Equine Psychotherapy

Equine psychotherapy, first begun in Europe, is a fledgling therapeutic resource for a very broad range of diagnoses. It is a powerfully effective tool in assisting clients who are fearful, anxious, depressed, angry, dissociative, or who have a variety of other emotional problems. Introducing therapeutic work with the horse to a client who is accustomed to conventional "office therapy" is, in itself, a change. Work with horses breaks through the client's defensive barriers and requires the client to develop fresh insights and new perspectives from old relationship and behavioral patterns. Work with the horse requires cooperative affective and behavioral consistency in clients who have learned a habit of thinking one way, feeling otherwise, and behaving in a manner that may be totally unrelated to either. We, as therapists, may not discern this important dissonance in the office, but the horse seems to sense the incongruity and will display confusion until the client is internally consistent.