According to the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association’s fundamentals, the concept of being "untrained" is about letting go of past assumptions so that new perspectives may be understood. Being untrained presents an exciting, but sometimes challenging, experience.
In thinking about your own life, or life in general, there are many things on which we need to be "untrained." One of the most prevalent, and surprisingly devastating, concepts that need to be retrained is the belief in fairy tales. There are many couples who are trudging through their marriage, trying to understand why it is not everything they expected it to be. At the same time, there are couples who are simply waiting for the other shoe to drop because their marriage, to them, does represent the fairytale. The reality is that “Prince Charming,” the way he is portrayed in fairy tales such as Cinderella and Snow White, does not really exist. First of all, there is no perfectly handsome, perfectly well-mannered, perfectly well-spoken, and perfectly emotionally stable person in the world. Secondly, your Prince Charming should be defined by your own thoughts, beliefs, desires, needs, and wants concerning your life partner. Lastly, we don't need to be rescued all the time. Having Prince Charming come and sweep you off your feet, put you on a white horse, and riding off into the sunset is not necessarily the most effective way to handle the problems in your life.
In actuality, being swept up and taken away is considered running -- at least from a mental health perspective. So often in life, we give our power away. We give away our power to make decisions. We give away our power when we believe that we are not strong enough to handle the obstacles that life puts in our path. This is not to say that we must face all our problems alone. What would I sound like, as a mental health professional, endorsing that? We should always feel empowered to stand up to any obstacle we face in life; and we should also feel empowered to ask for help when we need it. We do not necessarily embody "strength" when we suffer silently as life beats us to a pulp. In my opinion, it takes much more strength to reach out and admit our brokenness and our need for help than it does to waste away in a frenetic cloud of chaos and emotional destruction.
So as we reach back to teach the young people, what is it that we need to train them up to do? My vote is that we no longer train them to believe that life is a fairytale. Life is definitely an incredibly exciting and suspenseful story. It is not, however, always a story with a happy ending. Life is an ongoing process from our first breath to our last. The story we create in between those two breaths defines who we are, what we stand for, and the legacy that we leave behind.
I would almost rather that my daughter believe in a superhero, like Wonder Woman, than to rest her hopes on finding a Prince Charming to take her away from all life's problems. I would rather my son believe in Black Vulcan than to believe that all he has to do is ride up a woman on his "white horse" and take her off into the sunset. I want my kids to know that not only do they have a personal responsibility to take care of themselves and to not compromise their morals and values; but that, in a committed relationship; they also have a responsibility to their partner. The responsibility that we have for our significant other is not to fix all their problems. The responsibility we have to them is to simply be present, empathetic, genuine, and truthful. Our responsibility, as life partners, friends, and parents, is to be a source of support and refuge, simply put. Sometimes, just giving someone permission to not have to be right, to not have to be strong, to not have to find a solution; but simply to feel and sit with their emotions, is all a person really needs.
So, as I sat in my training class for equine assisted psychotherapy, I was repeatedly challenged to let go of everything I thought I knew and believed to be right, or effective, in psychotherapy; and to train my mind to understand that there are other options, there are other treatments, and there are other ways of doing things that can promote personal growth, even when we least expect it.
What do you need to un-train your mind about? What beliefs or life perspectives might you need to let go of? What stops you from opening your mind to different alternatives and life perspectives? What stops you from challenging your own beliefs -- those beliefs that you've had since you can remember, but perhaps don't even remember why you believe them?
Every day we wake up affords us an opportunity to learn something new. Sometimes, we learn something new about a particular subject or topic; and sometimes, we learn something new about the very person we see in the mirror. It’s in those moments, when we watch our own transformation that our life changes forever. It's in those moments, when we embrace that transformation that we learn to love ourselves even more.
