In the past couple of months, I’ve begun horse-assisted therapy at Miracles in Motion in Keene, NH. I decided to begin the work after reading about the story of Jaycee Lee Dugard, the California woman who was abducted at the age of 11 and held against her will for 18 years. One of the ways in which she and her family are working to repair trust is through horse-assisted therapy. When I first read about the therapy, I immediately realized that it was something I’d love to do. Between the trauma history of my childhood and my autistic lack of guile, trust has always been a big issue for me. Besides, I love working with farm animals and, since moving off the farm in 2008, I had been missing them a great deal. So I decided to give horse-assisted therapy a try.
Miracles in Motion exists to help children and adults with a range of goals, from trauma-related healing to working with physical, cognitive, and intellectual disabilities. As I’m finding, the therapy isn’t just helping with trust issues; it’s helping with physical balance, sensory integration, and general self-confidence as well. I absolutely love horses, but I have always been terrified of them—care of my mother, who instilled in me the fear that if I got on a horse, it would throw me off and kill me. Needless to say, I’ve overcome that fear. I’m not only able to get on a horse, but I’m also able to ride while stretching my arms in the air and twisting from side to side! If I could go to Miracles in Motion every day, I would.
A few weeks back, I had an interesting conversation with my instructors, Victoria and Frank, about how to make eye contact with horses. Victoria began by telling me that predators tend to have eyes in the front of their faces and that they stare at their prey in a very focused way. Prey animals, however, tend to have eyes on the sides of their faces, allowing for a great deal of peripheral vision that increases their safety. She encouraged me to try and look at the world like a horse by relaxing my focus and having “soft eyes” that could take in all the information in my peripheral vision. She then told me that I have to use soft eyes when looking at a horse, because if you make very focused eye contact with a horse, the horse will think you’re a predator, break eye contact, and try to get away from you. I had already noticed that making direct eye contact with a horse made the horse very uncomfortable, but I hadn’t understood why.
I immediately began to understand my own difficulties with eye contact. In American society, people tend to make eye contact somewhat aggressively. Most people do not use “soft eyes.” As an autist, I walk around the world with a very sensitive system that can feel assaulted by such things as loud music and sudden bursts of noise, nasty words, bullying behavior, deception, harshness, and so on. In other words, in the sensory and emotional world, I am more akin to vulnerable prey than aggressive predator. Even though I advocate for and defend myself in order to stay out of the role of victim, I encounter life with enough native vulnerability that what’s considered “normal” eye contact feels threatening on some level, and I instinctively avoid it. It’s not threatening in the sense that most people are predators and mean me harm; it’s threatening in a more instinctual way, such as when a horse evades eye contact with me even though I personally don’t plan to turn her into glue.
As I was talking with Victoria that day, I realized that I have no trouble making eye contact with her at all, and the more I looked into her eyes, the more I realized how soft they are. Then Frank said, “Look into my eyes and tell me how it feels.” His eyes are very soft, too, and I didn’t have a problem making eye contact with him, either. Victoria and Frank have worked with horses for most of their lives, so their eye contact is different from that of most people I have met.
The only other person with whom I can make consistent, comfortable eye contact and still manage to talk is my husband. He, too, has very soft eyes—not from being around horses, but because he’s such a gentle and non-judgmental person. I have an easier time making eye contact with family and friends than with strangers, probably because I’ve had a long enough experience of trust with them that my instincts aren’t on alert.
Any sense of being fixed by someone’s eyes, however, generally feels aversive, and I avoid it.
© 2010 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg
Cool insights, Rachel. I was in 4H, and have loved being with horses my whole life. It’s been some time, but as I recall, I didn’t make eye contact with horses either. Mostly, I just looked between their eyes. It’s interesting what you’re saying. Next time I go riding, I’ll have to check it out.
While reading, I was wistfully thinking that I wished I could talk with Frank and Victoria, and go for a ride with all of you. I’ve ridden a horse before, nearly 50 years ago! Might be too late to do it now.
My son participated, with great success, in horse therapy for several years. The eye contact revelation is interesting as I (not on the spectrum) sometimes have more trouble with sustaining eye contact than does my 12 year old son who is very much on the spectrum.
that’s interesting—have noticed my eye contact varies too, depending on how well i know someone, if i trust them or not, etc. it sounds like a great form of therapy—-fun also.
Great post as usual! Here in Ocala (we have the clain on being the horse caapital of the world). we have a number of ranches that do horse therapy. In fact between Orlando and Atlanta there are only a few places that offer any kind of theapy that arre not under exclusive contract with the state education departments. Those that are take private patients only take children so, the only therapy available is horse therapy. I have heard and seen that they have good results. I am glad you are finding the help you need.
A horse is a horse, of course, of course
And no one gets cured by a horse, of course
That is, of course, unless the horse
Is the famous Doctor Ed
Go right from the nurse and ask the horse
He’ll treat your depression and your remorse
He puts you on a steady course
Talk to Doctor Ed
Shrinks go yakkity yak a streak
And waste your time, oy vey!
But Doctor Ed will never speak
Unless your insurance won’t pay
A horse is a horse, of course, of course
And this one will get to your problem’s source
You’ve never heard of a therapy horse?
Well listen to this:
“I am Doctor Ed!”
John: LOL! I remember the Mr. Ed show. I used to love that show, although I’m really glad right now that horses don’t talk. It’s one of the reasons I’m enjoying the therapy so much.
Imagine what a horse might say (unlike Mr Ed, of course!) in response to encountering hard or soft eyes. In Gulliver’s Travels, the horses were called something like whynnmms (the sound they made) while we humans were called (appropriately enough) Yahoos — again, probably for the sounds we make. Mr. Swift knew what others have figured out: horses are far more sensitive than Yahoos. So it makes sense that we should approach them with soft eyes — and it also makes sense that we would benefit from approaching each other with those same soft eyes. Unless, of course, you’re trying to buy a car from the guy with striped pants and a cigar.
Great post. I’m happy you like horse-assisted therapy and it’s even helping you with such unexpected things as eye contact. I love animals and wish I could do some kind of animal-assisted therapy myself.
[...] Cohen-Rottenberg’s Horse-Assisted Therapy and Eye Contact first appeared at Journeys with Autism, and is republished here with permission. Rachel’s [...]