How Horses Can Help the Highly Sensitive Woman Deal with a Narcissist

Have you ever found yourself in a relationship where you lacked power, felt unheard, and found you were putting more into the relationship than you were getting out of it? You might have been dealing with a narcissist. Narcissistic behavior can be challenging to deal with and often leaves us feeling drained, weakened, and uncertain of ourselves.

At The Empowered Herd, we’ve found that horses can help women to identify narcissistic relationships, develop strength and confidence, and reclaim their lives.

Understanding Narcissism

A narcissist is a person who is focused entirely on themselves. They may appear to be fun, engaging, and even compassionate, but once you know a little bit more about them, you’ll find that the relationship is one-sided, and they will try to change the subject or refocus the conversation on them, rather than listening to your thoughts or concerns. They may minimize your worries, talk down to you, and get angry quickly.

Narcissists take advantage of fears, doubts, and a need to be accepted or to belong. Sometimes our desire to help or fix someone can lead us right into a relationship with a narcissist. Other times, we may find ourselves working with a narcissist in a professional setting, or maybe a family member is a narcissist.

A relationship with a narcissist can quickly become a toxic situation. Sensitive women may find that a narcissist is manipulating them and ignoring their personal needs and boundaries. Narcissists often attack others emotionally, and sustained emotional attacks can erode away confidence. Ultimately, a woman may find she has no control over her life or relationship, which reduces her confidence and creates even more emotional distress.

Because narcissists are emotionally controlling, it can be difficult for someone to even identify that they’re in a relationship with a narcissist. That’s where horses can help.

How Equine Assisted Coaching Helps Women Deal with Narcissists

When you’re too deep into a situation to realize how a narcissist is affecting you, horses can help you to recognize what’s really going on. When you work with horses in an equine assisted coaching situation, you’ll discover important truths about yourself, your feelings, and your reactions to situations. Horses can help you to regain important parts of yourself.

Increased Self-Awareness and Self-Respect

Unlike narcissists, horses focus entirely on you, rather than on themselves. They read every movement and signal you make, providing real-time reactions and feedback. By watching these reactions and feedback, you can learn more about the signals you’re sending, like how your tense posture makes a horse uncomfortable, or how your nervousness can make a horse move away from you.

Even more important, when you work with horses, you return to a place of power again. Despite weighing more than 1,000 pounds and being much larger than you are, horses look to you for leadership. Small movements, like an extended arm or an opened hand, can move this animal without you even having to touch it. What better way to feel powerful again?

Restored Confidence

With this restored control also comes restored confidence. By interacting with and gaining respect from a horse, you can build your confidence back up. Every exercise that you successfully perform gives you a sense of accomplishment, further building up your confidence. Exercises can be as simple as putting a halter on a horse or asking a horse to halt, back up, and turn on command. These little steps are crucial in restoring confidence.

Establishment of Personal Boundaries and Assertiveness

When you’re working with horses, you absolutely have to establish personal boundaries in order to keep yourself safe. Unlike when humans ignore your boundaries, if horses cross over into your space, it’s hard to ignore. Once you establish your boundaries again by sending the horse away from you, you can invite horses into your space. But, most importantly, you also have the power to ask them to leave again.

All of these skills and discoveries can help you to better deal with a narcissist, whether it’s finding the confidence to leave a relationship or simply finding the strength to stand your ground with a family member.

Exploring Equine Assisted Coaching

Equine assisted coaching can help highly sensitive women to identify and deal with narcissistic people in their lives, but it can also do more than that. Put equine assisted coaching to use for problem solving, team building, and more. To learn more, contact us at The Empowered Herd here. We would love to talk about how horses can help you to learn more about yourself, about others, and about how you can immediately apply what you learn to your life.