Is it possible to fail therapy? What therapy do I try when my words fail me?
Have you ever felt like you’re flunking therapy? Have you ever felt like you can’t make progress in your therapeutic setting? Or, that you can’t connect with your therapist?
Or perhaps you connect just fine, and you already know the questions your therapist is going to ask you. And you don’t want to go there but you don’t know why.
If you are achievement oriented or goal oriented, then not achieving your therapy goals can feel very frustrating and disheartening. Evaluating progress in therapy is really important. For example: Maybe you felt the pain point and you reached out for help working through the issues. Maybe you are really ready to do the work. But if you don’t feel big changes quickly and efficiently, it can feel like a waste of time.
If your go-to strategy is pushing through and pushing things away, it can be very frustrating when you feel like you are flunking therapy. It can feel like you’re not getting anywhere in therapy, or that this type of therapy is not helping your anxiety and depression, or just like you’re not getting the outcome that they were hoping. And, as this New York Times article points out, you already know that “high-functioning anxiety” is not a real diagnosis but a hashtag that covers up for that constant feeling of hyper-vigilance that you can not shake.
Why don’t I have the words to explain the root of my anxiety, grief, or depression?
Why don’t I have the words to explain what’s going on for me and why am I do anxious? We hear this a lot at Beachwood. Our response is; this is all about where and how trauma is stored in the body and mind.
When we experience things that overwhelm our ability to cope in the moment, the experience is stored in the sub-conscious part of our brain as trauma. We get through it however we can and the younger we are the more likely that is through fight, flight, or freeze.
And the younger we are, the less likely we are to be able to speak. We literally are too young to have the words to explain how our whole body experienced that overwhelming thing.
We also might be left with an all-encompassing feeling of hyper-vigilance, or anxiety that we are missing something important and need to be alert. As Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. wrote in The Body Keeps the Score, “traumatic experiences do leave traces… on our minds and emotions, on our capacity for joy and intimacy, and even on our biology and immune systems.”
What to do when your current therapy isn’t helping? You don’t need many words to try Integrative Equine Therapy with Beachwood’s horses.
Exploring new approaches when you get stuck with your current therapy is often the best approach to helping you find what therapy will help you. As the State of Mental Health in America report details for 2023, most adults will either give up on therapy if they can’t find access to an approach that helps when different issues arise. For example, at Beachwood Integrative Equine Therapy, we help you get to the heart of what’s going on when you don’t have the words.
Beachwood’s Integrative Equine Therapy protocol is a unique form of equine therapy that is not about riding or caring for the horses. Working with the horses and with an Integrative Equine Therapist can give you the breakthrough that you’re looking for when you are in that stuck place, and you need something to change.
Searching for Some Best Practices for Anxiety Therapy? Integrative Equine Therapy could be the Experience that helps.
So, if you feel as if you’re flunking therapy and you feel as if you’re not achieving what you’re supposed to achieve, there is help. Some of the best practices for finding alternative therapy for anxiety, trauma, grief, stress, and depression include somatic, full-body, mind-body-spirit, experiential therapies to allow trapped trauma to move and be processed. In fact, Nature Magazine publish articles on whole field of research just on the benefits from deep and slow breathing on anxiety in young and older adults.
Why does Integrative Equine Therapy help with trapped trauma and anxiety? The horses are fight or flight animals and when they feel safe, we pick up on that sense of safety. Beachwood’s horses create a safe space that we very quickly recognize. That holistic, mind-body-spirit connection makes the part of us that’s holding the trauma recognize that safety. Horses also show us where in our body we’re holding the trauma, and even help us to notice that we have been chronically holding traumatic experiences in our bodies.
At Beachwood, clients sometimes ask, are there any negative side-effects from equine therapy? We always say, there are no negative side-effects of integrative equine therapy and in fact, many clients have told us this experience has been life changing. Working with the horses at Beachwood is a how you can build connections between where you’re holding trauma and why we’re holding it at bay. The Integrative Equine Therapy process can help you to feel the profound relief of finally making those connections and building the new neural pathway to the conscious part of our brain.
Why do people come to Beachwood to experience Integrative Equine Therapy?
By the time most people are ready to start therapy, there’s often enough pain associated that we really need to fix things. We need to move past sticking points, and not get stuck with a single approach if it’s not helping us. Clients who come to Beachwood tell us that Integrative Equine Therapy is so helpful because it supports other approaches and its efficient and effective at helping them find the path forward again.
People chose to heal with Beachwood’s horses when they want move forward and build neural pathways that are permanent. People chose to heal with Integrative Equine Therapy when they want their current therapy to soak in and become more effective. Perhaps you already know that moving, being in nature, connecting with the horses, and not having to re-tell old stories is the way forward for you? Perhaps you’d like visit Beachwood for an Intensive (7 sessions over 4 or 5 days) or come for some weekly sessions to help move past the sticking point for you now?
Contact Beachwood on 1-877-788-4325 and figure out if healing with the Integrative Equine Therapy horses is right for you at this point in your healing journey. We have Beachwood Centers in Davis, California; West Palm Beach, Florida; Prince Frederick, Maryland (near Washington D.C.); West Grove, Pennsylvania; and, Charlestown, Rhode Island (near Newport, RI).