Equine Assisted Psychotherapy is a therapeutic approach that uses a relationship with horses and therapist(s) to help people understand their current difficulties. Understanding horses, and how they manage situations and relationships can help us in therapy to learn a great deal about ourselves, give ideas for new ways of being and help us feel safe to explore difficult experiences and emotions.  All of our therapy work is underpinned by this approach.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) helps to recognise that our thoughts, feelings and actions are often linked, and can lead to negative cycles which are hard to break. CBT tends to focus on what helps in the here and now, and developing strategies to changes these cycles. We find that using horses can help clients to explore these patterns, and feel safer to try out new techniques.

When we experience upsetting and traumatic events the thoughts, feelings and memories we have about those events can get stuck, and our brains struggle to process and store these away. It can be hard to move on from them. The aim of EMDR is to help the brain to process and store away these memories. One way of doing this in EMDR is to move our eyes from one side to the other while thinking about the difficult event or memory. This is not new for you body; in fact you move your eyes every night from side to side when you are dreaming. This is called REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep cycle. We will help you to do this and explain this fully to you before starting. One of the good things about this therapy is that you don't have to talk about what you are thinking of in detail if you don't feel able to. Horses can really help in this process and help clients feel safe and grounded in the present, whilst thinking about memories from the past.

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) is an approach that balances understanding and hearing how difficult things are in the moment, and working towards change. It is an approach that focuses heavily on building skills in mindfulness, emotion regulation, coping in times of significant distress and relationship skills. Many of these skills are highly relevant to horses; our horses often are brilliant at demonstrating these, and can help clients feel safe to practice.