One of the most frustrating things about losing your riding confidence is that, very often, you still know exactly what to do.

You understand what your instructor is telling you. You know your horse is capable. You may have ridden through the same situation successfully dozens of times before. You’ve probably also tried breathing exercises, visualisation, positive self-talk and reminding yourself of everything you’ve achieved.

Then the moment arrives and your body reacts before you’ve had a chance to reason with it.

Your heart starts racing. Your muscles tighten. Your mind runs through everything that could go wrong. You might freeze, avoid the situation altogether or suddenly feel like a far less capable rider than you were five minutes earlier.

This is the part that riders often find so difficult to understand. If you know you can do something, why can’t you just get on and do it?

The honest answer is that knowing something and feeling it are not always the same thing.

When logic and emotion don’t agree

If confidence were simply a matter of thinking the right thoughts, none of us would have confidence problems.

You can know perfectly well that your horse isn’t about to bolt and still find yourself riding as though he might. You can understand that one bad experience doesn’t mean it will happen again, while your body is already bracing for it. You can hear every word your instructor is saying, but be too tense and overwhelmed to put any of it into practice.

That doesn’t make you weak, irrational or a poor rider. It means that the reaction isn’t necessarily coming from the logical, thinking part of your mind.

Sometimes there is an obvious reason for it. Perhaps you had a fall, your horse bolted, you lost control or something happened that genuinely frightened you. Sometimes it’s less clear. Confidence may have been chipped away by a succession of smaller incidents, a difficult partnership, a humiliating lesson or simply months of feeling that things weren’t going quite right.

Even watching somebody else have an accident can be enough to change the way you feel about a situation.

The event ends, but the emotional response connected to it doesn’t always update. Your logical mind knows that you are here, now, riding on a different day and perhaps even on a different horse. Another part of you is still responding to what happened before.

That is why riders that come to me are frustrated and tell me, “I know it’s ridiculous,” or, “I know I should be able to do this.” but i am still reacting as if there is a threat!

Usually, it isn’t ridiculous at all. The reaction makes sense when you understand what is driving it.

It isn’t always about a particular accident

Riding confidence can also become tangled up with how somebody sees themselves.

A rider might not consciously walk around thinking, “I’m not good enough,” but that belief can still be sitting underneath the surface. It might appear as a fear of making mistakes, a constant need to get things right, comparing yourself with other riders or feeling that everybody else is more capable than you.

Over time, “I struggled with that” can quietly become “I’m the sort of rider who struggles.”

That is an important difference.

The first describes something that happened. The second begins to feel like a fact about who you are.

Once a belief has become part of your identity, simply replacing it with a positive sentence often doesn’t touch it. You can say, “I’m a confident rider” as many times as you like, but if another part of you is quietly saying, “No, you’re not,” the words tend to bounce straight off.

So where do lessons and mindset work fit?

Rider-confidence work is sometimes discussed as though we have to choose sides: ridden coaching, mindset, sports psychology or something else.

I don’t see it like that. They have different jobs.

Good ridden coaching matters enormously. If the problem is a gap in your knowledge, skill or experience, then the right instructor is exactly what you need. Confidence should have a solid foundation. No psychological technique can replace appropriate training, a suitable horse or competent instruction.

Mindset work can help you recognise unhelpful thinking, approach situations differently and stop automatically feeding every “what if?” that enters your head.

Sports psychology can be extremely useful for performance, focus, competition nerves and recovering after mistakes.

All of these approaches can be extremely valuable, and for many riders they provide exactly the support that is needed.

IEMT simply offers another way into the problem.

It can be used as a standalone approach, or it can sit alongside ridden coaching, mindset work or sports psychology. My role isn’t to replace any of those things. It is to help with the emotional response that may still be present despite a rider understanding what to do and doing everything she reasonably can to move forward. My job is basically to work with the ‘misfiled memories’ that are keeping you stuck thinking and reacting in the same fearful way.

A rider may be receiving excellent instruction and making genuine progress, but still find that fear takes over in one particular situation. She may have learned useful mindset or performance techniques, yet struggle to access them once the almost instant and emotional fear response starts.

That is where IEMT may be helpful.

By working with the emotional response itself, IEMT can support the work the rider is already doing, or provide an alternative starting point for somebody who feels that her problem isn’t really a lack of knowledge, skill or positive thinking. If we can remove the automatic response of fear it is so much easier to get back to who you were as a rider. Most riders report how liberating it is to finally enjoy riding and feel relaxed and able to learn. I see riders of all abilities and levels of experience so it is never about how good you are but what ‘misfiled memories’ you have that are holding you back,

It isn’t a question of one approach being better than another. It is about understanding which part of the problem needs attention and finding the approach that fits the individual rider. I enjoy working alongside other professionals and regularly get referrals from coaches to help address nerves of self esteem issues that are blocking their clients enjoyment and progress with riding.

Where IEMT is different

Integral Eye Movement Technique, or IEMT, is the method I use to work with the emotional responses and identity patterns that can sit beneath a confidence problem.

It isn’t another way of teaching somebody to think positively. I’m not giving the rider more advice about how she ought to feel, and I’m not trying to persuade her that riding is completely safe.

Instead, we look at what is creating the reaction. What has happened in the past to make this person think, feel or react this way?

That may be the emotional imprint left by a fall or frightening experience. It may be a recurring feeling that appears in several different situations. It may involve a belief about being incapable, unsafe or not good enough.

IEMT uses precise questions and eye-movement patterns to work with how those experiences have been stored and how they continue to affect the person now.

You don’t have to describe every detail of what happened or spend session after session talking through the whole story. The factual memory isn’t erased and you don’t forget what you learned from the experience. The aim is to reduce the unnecessary emotional charge attached to it, so that an old reaction is no longer making today’s decisions for you.

Why this matters when you’re riding

Imagine trying to follow an instructor’s advice while your body is preparing for something to go wrong.

You’re being told to soften your hands, but every instinct is telling you to hold on. You’re asked to look ahead, while your attention is busy scanning for the next possible danger. You know that tensing your legs isn’t helping, but your body has already done it.

The instruction may be absolutely right. You may even have understood it perfectly. You just can’t use it properly while another response is running in the background.

When that underlying response changes, the coaching doesn’t become unnecessary. It often becomes much easier to use.

You can hear what is being said. You can respond to what your horse is actually doing rather than what you fear he might do. The mindset tools begin to feel more accessible because they are no longer competing with such a strong emotional reaction.

That is why I see IEMT as working alongside good instruction, mindset work and sports psychology, not in competition with them.

Perhaps you don’t need more advice

Many of the riders who come to me are knowledgeable, capable people. They’ve ridden for years. They’ve had lessons, tried the exercises and worked very hard to help themselves.

What they often haven’t been offered is a way of working directly with the reaction that keeps taking over.

IEMT isn’t about telling someone to be confident. It’s about becoming curious about why, despite everything they know, part of them still doesn’t feel safe or capable.

Sometimes the next step really is another lesson, more practice or a different way of approaching the situation.

But sometimes you already know what to do.

The part that needs attention is what happens inside you when you try to do it.