is safe to do something, or what the risks are. So, for people who are scared of flying and book a holiday 6 months ahead of time, it could literally begin at that point and they without conscious awareness would have this impacting them regularly for that whole time, slowly building with them having no understanding of what was causing their current experience.

People who experience anticipation anxiety often describe feeling tension in their body even when they have no awareness of being worried about anything specific. When we find ourselves in the grip of anticipation anxiety trying to reassure ourselves rarely works, a lot of the time even simple breathing techniques can seem minimally effective.

What I find most effective as a starting point is to simply acknowledge that I am experiencing anticipation anxiety, so of course I am feeling this way, it make sense given what is going on in my brain. I stop and give myself some space to take a good look at the images or movie my brain is offering, I mean really look at it, I watch it to the end and remind myself that my brain is simply trying to keep me safe, it doesn’t realise it is not actually happening. It can be helpful to decide just to do the next step and see how you feel, and then the next step etc, ensuring not to put pressure on yourself to complete the final step, especially important is that we don’t judge ourselves for it, that we support ourselves with compassion, after all if our horse was feeling frighted most of us would simply slow down, reassure and accept that he is a horse being a horse. Well we are humans and this is just part of being human, and I like to admire just how creative my imagination can be. 😊

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I appreciate you all, thanks for reading, and have a great week. :)