Angry is just sad's bodyguard

 "No one heals himself by wounding another" - Aurelius Ambrosius

I admittedly don't dabble in religion. I made the decision to separate myself from organized religion a long time ago, but were there ever an early religious figure I could get behind it would be this guy, better known as St. Ambrose.

St. Ambrose lived in circa 340AD. The record of his role in the Church at that time, as well as his rise to the position of Bishop of Milan, is fairly well documented as far as stuff that happened a couple thousand years ago goes. He was admittedly not perfect - he vigorously refuted "paganism" (as one would expect for the times) and greatly opposed Milan's Jewish community. However, upon his accepting the nomination of Bishop of Milan (a post he did not seek and did not initially want as he had no formal training in theology and had never even been baptized) he promptly divested himself of his money, donated his land and took to a life of strict discipline, void of worldly indulgences. 

St. Ambrose is remembered within the Church as being a deep believer and practitioner of the faith while at the same time being able to confront inconsistencies and errors in Church teachings as well as "live in Christian love" with those considered enemies of the Church. He is also, as it happens, very well known for the quote bolded at the beginning of my little sermon, here.

My reason for delving into all this is multifacted: the quote speaks for itself but my reason for knowing so much about St. Ambrose is because I did quite a bit of research on him when I discovered this quote so many years back. At the time, it hit me in such a way that I felt literally compelled to find out more about what human uttered such an astute phrase. The story of St. Ambrose proved to be just as astute as the quote he's so well known for and gave me confidence in the understanding that humans are extremely complex, and the motivations behind our actions are immensely complex as well.

That doesn't tend to bode too well for how we as a species think, however. If anything, we like things to be the opposite of complex: clean, neat, orderly, black and white, grounded and unchanging. I blame that ol' lizard brain for this - even in all of our evolution and ability to rationalize and develop in our understanding of the world around us, the ol' lizard brain is still in there trying to keep us from getting eaten by a sabretooth cat. Easier to do so when your world is pretty simple.

Over time - and with a lot of therapy - I've developed a much better understanding of my own complex reasons for my emotions and actions precipitated by them over my lifetime, and it's been especially helpful in understanding why I struggled SO much with how to be a better horsewoman for so long. One of the things that struck a particular chord was the relationship between anger and sadness...hence the title of this post.

There was a time in my life where I would get angry with my horses. I'm not proud of it but I recognize the importance it has played in helping me develop an understanding of how to be better. I also recognize I am by FAR not the only one who has struggled with anger. I see it all the time in nearly every barn I travel to or board at. I've seen it at the show grounds, at clinics, in the shadowy corners where people often don't think anyone will see them vent their anger onto their animals. Or, conversely, in broad daylight because it's been normalized in particular subsets of the horse owning population to treat your horse roughly.

Then there's what I've started calling "grey anger" - it's not so overt as to draw attention from most people but the horse still feels it and understands he's in trouble and often has no idea what for because the anger isn't really about him at all. He's just the poor sap who didn't know to toe the line that day. These are the handlers whose horses refuse to be caught at pasture and end up getting driven and chased by their owners until they concede, huffing and puffing. These are the horses that simply misunderstood or misinterpreted a cue and get a massive overcorrection in response. These are the owners that will call their horses inappropriate or foul names and defend their actions claiming they are "just joking" and "it's all from a place of love" (I don't know about you, but I don't tend to call anything I love degrading pet names...)

At the end of the day, most anger is just veiled sadness. It's a defense mechanism, one a large percentage of the population learns to perfection over a lifetime. Anger can also be a cover for fear but even fear has roots in sadness in many instances. You are less vulnerable to the attacks of others (or so you think) when you project anger: living creatures recognize anger as a red flag, a sign of potential danger and thus we often choose to avoid or defer to those expressing it. Anger hurts the expresser, but not nearly as much as we perceive we would hurt were we to allow someone into the dark recesses of our personal traumas and probe the cavernous expanses of our pain. 

What's fascinating is how often we use anger to wound or degrade others. I am sure there are psych papers abound on this topic, but my own personal experience - again - has shown me that anger used in this way is still a defense against something that we believe might harm us. However, we aren't living amongst sabretooth cats and rivaling neighboring villages anymore. No, those "things" we are protecting are much more profound: we protect core beliefs we have about ourselves - both positive and negative. We protect the image we desire to project to others, even if deep down that image feels as tenuous as an old, saggy barn roof. We protect our egos - the fragility of our understanding of ourselves - and it's that ego that convinces us that plumbing someone else's pain, "hittin' 'em where it hurts", will provide us sufficient protection. 

It is the horse's tremendous ability to get right to the thing that makes us the most uncomfortable that makes him such a target for anger. The horse often knows more than we know - and much more quickly - and all the sudden we find ourselves irate over our horse's "unwillingness" to do a thing we asked, to cooperate, to just help us assuage our own guilt over the fact that we feel we aren't good enough. 

What we aren't good enough at or for doesn't really matter in the moment. It could be something completely unrelated to horses (it often is) but those feelings of inadequacy are overwhelming to a lot of us. We grow up being told we should be better, we should work harder, we aren't enough, we aren't worthy: one doesn't have to use any of those specific phrases to conjure up lasting feelings of inadequacy in a child. We might even craft that belief ourselves having exhausted all other possibilities of why we aren't getting the support we need from the people we need it from. Once that belief is embedded it will resurface again and again and again over our lifetimes, touching every pursuit and undermining every relationship. 

And the horse sees it. He sees ALL of it. He sees it long before we even get to the pasture gate. And none of it bothers him in the least so long as we don't place our burdens on him. We inevitably do if we aren't aware, and this is where we get into trouble. This is where we start to grow the anger monster with our horses. 

I believe this about even the most seemingly rotten of people. It's the blessing (sometimes the curse) of being highly empathetic: you tend to be able to find the good in all people and if you can't see the good then you will see all of the broken places within in them that have led them down the path they are on presently. It doesn't mean you condone their behavior but you can understand it. 

The best advice I've ever heard when it comes to dealing with the anger monster and horses came from Tom Curtin. The clinic participants were all gathered around as he talked to us. One gal implied a question when she mentioned that she sometimes felt frustrated when she couldn't get something working with her horse. Tom's face got real solemn; he sat back in his saddle, placing a hand behind him to rub his gelding's rump. "If you feel yourself gettin' mad at your horse you ain't gonna be of any use to him, so you best get off and go get an ice cream or somethin'." Some participants chuckled - there was an ice cream stand within walking distance of the farm we were at. The rest of us saw how serious he was and knew what he was really saying: he wasn't shaming anyone for getting frustrated, but pointing out that once you are you don't have much business working with horses in that moment. You'd be better off leaving it for another day - the horse will be fine.