WATCH: Armed forces veteran with PTSD and hypervigilance says ‘absolutely amazing’ equine therapy has helped him to relax

Eddie from east Belfast was speaking at the launch of a new veterans mental health project, You Matter, initiated by Veterans Commissioner Danny Kinahan. 

The You Matter project aims to prevent suicides among veterans by teaching them ways to cope with the impact of war zone trauma and its effects on quality of life and relationships.

It is delivered by Inspire Wellbeing in conjunction with the Armed Forces Covenant, the NI Veterans’ Support Office, Action Mental Health, Brooke House Health and the Wellbeing Centre in Fermanagh.

One of the innovative therapies offered is equine therapy, delivered by Horses for People in Comber.

Eddie from east Belfast served in the armed forces for 24 years and later worked at HMP Hydebank and HMP Maghaberry during the recent murders of several officers. As a result he suffers from Post traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and hypervigilance - being extremely alert for danger at all times.

“Things were getting worse, I was getting nasty and bad tempered at home and couldn’t sleep,” he told the News Letter.

He saw an advert for people who suffered mental illness and was accepted onto the pilot programme with Inspire, which gave him the option to try equine therapy.

“It was absolutely amazing,” he said.

He has become very good friends with other veterans from Coleraine, Ballymena, Lisburn Portadown, Ards and Belfast who have also done the course.

“We call ourselves a band of brothers and we all look after each other now.”

“When we arrived some people were scared stiff of the horses. But horses are so therapeutic it is unreal because they are very much like humans.”

Both have the same ‘fight or flight’ response to threats, but horses soon forget the stress whereas people hold onto the memories and fear, he says. “That was just me.”

“The biggest thing a horse brings is calmness. A horse helps you to calm down.”

He has seen veterans terrified of horses at the beginning but becoming completely calm within an hour

“My hypervigilance has definitely lessened through the therapy.”

Normally if he was in a hotel he would never sit with him back to the door, but that all changed in a recent visit to Belfast. “On this day I did just that because I had learned to relax.”

He used to walk with his shoulders lifted up around his neck because he was so tense - but no longer. “Everything just scared me,” he said.

Michael Donaldson is a case manager with the project. A former army medic, he has been a mental health nurse for 30 years who has worked with serving soldiers in NI and Plymouth.

He likens the service offered by You Matter to unpacking a rucksack which is very badly packed and uncomfortable to carry. He then helps veterans repack the contents more neatly.

“You will still be carrying the same weight but it is better packed,” he adds.

Treatments may include high intensity Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), equine therapy and mindfulness, depending on the needs.

“Equine therapy is fantastic,” he said, while admitting he was very sceptical at first.

“Horses see you for what you are. You might think you are presenting quite normally but you might actually be presenting quite aggressively. So you can change how you present and the horse will react differently towards. What you are doing is learning how you present to others and how others take you.”

June Burgess is the proprietor of Horses For People, which provides the equine therapy in project. She has a background in competitive equine sports - during which she studied sports psychology - and business management.

Being asked to mentor the Ulster Rugby team to find careers after professional sport further prompted her to study life coaching. Now her Horses for People business incorporates all three strands of her experience: horses, life coaching and sports psychology.

“The equine therapy part of the veterans service is a two day workshop which puts the guys through a series of interactions and exercises with the horses,” she told the News Letter.

“Veterans learn more about themselves, about how other people perceive them, they discover their strengths and their skills. These have quite often been buried for some time because they have been unrealistically negative about how good they are at certain aspects of life.

“So we highlight all of those and add more tools to those to help them to cope better with the obstacles of life as they come along in the future.

“Horses are perfect to do all that because they respond in black and white to all the interactions we have with them.”

The courses teach veterans to reach a balanced level of assertiveness - but not aggression - to connect with the horse.

“You can’t fool a horse and you can’t coax it to do something. You have to be really solid in yourself - they are always reading your intention and if you are not clear about what you are asking them to do then they won’t respond.

“So it is all about being very authentic, about being yourself and having a very clear intention for what you are doing.” 

She adds: “Everybody wants to connect with the horse but you can’t force it to interact, so you have got to work out ways of adapting what you are doing to get that connection.”

Some veterans are initially sceptical and tell her they will probably leave before lunch on the first day.

“But they never do,” she says. “As soon as they get down into the arena from the very first exercise, they are captivated with the beauty of the horse, wanting to connect with it - and with the beautiful environment.”

Veterans Commissioner Danny Kinahan said the launch of ‘You Matter’ was a key day in his role, in particular because he was so impacted by the suicide of young Co Down veteran Brett Savage in 2020, just after he took up office.

“I realised I had to learn something so we pulled together all the mental health groups into a committee, partly to teach me,” he said. “The result was the You Matter project.”

While most veterans do not need support, the project is absolutely “essential” to ensuring that every veteran in NI who does knows that help is available, he said.

Veterans and their families can access You Matter on 03308 089 294.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our advertisers - and consequently the revenue we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you taking out a digital subscription.

Subscribe to newsletter.co.uk and enjoy unlimited access to the best Northern Ireland and UK news and information online and on our app. With a digital subscription, you can read more than 5 articles, see fewer ads, enjoy faster load times, and get access to exclusive newsletters and content. Visit https://www.newsletter.co.uk/subscriptions now to sign up.

Our journalism costs money and we rely on advertising, print and digital revenues to help to support them. By supporting us, we are able to support you in providing trusted, fact-checked content for this website.

Ben Lowry

Editor