Of the many untruths I have to push back against when working with riders, this one is a biggie: the idea that in order to get over your fear of riding after a fall or runaway or crash, you have to push through it.

You don’t. And you probably shouldn’t.

Any rider who has tried to push through her fear of riding by just going ahead and riding surely knows what it’s like to ride with your stomach in your throat. It’s a horrible experience—and unsafe too. Because if you’re that nervous, you’re likely to be distracted and indecisive while riding, stiff in your body, and slow to respond to your horse’s movements. Your horse will pick up on your anxiety, only increasing the odds that the “bad thing”—another fall or crash or bolt—will happen.

Let’s take a look at “Nancy’s” experience trying to recover from a bad fall after she tried to leave out a stride in a hunter derby when her horse took a second look. The poor horse swam for a moment before landing on top of a pile of birch branches and brush. He was fine, but she wasn’t. She got clearance to ride two months later, once her broken collarbone had healed, but she was still left with a mild concussion and soft tissue soreness. She was also left with some trepidation about riding to the gappy distance.

Nancy’s trainer starts her off slowly, with smaller fences, related distances, only a few oxers. She notices, however, that Nancy is riding very conservatively. She’s underpaced and doing all the adds. Actually, she’s only doing the adds. Anxious about missing her spots, Nancy is now riding backwards, holding to all her fences, staying out too long in the corners. She’s lost the confidence that for years had enabled her to pick up a forward canter and send her horse down the lines.

Nancy’s trainer is patient at first, but then grows frustrated after a few weeks with Nancy’s seemingly slow return to her prior level of competence and courage. “Nancy,” the trainer implores, “c’mon, you’ve done this a million times. Just send him forward, and you’ll be fine.”

Well, on that point, the trainer is right. If Nancy were to send her horse forward, she probably would be fine, with everything more or less coming up just right. Such is the significance of pace and conviction.

The problem, however, is that Nancy can’t send her horse forward even if she would have wanted to because her brain is saying, “Are ya kidding me? Did we not just crash and burn the last time you ‘sent’ him? What if it happens again? What if you miss again?”

The Default Setting

Instincts for self-survival will always trump a rider’s deference to her trainer and devotion to her sport. You can say anything you want to say to Nancy, and her response will be the same—a cautious, tentative ride. Not forever but for a while, until Nancy believes once again that whatever comes up on course—a spook, a missed distance—will be something she can manage safely. That’s why practicing getting “perfect” distances is counterproductive—a rider has to know that she can manage the inevitable imperfect one because that’s the one she’s thinking about as she nervously canters down a line.

We all know the risks of riding horses and buy into them up front. The idea of getting hurt settles into the back of our mind, and we don’t really think of it again—until something happens. Now it’s front and center and won’t budge. This is worlds apart from performance anxiety, where we worry about making mistakes, making fools of ourselves, making our trainers disappointed in us. That kind of anxiety may also cause us to ride too conservatively, but it’s for fear of making a mistake, not of getting hurt.

Performance anxiety is something you can push through, especially if you know how to compensate for the ways your anxiety compromises or changes your riding. The too-conservative rider, what I call an “under-rider,” can push through the anxiety to conscientiously ride more decisively or assertively. The “over-rider,” impulsive, and sender of mixed messages to her horse, similarly can push through her anxiety to conscientiously ride more mindfully, more diplomatically.

But fear is a different beast, immune to the urgency of professional riders with horses to showcase, trainers with horses to sell, amateurs chasing end-of-year points. The default setting for our bodies and brains is self-preservation, and we have robust internal systems working at all times to keep us safe. Fear is but a messenger that says to proceed with caution. Were it to speak, it’d be saying, “Just doing my job, ma’am.”

In my experience, trying to ride through your fear won’t get you past it. It likely will make it a lot worse. A better way to overcome fears that arise on the heels of an accident or crash is to figure out what you would feel comfortable doing, and then you do that to start, and no more. The immediate goal is to ride comfortably, without your stomach in your throat, without the images of impending doom circulating in your head, without the anxiety that makes you pull out of jumps, never leave the indoor, or forego any gait faster than a sitting trot.

And you stay there, doing that “comfortable” thing over and over until you actually get a little hungry for something more. Maybe you look over and see a course that’s set a little bit bigger than what you’ve been doing and say, “Yeah, that looks cool. I’d like to do that.” You’re hungry to do it, not afraid. When that next step goes well, you stay there until you start feeling hungry for the next one. Ideally, you’ve become confident again in your ability to make good decisions in the moment and, should you mess up, confident in your and your horse’s ability to still get around safely.

The mistake many riders make is rushing to return to their prior level of training or competing. I get it. You worked hard to get there and, damnit, this flukey thing happens, and all of a sudden you’re no longer making the inside turns or asking your horse for “more” (impulsion, obedience, step) because you don’t want to get him upset. That’s not a helpful dynamic between people and horses any more than it is between people.

Let’s take the example of a competent and confident dressage rider sitting on a large, powerful horse with powerful gaits. Another horse in the indoor spooks, and so does he. His startled response, combined with all that compressed energy, erupts in a bolt that unseats the rider and slams her into the corrugated metal wall. We shouldn’t be surprised to find that when she starts riding again, she is timid—but she is. “I’ve never had an issue with this horse, and all of a sudden, it’s like I’m afraid to ask him for anything,” she might say. “He gives me this weak little canter, and I’m like, ‘OK, sure, fine, I’m good with that.’ I’m not, but I’m afraid that if I ask him for more he’ll get mad and bolt again. Before my accident, I’d have bopped him in the belly with my leg and said, ‘Get on with it!’ ”

A horse that this person used to ride authoritatively now intimidates her. She always knew that he could bolt and run off, but now, remembering just how much at his mercy she was when he did do that, she finds herself over-accommodating his (poor) work ethic. He’s the same horse, no more likely to bolt than he was before, but the dynamic between them has changed. This rider’s recovery lies in her figuring out where she could once again ride comfortably and with authority so she can reverse the problematic dynamic.

Maybe it’s only at a walk and sitting trot that she’s able to unapologetically ask the horse to bend, to half-halt, to extend without feeling a rise in her anxiety level. If she did begin to feel anxious, it would be her cue to back it down. It’s much more important that her horse once again recognize the rider’s presence and command than he practice his half-passes.

This is the point where some riders get impatient. Eager to move forward, they fall victim to all the pop psych sound bites that look great on paper and on Instagram but have no real bearing on recovery or performance. One such bite is trying to convince themselves “it” won’t happen again. Yes, it was a freak occurrence, and it may never. But it could. Accidents on horseback bust up our illusions of control. In their wake, we are forced to reckon with the truth that bad things can happen.

Imploring riders to relax doesn’t work either. You just can’t manhandle anxiety or manufacture a calm emotional state out of fearful one. And here’s my favorite—telling a rider that she should ignore her “negative” thoughts. Honestly, there are no such things as negative thoughts. There are only thoughts that we like, and thoughts that we don’t like. It’s the ones we don’t like that get labeled negative, but that does nothing to disempower them. And this is a good thing, really. Because those thoughts are usually twitches of our better judgment, the ones we should most be listening to.

For sure there are riders who don’t get shaken at all after an incident. They have so much credit in the bank, so to speak, so many solid, confidence-building experiences that the account “withdrawal” from a crash or bolt changes nothing. There are also riders who have successfully pushed through their fear and gotten back to it quickly. They return to the sport after a crushing blow no worse the wear; they’ll swear by their balls-to-the-walls method and tell you to do the same. But it’s not for everyone; it’s for a select few who thrive under do-or-die conditions, and that’s not most of us. And those who lose, lose big. Sadly, so do their horses.

“There are no such things as negative thoughts. There are only thoughts that we like, and thoughts that we don’t like.”

There are riders as well who are, unfortunately, one bad crash away from never riding again. No one wants to hear that, but I believe and have seen it to be true. In between are the majority of riders, anxious and uncomfortable, but eager to get back to where they were.

There’s no magic to recovering from a fear of physical harm after getting hurt while riding, but there is common sense and an appreciation of how we, as human beings, are wired. Other sports psychology consultants may have ways of moving riders through the process of recovery more quickly than I describe in this article. But I speak to what I’ve seen and experienced in my 57 years riding, and my 30-plus years as a clinical and sport psychologist.

Telling riders that they have to push through their fear puts them at odds with their inner experience and leaves them feeling unsupported. If they find themselves unable to push through, they could easily feel as though they’re not trying hard enough, and I believe that nothing is further from the truth. For children, the experience is even worse. Sensitive to disappointing parents and trainers, kids who are told to push through their fear tend to do it, unhappily. For the most part, their anxiety doesn’t get better, and many will stop riding, or jumping.

It’s the trainers and riders who approach the problem from the same side of the fence who do well. They have a plan incorporating a graduated return to prior levels of riding or competing. They are patient. They are not judgmental. They respect the emotional response the rider is having to the accident or incident and work to attenuate rather than dominate it. In a sport that celebrates winning, they’re the ones with the ticket.

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Janet Sasson Edgette, Psy.D., M.P.H., pioneered the application of modern performance enhancement principles to the equestrian industry. She served as a sport psychology consultant for Practical Horseman magazine for eight years and wrote a monthly column on sport psychology. She’s author of the book “Heads Up!: Practical Sports Psychology for Riders, Their Families, and Their Trainers,” which advanced the field past the limiting traditions of relaxation and imagery work, and she wrote “The Rider’s Edge: Overcoming the Psychological Challenges of Riding.” She consults to recreational, amateur and professional riders, trainers and other industry professionals and offers sport psychology seminars, keynote lectures and informal Q&A sessions. She competed in the Medal and Maclay Finals as a junior under the tutelage of Wayne Carroll. She’s shown all over the East Coast in the amateur-owner jumpers with top trainers, and she continues to ride and train with Diane Little in Marshallton, Pennsylvania. Find out more at Sportpsychforriders.com and JanetEdgette.com.