What I Learned About Fear in Transylvania

Dancing between Angst and Joy on Horseback

Anna Katharina Schaffner

Saddling Up

The equestrian centre Equus Silvania, our base camp for a 6-day horse-riding trail at the foot of the Carpathian mountains, is in Sinca Noua, a three-hour drive from Bucharest. My five fellow riders and I (all women) slowly made our way along ever more winding roads towards Transylvania. We drove past derelict factory buildings, encountered numerous horse-drawn carriages transporting timber or hay, a man on a bicycle guiding a solitary cow, a one-eyed tractor in the dark. I spotted a wolf in a field at dusk. Sheep everywhere.

I felt as prepared for this trip as I could have been. My fitness levels were the highest that they have ever been, and I had taken weekly riding lessons for a couple of months. But when we all introduced ourselves to our two guides, who were assessing our skill levels and needs, I thought: Bloody hell, what have I done? In my group there were two former Irish jockeys, life-long friends and horse breeders; a completely fearless Russian who does horseback combat and stunt riding, and seems to have ridden almost every animal under the sun – yaks, mules, elephants, camels; a Dutch lady who is a certified horse guide herself. I decided fully to own my imposter feelings and said: I’m clearly the least experienced rider in this group. Please give me your safest and smallest horse. But then I added: But also let her be fast, for I do like to canter. Which is true.

Our excellent German riding guides were not just amazing trail finders but also psychologically astute match-makers – my first horse, an elegant, sensitive, and super-responsive chestnut Arabian mare, was exactly what I had asked for, the smallest and the fastest, and I felt almost immediately safe with her. After three days, we changed horses, and I was given a taller, stronger, more energetic horse. Next level challenge: every time we started to canter, I was briefly terrified by that energy and her love of speed.

On Fear Management

This trail was not just physically demanding – the last two of the seven hours we were in the saddle almost every day were no picnic. I felt pain in all sorts of strange places. But, for me, the trail was above all a mental challenge. A card-carrying neurotic, I didn’t ask whether I would like my horse, but whether my horse would like me. I also worried about fitting in with a group of strangers. But above all, I am deeply ambivalent about riding: I love it, and I feel fully and truly alive on a horse, but I also experience quite a few moments of genuine fear. Our trail included lots of long, fast canters, uphill, through pastures and fields and woods, and some gallops – our top speed was 48.7km per hour.

My fear is a fickle beast: it popped up quite randomly, often in situations that weren’t really dangerous, and then I felt fine in situations that were actually quite challenging. Sometimes, it arose in my mind because of unhelpful images, thoughts, or stories; sometimes, it manifested in my body as a sense of heightened risk, an acute, sudden awareness of my physical fragility and mortality, even as fear of death.

I accepted that fear would show its face quite regularly on this trail and was prepared for a constant dance between angst and joy. I had my tools at hand and I was prepared actively to self-regulate. Whenever I noticed fear taking over, I sat even more upright in the saddle, shoulders back. Posture regulation is a great way to manage mindset. How we physically hold ourselves affects our emotional and cognitive state. By very consciously adopting an open, tall, expansive pose, we can increase our confidence. To an extent, at least. It’s also a sensible thing to do on a horse. The straighter and the more balanced you are, the safer you sit and the more smoothly you move with your horse.

The next one is a tired point to make, but also an example of common sense, uncommon practice. When afraid, keep breathing. I concentrated on breathing deeply, slowly, and evenly. Horses are hypersensitive prey animals; they feel their riders’ physical and emotional state acutely, and they react to our breathing patterns and heart rate and other very subtle signals. Fast, shallow breathing makes them nervous; we infect them with our jitters.

Good Stories vs Bad Stories

I also told myself good stories: You’ve got this. You’ve done this many times before. You will do it well again. Your body knows all it needs to know. You love this. It’s a privilege. It’s what you longed for. I had Nina Simone’s song ‘Ain’t got no – I got life’ in my head:

I got my arms, got my hands

Got my fingers, got my legs

Got my feet, got my toes

Got my liver, got my blood…

In other words, I reminded myself of what I had: my upright posture, my steady seat, my strong legs, my feet so safely in my stirrups, my capable arms, my presence of mind, my experience, my instincts, my good relationship with my horse, my ability to regulate my state. I also switched into a hyper-present mode, my attention fully focused on the movements of my horse and on the path before me.

Did it work? Mostly. There were canters I loved, even some gallops that were truly, wildly exhilarating, that felt like pure jouissance. And there were also some moments where I thought: Just let this be over. Just let me survive this, please. But after those bad moments, there was always elation and adrenalin: I survived. I’m still standing. I’m whole. I did it, in spite of my fear.

What also felt good: When there was real challenge – my horse bucked because another horse had bolted and came galloping towards us – I remained calm and in control. But at moments when there was no real danger, just a distorted, exaggerated perception of risk in my head, I didn’t stay cool at all. And I guess that’s fear for you in a nutshell. We are all afraid of some things, and completely unafraid of others, and our fears sit on a spectrum of more or less rational, more or less justified, more or less helpful. Some are evolutionary – fear of heights, snakes, spiders, the dark, the deep – and some are wonderfully weird and unique.

Getting back on your horse

Everybody else in my group struck me as entirely fearless. But, of course, that wasn’t the case. Except for one person. One of the best riders, she got bucked off her horse once during a fast canter. It looked wild, my worst nightmare, a spectacular fall, head first, at high speed. I was right behind her and saw everything. But she simply got up, brushed herself down, and then calmly got back on her horse. ‘Part of the experience,’ she shrugged.

And that’s exactly the right attitude. If you overthink, or stop in a state of fear, you will never ride again. Just getting back on our horse, after moments of failure, injury, or humiliation, is always the best way forward. Otherwise, our world will shrink, we will become a slave to anxiety, we will become ever more avoidant and risk-averse. We will remember only the bad moments, that one fall, and forget about all the amazing times when we were safe and happy and fully in control.

When we don’t get back on the horse, our memory will become biased and selective; we will magnify and overestimate the singular bad event and tell ourselves that this bad thing is bound to happen again and again. And yet, as Donald Winnicott observed, the strangest thing about trauma is that the thing we most fear will happen to us has already happened. And we survived.

Our language is teeming with equestrian proverbs: Get off your high horse, don’t put the cart before the horse, don’t change your horse mid-race, hold your horses, riding roughshod over somebody, spurring somebody on, holding the reins too tightly or too loosely, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t force it to drink, putting someone through their paces… We know about show ponies, dark horses, one-trick ponies, hobbyhorses, workhorses. Horse metaphors are not just vivid and clear but also old and wise, because they are rooted in millennia of lived experience and close companionship with horses.