Throughout my life I have read of rape headlines and always thought – I am so lucky – it would never be me. At 5'10" with more strength than most men, the last thing I worried about was being raped!
When I was 24 I learned that this preconception of mine was a load of crap and that your strength is nothing to you when you are unconscious. I had gone with my new, super talented and super quirky horse back to the place I bought him from for some training and help getting to know him - what was supposed to be an educational and amazing few days were certainily educational – but not in the way I expected!!
After the first day I was invited to have some food and drinks with the boys that worked at the yard that evening, I went along and things got out of hand quite quickly. A BBQ and then games with drinking fines ensued, I remember feeling pretty drunk and excusing myself to check the horse before going to bed. One of the guys came with me to see the horse, nothing happened between us, then I went to bed in my horsebox on my own.
I woke up the next morning and was immediately mystified - I was wearing different clothes than I had been the night before. I was also lying on the seat of the horsebox as I had, apparently been too drunk to either climb up to the luton or pull the bed out.
There was something really odd going on here, but my mind did not jump straight to rape as I could not remember anything and had my own preconceptions of what rape actually was. There was no fight, no struggle - so could it be rape?
As I was trying to piece things together I realised that I felt funny. I kept ignoring it but then I found a condom wrapper and used condom and a flood of emotions erupted as I realised that someone had raped me while I was sleeping. In my horsebox. Anger, injustice, guilt, self-blame and shame all quickly gave way to numbness.
I pieced things together as subtly as I could (which on hindsight really was not very subtly whatsoever), spoke to the yard owner, called my mum and called the police who picked me up drove me an hour up to Aberdeen where I sat freezing for hours. This was cringingly embarrassing for me – I was never a fan of talking to anyone about sex that much – and now I had to talk to my mum and the police about sex that I did not even want to have had!
I was fingerprinted, checked by a doctor and interviewed. I left the police station 8 hours later feeling like I was the criminal for having been drunk and unable to defend myself, the man who raped me did a runner and justice was never realised - this was almost as damaging as what he did to me at the time.
While I had been at the police station, the police had taken evidence from the horsebox and left it with a gaping hole in it’s upholstery… I got my horse and with my head hung low and shrouded in feelings of guilt and shame. I put him in the box and went home, having to stop a few times as the tears and sobbing were verging on making it dangerous to drive as I kept realising that it had actually all happened.
The horse, the subsequent patch of the chair and my negative emotions were glaring daily reminders of how worthless I was. I did not particularly want to go anywhere in the horsebox – whenever we went in it, I could not help dark thoughts entering my brain. I felt so incredibly broken and worthless as I crept slowly towards depression and further away from the success that drove me previously.
I developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This made being out alone, especially in the dark a crippling experience. Worrying that the man behind was following me, avoiding being in the company of just one man, avoiding going out, especially to busy places – one night I did go out with friends 5 years later - a guy pinched my bum and my reaction was so quick and violent that I almost broke his hand… So all was not good in Mandyland for quite a bit and others suffered for it.
My pent-up emotions were making me angrier and angrier at myself and the world. Over the years I tried therapy and counselling but did not get from it what I wanted so I continued as best I could, looking to online places where I felt I could get the support I needed. This helped a little but did not really scratch the surface of what I needed to start my healing. Many online sources were giving me what I now see as the wrong advice which did more harm than good at the time encouraging me to alienate my friends and family.
I would read other people's stories with admiration that they could speak out about what had affected their lives - it helped me so much at the time to know other people had gone through similar things to me and found their way out of the other side - but I still had no voice of my own and the thought of telling my story brought me out in floods of sweat and tears as I struggled to keep my head above the water.
Life continued in a downward spiral – I gradually lost my love of horses and in 2012 sold the ones I could, loaned out the rest, finally selling my last in 2014. I always felt embarrassed and ashamed that the horsey community knew something so personal about me, I was suffering constant lower back pain, I was not getting the results I desired with the horses and I was fed up of pouring money into something that I bearly liked, never mind loved anymore.
By summer 2017, I was so tired and was on the verge of giving up on life. I I was living at 100% pain with herniated L4/5 discs, had no get up or go and was really depressed with the prognosis I had been given from the doctor that the pain would not even think of subsiding for 3 to 6 months. I struggled to even take the dogs out for a walk and had had to quit my job as a dive instructor.
I bloated hugely to the point of looking 6 months pregnant after every meal and was constantly losing weight and down to my all-time lowest weight of around 60 kilos. I felt sick most of the time, could not sleep for more than 2 or 3 hours at a time and was extremely moody and argumentative which also was accompanied with never ending guilt about said moods and arguments.
I spent every moment sweating as a response to my anxiety and felt like giving up. I felt that my family did not like or care about me, my friends had all but fallen away and the guilt about what my poor boyfriend had to put up with ate me up every moment. I was on the verge of dumping him so I did not have to live with the guilt that I was experiencing. I knew what a nightmare I was being but had no power to stop it. I felt like the world no longer had anything to give me and that really, if this was life - do I want to still have it?
And then my miracle happened. I found Pedro Montoya, who had done the Proprioceptive - Deep Tendon Reflex courses and was beginning to implement it alongside his Pilates lessons. He started with my back pain which in one session he reduced from 100% to 5%. I was amazed, but it slowly crept back over days to around 25-50% pain that fluctuated. With return visits he soon made me realise that this part of my pain was not actually anything to do with my physical structure, but my emotions which unknown to me at that time are intrinsically linked.
Using P-DTR, Pedro showed me that my adrenals were not functioning well and this was creating muscular pain and extreme tiredness. He showed me that I had intolerances to sugar, milk and wheat and these were causing my bloating - and that these intolerances were neurological and then he changed them!!
The following is a list of the things that I learned about my body from him that helped me start the initial stage of healing and ultimately my path to now:
Whenever I touched the skin (with my fingers or tongue) of fruit or vegetables (even organic) my central nervous system crashed, but when I took the skin off the fruit inside was ok for me to touch and eat. This was all being caused by pesticides used in the growing process. He also showed me that if I cleaned the fruit with salt and vinegar that this was greatly reduced!
When I felt foggy and super low it was likely food based. If I washed my mouth and scraped my tongue a few times I would probably feel a lot better as it removed the remnants of the food.
The moisturiser that I was slathering on my skin twice a day was debilitating my central nervous system due to the chemicals – coconut oil agreed with my skin far better.
The toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner and soap I was using were debilitating my central nervous system – chemicals and fluoride.
The air freshener in the bathroom was debilitating my central nervous system – I have since learned that these are often endocrine disrupting and literally SO bad for health.
When I thought of certain people that I had unhealed emotions around, and certain events, such as the rape, my central nervous system crashed
When I ate sugar my central nervous system crashed.
A smell that reminded me of a specific person that I had a lot of emotional problems with was debilitating my central nervous system.
My previous facial trauma from 10 and 20 years ago were still debilitating my central nervous system and creating my back pain.
The fabric softener I was using was debilitating my central nervous system.
My negative thoughts were debilitating my central nervous system.
I was so astounded at how much insight this therapy gave me in to my life that I wanted to learn more. As I started to reduce the number of things having a negative effect on my central nervous system, I started to see an increase in energy and the pain decrease more and more.
There were still some niggles and as I saw some emotions I had treated using P-DTR, but not all of them, return - I found out that some emotions are too big to be healed with a neurological treatment. Some emotions actually are there for us to learn lessons from by taking them apart, finding the silver lining, the blessing and the lesson. Instead of allocating blame to someone it was time to step up and take responsibility for my happiness.
I realised that the feelings I was having about others were actually how I felt about myself - I did not like myself, so I projected that I did not like others, and they did not like me back!! My lack of self-love made it impossible for me to love and share in others’ lives and as I worked on healing the wounds that created the lack then happiness began to enter my life and my spark began to return.
By living my pain and anxiety, I had been allowing it to be in control - and that by taking one small step each day that I was relinquishing that control and moving towards the life that I wanted. I remember the first step I took - instead of focusing on all that is wrong and bad, find the silver lining. There is always a silver lining, I was told, wouldn’t it feel better to focus on that?
This was truly the turning point for my mind as I realised this was a very true statement, and that with a shift in mindset that it was a much better way to live my life.
If you could have £1,000,000 today or £1 and double it every day for a year– which would you choose? The inclination is to take the larger sum, but actually the £1 doubled totals £10,737,418.24!!! Now make that money life changes - just making a small change every day leads to more change than you can possibly imagine in a really short time!
Fast forward to the here and now - I am currently incredibly grateful for my journey... The worst experience of my life has created the best experiences by far.
Now, fear has no place in my life. The debilitating feeling that permanently rippled through my bones and muscles does not bother me anymore. I choose to love myself, I choose to love others and let others love me. These choices allow me to heal and grow and have brought so many positive changes in my life, that 2 years ago I never believed would be possible.
I am doing something that I love, having returned to horses with answers that nobody else can provide. I help both horses and their owners to have a better experience with each other which is incredibly rewarding and a way that I never dreamed I wold be involved with horses. I experience joy daily - sometimes at the smallest of things. Laughter lights up my day and I am approaching some ground breaking discoveries that will really change how we maintian and work withour horses.
If your pain does not disappear 3-6 months post-injury with conventional treatment, it is important to ask – why? If the tissues are healed, why am I still experiencing pain? Is it physical or emotional or a combination?
Get in touch with your pain – notice if the pain or energy levels fluctuate with your day to day activities? If so, what do you think is the trigger?
PainLess Equestrian Therapy is dedicated to helping equestrian athletes conquer the pain and emotions that are produced from negative past experiences to produce the best results possible in every area of their life.
Get in touch to have a chat about how you can turn the negativity in to positive experiences.
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