The Power of the Herd (47 page)

While official studies don't mention it, the rampant epidemic of callous predatory behavior and shame in the workplace alone could explain many of the emotional symptoms listed above. The high cost of depression, therefore, is not an individual challenge. It's a call for
all people
to elevate their interpersonal, emotional- and social-intelligence, and leadership skills — yet another reason to move from a “survival of the fittest,” “every man for himself” orientation to a mutual aid, “everyone is valued” and “everyone is responsible for our success” mentality.

But let's get back to the individual for a moment. In her article “Depression in the Workplace,” Mary Sherman reports that in more than 80 percent of cases, treatment is effective, offering at least some degree of relief.
“Treatment,” she notes, “includes medication, short-term talk therapy
, or a combination of both.”

A pilot study on equine-facilitated therapy led by one of my colleagues, fellow Eponaquest instructor, horse trainer, and licensed social worker Leigh Shambo, showed even higher rates of success with a more challenging population — namely, abuse survivors with complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Six women who had previously either refused, or failed to benefit from, traditional group therapy showed significant, enduring improvements in depression and dissociation after a mere ten weekly two-hour sessions combining nonriding horse activities with related group process work and life skills educational components. A full article on the results was published in the flagship journal of the Federation for Horses in Training and Education International, in the 2010 issue.

“They had all experienced physical and/or sexual abuse during childhood, with at least one woman surviving a violent rape as an adult,” Leigh told me after completing the study cosponsored by her Human-Equine Alliances for Learning (HEAL) nonprofit and Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, Washington. “Despite years of medication and outpatient counseling,” said
Leigh, “their anxiety was so intense that some were afraid to leave the house. Without the skills or the courage to go out and build new relationships, they felt overwhelming despair.”

Leigh led a clinical research team of three, including her colleague Susan Seely and researcher Heather Vonderfecht. Standardized measures were taken at four stages during the process (before, during, and at the close of the program, and four months after the program ended). Depression scores, which were in the moderate-to-severe range at the beginning, were in the low end of mild depression by the final session. At the four-month follow-up point after the program ended,
all
the women were in the
normal, nondepressed range.

The earlier, personal-development-oriented version of the Emotional Message Chart that was first presented in my 2003 book
Riding between the Worlds
turned out to be a key factor in Shambo's horse-facilitated therapy sessions. “Jennifer,” a woman with Asperger's syndrome (a high-functioning form of autism), had been in treatment, on antidepressants, most of her life. “We were going over the chart, discussing the messages behind the various emotions,” Shambo remembers. “When we got to depression, she looked at me in the strangest way, and asked, ‘Do you mean to tell me that my depression could have a
meaning?'
It was a life-changing moment for her and for the other women. It turns out that they were under the impression, conveyed somehow through the standard medical system, that if they were ‘cured,' they'd never experience troubling emotions.”

A year after the 2006 study ended, Shambo met up with Jennifer again. “She told me she hadn't been depressed a single day in that entire time,” Shambo marvels. “When she felt what would have normally been a debilitating surge of emotion, one that previously led to crippling anxiety, she used the emotional message chart to decipher the meaning behind it. As she accessed that information in a thoughtful and empowered way, her mood would shift and she could go on about her day.”

All the participants in Shambo's study made significant life changes. By learning how to set boundaries with a thousand-pound animal, the women were able to confront husbands and other family members in productive ways. By developing the courage and assertiveness to direct the horses to perform various moves on the ground, several gained the confidence to go back to school.

Together these women practiced new, stronger ways of being, and they witnessed each other's success. As one woman wrote in her evaluation, “The learning didn't stop when the group did, either. I learned valuable skills for living that I use every day. The horses have so much to teach, if we only let them!”

Studies on employee attitudes toward depression show that many refuse to seek treatment because they fear it will affect promotions and other future employment opportunities. They're also wary of confidentiality (regarding any discussion related to depression or other possible mental health issues) when meeting with bosses or enrolling in corporate-subsidized counseling programs, revealing concerns about how others will see them, in some cases justifiably worried that opportunistic coworkers will use this vulnerability against them — adding even more anxiety to the chronic anxiety already associated with this complex condition.

Yet while depression seems like weakness or resignation, it actually holds tremendous untapped energy. People in this debilitating state often feel selfconscious, dim-witted, and embarrassed by their predicament. Yet according to Karla McLaren, depression is nothing to be ashamed of. In her audio book
Becoming an Empath
(and subsequent other books), she calls it “the stop sign of the soul.” This “ingenious stagnation” takes over when people refuse, over an extended period, to acknowledge the wisdom behind “outlawed” emotions like anger, fear, sadness, and grief.

While some depressions
do
result from chemical imbalance (and respond well to antidepressants as a result) many cases stem from a deep-seated, intuitive objection to major life choices. After repeated warnings, the psyche finally hinders our compulsive reenactment of destructive patterns by draining all energy to move forward in the current direction. According to McLaren, people who can't engage this protective mechanism blindly stumble into situations endangering their health, their sanity, and their purpose in life:
“In a world where we're taught to ignore our emotions
, dreams, and true passions, where we enter blindly into the wrong relationships and the wrong jobs, depression is our emergency brake.”

One of the most efficient ways out of this emotional quagmire is to ask two questions: What activities or relationships drain my energy? and What new direction gives me energy? Severely depressed people may need medication to bring their baseline up high enough to even ask these questions. If they get the message and begin to move forward in a soul-replenishing new direction, they may no longer need biochemical support, as numerous people I've worked with over the years can attest after gaining significant emotional- and socialintelligence and empowerment skills from working with the horses.

For most people, however, the difficulty lies in accepting the answers. Sometimes, depression leads a lawyer to pursue photography, a seemingly irrational
or, at the very least, “irresponsible” impulse for a man born into a family of attorneys. Sometimes, it demands that a battered woman leave her husband, even though everyone else thinks he's the nicest guy in the world.

As I mentioned in previous books, a bout of depression in the early 1990s mysteriously pushed me away from a successful, rather glamorous career as a music critic toward the initially vague notion of working with horses to help people. At first, it seemed ridiculous to switch from radio and print journalism to the equestrian arts. I resisted for months. Some wise, persistent force finally squelched my skepticism by shutting off all power to the safe, ego-satisfying activities with which I identified myself. It got to the point that I had to down an entire pot of coffee to write a single music review, and even then my mind was sluggish and full of fog. Yet whenever I managed to drag myself out to the barn, I seemed to have endless enthusiasm for cleaning stalls, grooming horses, and riding in the desert heat. So many creative ideas and insights would flood my brain when I was relaxing with the herd that I kept a notebook in the tack room. The research I did during the seven years leading up to publishing
The Tao of Equus
spanned subjects that seemed to have no practical purpose at the time. Yet all I had to do was follow the burning need to know, and I was blessed with endless energy and concentration.

If depression's message were so easy to accept, the psyche wouldn't have to resort to such tactics — and that's the genius behind the stagnation. After months of lying listlessly in a darkened room, the attorney finally steps out to shoot some pictures. His wife and parents are thrilled to see him take an interest in something, anything. “What the hell,” they say. “Let's buy him a new camera!”

Depression is the soul's last-ditch effort to assert itself in a climate that fosters a rigid, socially sanctioned persona. It works for horses too. In
Way of the Horse: Equine Archetypes for Self-Discovery,
I told the story of two depressed horses I'd worked with: a shy and flighty cow horse named Noche, and a Thoroughbred named Magic who resisted racing, but not for lack of talent. A number of high-powered leaders have since told me that these anecdotes, more than any others, helped them to embrace the wisdom of their own depression when they inexplicably lost their drive to excel in a career they once found energizing and fulfilling.

Magic loved her trainer, Sally, and would run like the wind whenever this favored human was on her back, passing all the other horses with ease. Yet it was unrealistic for them enter formal races together. Sally was pushing forty, and while still in phenomenal shape, she was quite a bit taller and heavier than the average jockey. Still, whenever a professional was lifted into the saddle, the
mare just wouldn't perform no matter how hard she was ridden, or beaten, to the finish line. The investors who owned this expensive horse fired Sally and brought in a new coach. By the end of the season, the filly was dangerously thin and listless. Finally, Magic's owners decided to cut their losses, lowering the filly's price enough to let Sally buy her. The mare “miraculously” recovered, and the two went on to excel at eventing, a field in which many horse-and-rider teams forge a close, harmonious bond.

Magic's depression demonstrated what she couldn't negotiate in words — she wanted to be with Sally and no one else, no matter how much money other people invested in her or what their expectations were. Most depressed mounts, however, don't have such an obvious goal. My old cow horse Noche had never seen a human develop a real relationship with his kind. Where he came from, ranch horses were tools. If he didn't remain stoic when the girth was cinched tightly, or break into a gallop when he was spurred, there was hell to pay.

For several years, I thought that if I gave this “poor abused” gelding a lot of carrots, massages, and love, he would come out of his disconnected, lop-eared state, but it was slow going. Reading Karla McLaren's notions about depression in humans, I came up with a novel idea. What if I helped Noche reclaim the wisdom behind those so-called negative emotions he had been punished for expressing? What if I taught him to gently, respectfully set boundaries of his own? What if when he pinned his ears ever so slightly, I cinched the girth more slowly, groomed him more gently in those ticklish spots, or maybe not at all, if he didn't absolutely need to be brushed there.

When Noche pawed the ground in frustration at the hitching post, what if I negotiated with him rather than following the conventional practice of leaving him tied an extra half hour for his insolence? It was reasonable that he stand quietly for tacking up. But what if I were talking on my cell phone, ignoring the fact that we had just finished a long, immensely satisfying trail ride? Noche's objection in that case would be justified, signaling that I should call this person back later — after I'd removed the saddle, hosed the sweaty horse off, and turned him loose to eat some fresh grass. And what would happen if I respected his fear? What if when this solid, experienced trail horse shied, I heeded the warning, rather than yelling “stupid horse” and whipping him with the reins? By slowing down, I might avoid getting thrown when we encountered a rattlesnake around the next bend. By taking another route in response to the horse's alarm, I might never find out what the threat was, but I'd be assured of a pleasant ride.

As it turned out, the benefits of collaborating with Noche's previously outlawed emotions outweighed any advice I'd received about being the intractable
leader in all possible situations. Because I listened to the mustang, he was more willing to enter new and uncertain situations with me. His eyes grew brighter. He began to stand up for himself with other horses, eventually becoming a leader in his own right. He whinnied when I came to the barn, making obvious efforts to draw me to his pasture, ready for whatever adventure we might undertake that day. He ate more heartily; he even took an obvious liking to a few of the mares and proceeded to woo them like a stallion. He transformed from a worn-down old cow horse to a proud, spirited, trustworthy friend.

People treat people like workhorses too. Depression is our natural reaction to the long-term suppression of significant emotions and dreams. The next time you're overtaken by that gray, listless mood, try listening to it. Remember, however, that the way out of depression sometimes involves the least rational, least socially acceptable option you feel drawn to — if it
were
acceptable, you'd already be doing what you love with the full support of family and friends.