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My life and practice took an interesting turn the day I decided to bring my horse to work. I made the leap from being a traditional psychotherapist with a nice office in town to offering Equine Assisted Psychotherapy (EAP) in my own backyard. Working from home with my equine partners is now a growing and inspired part of my general private practice. Little did I realize that along the way, I would have to stretch in the most uncomfortable ways, both personally and professionally. Looking back, I laugh at some of my discomfort and marvel at the rewards this change has brought to my practice and my life.

.... EAP is an experiential therapy modality that involves specifically designed activities with horses and clients to promote self-awareness, insight, and behavior changes. These activities typically involve the client interacting with the horse rather than riding. They groom, lead, and move the horse with non-verbal communication. Themes, metaphors and parallels to the client’s life emerge while processing the outcome of the activity. The sessions take place in my beautiful “back pasture” and on rainy days, in the old crooked barn. My new partners are my two aging gelding horses, Sundance and Blackjack, and my horse professional, Kerry. EAP is always done in a team approach, with a mental health professional, who focuses on the therapeutic process, and a horse professional, who focuses on the horses. His or her role is to ensure safety and provide insight to what these very intuitive animals bring to the session. I have experienced many remarkable and unforgettable moments where the horse seems to know exactly how to push a person’s buttons, or how to be loving at just the right time.

Horses had only been a childhood fantasy until 2000. That year, my husband and I bought a farmhouse in Michigan, and much to our delight it came with a horse and two goats. Before even packing up to move, I started researching everything “horse” and found a whole community of people incorporating horses with therapy. In our first year at our new home, my husband and I participated in a 3-weekend Spirit Horse workshop facilitated by Horses of Hope from Baxter, Kansas. We participated in equine exercises as clients and were deeply moved and inspired by the horse’s ability to elicit deep personal insights. I came away from this experience believing in the power of equus, and felt energized and highly motivated to somehow incorporate horses in my professional practice.

Soon I learned about EAGALA (Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association), an international organization that trains and certifies professionals in the practice of EAP. Before I knew it, I found myself in a dusty arena with loose horses getting my first “un-training” in EAP. The sights, sounds, and smells of the whole experience were a refreshing and welcome departure from the sometimes stoic feel of traditional psychotherapy seminars. The founders of EAGALA, Greg Kersten and Lynn Thomas, stress getting out of the way and letting the horses do “their thing,” letting go of your agenda, and allowing things to unfold; hence, un-training. Their approach and philosophy aligned well with my training in humanistic psychology and I wanted to get started with this exciting and out-of-the-box approach in my practice.

Getting started required that I find a “horse professional” to partner with. I had no idea how to go about that since I had very little horse background. I also had to get over the fact that clients would be coming to my home for their session. I truly had to “un-train” myself from much of what I had learned about clinical boundaries, control of the therapeutic environment, and my professional perspective. I would have to stretch to do this work, but it pulled at me so strongly that I couldn’t turn back.

So, I stretched!

Every therapist has struggled with boundaries from time to time, and I am no exception. I had always been able to manage these issues in supervision. This, however, seemed big.

First of all, clients would be coming to my home, since this is where my equine partners live. It’s a rustic farm, with no bathroom in the barn. When clients need to use the facilities, they have to come into my house, go through the mudroom and kitchen to get to the bathroom. This made me hyper-aware of the clutter in the mudroom and the paw prints on the kitchen floor and I found myself frantically cleaning the night before each EAP day. I also began to feel increasingly responsible for the maintenance of the grounds; weed-wacking, mowing, mucking pastures, and fixing up the “waiting room,” two chairs strategically placed under a shady walnut tree in the front yard. Lots of personal energy went into trying to maintain professional boundaries at my home “office.”

The EAGALA model for EAP requires that a horse professional be present for all sessions. Inviting another person into the client’s private space was a big stretch for me. How do you even begin to find such a person and then have them share in the client’s therapeutic process? How will my clients react to this new addition? How will I react? Luckily, I found the perfect partner, a young woman with a lifetime of horse experience who is also easy-going, intuitive, and compassionate toward the clients. However, she has no mental health training, much like I have no horse background.

The boundaries between personal space and professional office have become blurred. For example, my husband is Vice President of sales and marketing for a local microbrewery, so beer is a staple item commonly found in our household. Obviously, I would never have alcohol at my office. One anecdote illustrating the challenge of maintaining a professional space at my private residence involves one of my long-time EAP clients. Unbeknownst to me, she had started using the garage refrigerator to keep her soda cool during our hot summer sessions. The client happens to be a recovering alcoholic and this refrigerator happens to be the “beer-fridge.” She never spoke of the beer, but I was horrified when I saw her take her Diet Coke from our beer-laden refrigerator.

Some of my clients surprise me by requesting to volunteer in the barn. They can’t get enough of the horses and the natural environment. They are willing to clean stalls, groom horses, weed pastures, anything just to be around more often. Of course, I should be happy for the help, but at first, I was resistant to open myself up to dual relationships because I have always held firm standards in this area. I spent long hours agonizing over whether to let this shift occur and was grateful for my colleagues’ suggestions and the insight I gained in supervision. The main thing I have to sort out in each case is whether this added relationship is going to clinically benefit the client. Sometimes, volunteering can be an opportunity for a client to learn about responsibility or it can simply provide stress relief and a sense of peace for a client who lives in a chaotic environment. I am amazed at the ways the added “farm time” can support a person in their growth. One adolescent client, on the cusp of turning 18 and being launched from her home, had dropped out of school, fought authority figures, and engaged in self-destructive rages. Although, she had never been accountable to herself or anyone else, she took an interest in the horses and asked for a job mucking stalls. Having now worked in my barn for eight months, she has only missed one day of work. She is learning to communicate with adults, and has matured significantly. This young woman will now have a good reference and some job skills that therapy alone could not provide. Because I stretched and opened up my boundaries, this teenager is better equipped to make it on her own. I continue to consider and evaluate each client’s appeal for more time to spend on my farm outside of therapy and allow my boundaries for dual relationships to evolve appropriately.

So, am I happy with my decision to bring my horses to work? Of course. There have been many obstacles, all of which have made me stretch both personally and professionally, and all give me stories and experience to share with others. In the next installment of this article I will discuss many of the rewards EAP has brought both to my clients and me, the challenges of giving up control, and how it has changed my professional perspective.

January
2006
Volume II ~ Issue 1