Inside EAP sessions.
( the following names and certain facts have been changed to protect confidentiality)
Sharon was referred to Suzanne for an eating disorder. After 2 sessions, she was able to get a handle on her disorder by learning how to lead the horse with confidence. She experienced that the horse would only follow her lead when she was connected to herself. She realized that she had been living her life from the “outside-in” in a very co-dependent manner. She had learned to dis-connect from her own feelings, thoughts, dreams and needs and pay attention to everyone around her but herself. This made sense in the abusive home she had grown up in but now this “hyper vigilance” and extreme codependence was killing her and she medicated her inner turmoil with a serious eating disorder. By learning that she had to connect to her own inner strength and power, she then became a safe person for the horse to follow. She resumed her acting career within 6 weeks of doing EAP.
Henry, a retired executive had recently lost his wife of 40 years to cancer. He felt his life was over, however his children begged him to try just 3 sessions of EAP. The horses initially did not want to have anything to do with him. He received feedback from the horse professional (the 2nd human in the 3 part EAP team), that the horses seemed afraid of him. Though, he initially got defensive about this and called the horses “stupid farm animals”, he came back to session two with some curiosity about how they would “ know about his anger”. Of course, the therapist and horse professional did not know what “anger “he was referring to but rather than talk it to death, they asked him to breathe into and own it rather than project it “out there”. As he did this, one horse came up to him and began nudging him. Henry started to cry. The session with the horses took on a life of its own. The humans merely needed to be there to reflect and ask the right questions. At the end of the session during the “circle up” time to talk about what he learned, Henry talked about how his anger at the world was really a cover up for the deep sense of loss and grief he was experiencing not only stemming from the death of his beloved wife, but also the loss of his career and several other losses he had not dealt with. In session three, Henry chose to three horses to work with that would represent for him, three things he was going to commit to doing to move forward in his life. One year later, Henry had re-married, he was present at the birth of his first grand-child and he was getting ready to begin a new business with his wife. Henry said the horses “saved his life”. His children agreed.
In only one session of EAP, Shannon was able to heal from the loss of her unborn child. She “magically” picked a horse to work with who also had lost a baby at birth. ( In EAP, we could never set this seeming “magic” choices up even if we tried). When she learned that this horse also had lost her baby, Shannon began crying and could not stop for 15 minutes. Shannon and Filly, the horse she picked, just stood together during this time and it was as if, they were doing shared grieving. Though Shannon has been to talking grief groups, she had never experienced the depth of her pain until she and Filly came together and became “one” for one magic session.