According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), only 39% of adults in the U.S. feel emotionally close to others. Historically loneliness and isolation have been associated with older adults. Typically older adults are more likely to lose contact with loved ones due to death and their adult children are preoccupied with their own lives. Yet, the prevalence of loneliness and isolation has grown significantly among young adults as well. Further, loneliness and disconnection are amplified by unaddressed trauma. Thus, the prevalence of loneliness and its impact on well-being speaks to the significance of connection and the need for equine therapy for trauma recovery.
At The Guest House, we know a traumatic experience leaves a permanent mark on you. That permanent mark of trauma often manifests itself as disconnection from the self and others. Moreover, when you are overwhelmed by the pains of trauma it can contribute to self-defeating thinking and behavior patterns. Thus, you deserve access to support that addresses your specific experiences and needs to dismantle the harm of trauma. Holistic trauma-specific like equine therapy for trauma recovery can be the right approach for you.
However, you may question how equine therapy for trauma can be a viable therapy for recovery. What does loneliness and thus connection have to do with self-defeating thinking and behaviors? How are trauma, substance use disorder (SUD), and other mental health disorders? Expanding your awareness of human bonding can support understanding trauma’s impact on SUD and mental health challenges. Moreover, awareness of human bonding will also highlight the value of equine therapy for trauma recovery.
What Is Human Bonding?
Human bonding or social bonding is a behavior in which people search for and develop close interpersonal relationships with each other. Social bonding is not built on monetary or leverage-based reward. Rather healthy social bonding does not have a direct benefit to the involved parties, other than the behavior of connecting being rewarding in itself.
Furthermore, as noted in “Social Bonding” from Michigan State University, social bonding is naturally rewarding behaviors among certain species like voles and humans. These long-term attachments can be found in different types of relationships, including paired bonding with a romantic partner or parental bonding with children. In fact, social bonding is vital to human survival as the social ties you hold with others can impact your well-being.
Importance of Social Connection and Trust
The HHS notes that social connection is the size and diversity of your social network and your role within that network. Moreover, social connection is the function of your relationships and their positive or negative qualities. As noted by the National Institute of Health (NIH) in “Care and Connection”, humans are naturally social creatures. Not only are humans social creatures, but they thrive on social connection physically and psychologically. Further, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states, social connectedness reflects the continuum of individual and group needs in meeting social connection needs.
The continuum of social connection needs is built on the number, quality, and variety of relationships you have and want in your life. Overall, social connectedness with others creates a sense of belonging and leaves you feeling supported, loved, cared for, and valued. In addition, to how staying connected makes you feel in your relationships, it is also a fundamental social determinant for positive health outcomes. Listed below are some of the ways fostering social connections can support individual and community well-being:
- Reduces the risk of chronic and serious health conditions
- Heart disease
- Stroke
- High blood pressure
- Immune system issues
- Alzheimer’s disease
- Dementia
- Depression
- Anxiety disorders
- Improves your ability to engage in healthy behaviors
- Better able to manage stress
- Manage depression and anxiety symptoms
- Form nutritious eating habits
- Get regular physical activity
- Build a healthy sleep routine and get quality sleep
- Helps communities thrive together
- Builds connections among community members
- Decreases social isolation and loneliness
- Strengthens community bonds by encouraging community members to give back
- Supports the overall health, well-being, safety, and resilience of the community
Despite the value social connections can offer individuals and communities, not all social connections are positive. As the NIH points out in “Building Social Bonds,” relationships exist on a spectrum from healthy to unhealthy to abusive. Healthy relationships with family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and others can contribute to positive mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Whereas, unhealthy relationships can contribute to harming your mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
Yet, how can you recognize when the social connection in your life is healthy, unhealthy, and abusive? Recognizing healthy social connections is built on how those connections make the people in those relationships feel. Listed below are some ways to recognize healthy, unhealthy, and abusive relationships:
- Healthy social relationships:
- You feel good being around the people in your life
- Each person listens to each other
- You feel safe sharing your thoughts and feelings
- Each person values and trust each other
- Unhealthy and abusive social relationships:
- During disagreements, they resort to personal attacks
- They blame you when something they say or do makes you feel bad
- You constantly feel like your thoughts, feelings, and opinions are not valued
- “You’re too sensitive.”
- They constantly put you down and try to control you
- You experience physical, sexual, emotional, or verbal abuse from your relationships
- They say hurtful things, withhold affection, or neglect you
- You are prevented from spending time with others in your social network like family and friends
Although conflict is normal and can even be a healthy part of relationships, your relationships should never make you feel less than others. Looking at the differences between healthy, unhealthy, and abusive relationships highlights the importance of trust in social connectedness. Connection is not only about proximity or interacting with each other; trust is a fundamental component of building and sustaining social connections with others. As the HHS notes, trust is your expectation of the positive intent and benevolence found in the actions of other people and groups. Through social connectedness trust is established and nurtured.
Yet, how is trust established among different groups of people? According to Frontiers in Psychology, trust is a principle force that binds society together. Whether implicit or explicit, trust is a necessary and reciprocal facet that supports building and maintaining mutually respectful relationships. Moreover, trust helps inform how people behave toward the unknown and known people they interact with.
Some of the benefits of trust in social relationships include:
- Effective communication
- Greater cooperation
- Increases social cohesion and social support
- Improves health and social functioning
- Supports economic prosperity
However, when trust is broken or impaired, it can be detrimental to well-being. As previously mentioned, the social ties you form with others not only support overall well-being but can also act as a protective factor. The quality of the relationships you form, especially early in life with a primary caregiver can protect you from developing unhealthy relationships. Thus, exposure to pervasive trauma at any point in life, but especially in early childhood can impair social connection and trust. Expanding on your understanding of trauma’s impact on connection and trust can highlight the benefit of equine therapy for trauma recovery.
How Trauma Impacts Connection and Trust
Trauma can manifest as self-defeating thinking and behavior patterns like mental health disorders and SUD. In particular, mental health disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are common trauma-related disorders. Although many are highly resilient to the long-term consequences of trauma, for others symptoms can lead to significant impairment. As the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) states, most survivors will experience common initial reactions to trauma. Some common trauma reactions include exhaustion, confusion, sadness, anxiety, agitation, numbness, and dissociation.
However, trauma symptoms become more concerning when you experience continuous distress, severe dissociation, and intense intrusive thoughts even when you are safe. The distress of trauma-related conditions is overwhelming and impairs individual functioning and relationship dynamics. Moreover, there is a greater risk of impairment from trauma due to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), which can include childhood trauma. A lack of high-quality support and examples of healthy behaviors early in your life continues to impact how you deal with adversity throughout your life. In particular, the Annuls of Medicine notes, that childhood trauma can contribute to the development of dysfunctional patterns of emotions.
Dysfunctional patterns of emotions can make it difficult to regulate your emotions and connect with others. Therefore, poor access to healthy behavior patterns and adaptive coping mechanisms makes you more likely to repeat learned maladaptive patterns. Further, even when you have a healthy support network other risk factors for trauma-related conditions can overwhelm you. Trauma disrupts your sense of self and shatters your sense of safety and trust in yourself and others. When trauma impairs your sense of trust and safety, it becomes easier to engage in unhealthy thinking and behavior patterns.
For example, as the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) notes, trauma-related conditions like PTSD symptoms can create problems with trust. Additionally, trauma-related conditions can make it difficult to talk about negative thoughts and feelings. Unaddressed challenges with trauma can leave you feeling deeply unsafe in the world. Although the world is not inherently safe, living in that kind of mindset is not sustainable for long-term well-being. As noted in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology, most people exist in an assumptive world mindset.
An assumptive world is a fundamental assumption that allows people to engage with the world around them. Moreover, the assumptive world is a set of core beliefs. Thus, an assumptive world influences who you are and what the world around you is. Additionally, an assumptive world is how you make sense of yourself, the world, and your place in it.
When the world behaves as you expect it to, it helps you perceive a healthy worldview. You can find a balance between what you do and what you get out of your place in the world. Thus, in an assumptive world, you believe the world is a reasonably safe, predictable, benevolent, and meaningful place to live in. Yet, trauma can severely disrupt your sense of balance and shatter your fundamental assumptions about yourself, others, and the world.
Listed below are some of the ways trauma and an associated loss of security can impede your relationships:
- Changes the way you think about yourself, others, and the world around you
- “I cannot trust myself or others.”
- “No one understands how I feel or what I’m going through.”
- Impairs trust
- Increases feelings of distance
- Can make you avoid closeness
- Pushes people away
- Creates problems with loved ones
- You stop attending or doing the activities you once enjoyed
- Reduces closeness
- Disrupts communication
- Impedes problem-solving skills
- Triggers numbness
- Difficulties relaxing or being intimate
- Feeling a greater need to protect loved ones
- Can come across as intense, demanding, and or controlling
- Unable to concentrate on other’s needs
- Difficulties regulating your emotions and behaviors
Looking at the way trauma can harm your relationships speaks to its overwhelming nature. Trauma is devastating as it can shatter core beliefs and impair well-being. However, the harm trauma can cause also speaks to the value of equine therapy for trauma recovery. Yet, how can equine therapy for trauma be an effective modality for trauma-specific challenges?
Uncovering the Benefits of Equine Therapy for Trauma
Several different factors contribute to the benefits of equine therapy for trauma recovery. Some of the foundational benefits of equine therapy for trauma are found in social bonding and trust building between humans and horses. Many often think of love and bonding as a uniquely human practice. However, social bonding is something that can transcend a single species to be found in relationships between humans and animals. Horses in particular share the capacity for strong social connection with humans.
Understanding the value of equine therapy for trauma and other disorders like PTSD and social anxiety starts with awareness of the equine–human partnership. As noted in Nursing Open, horses have shared a close relationship with humans in which horses have supported physical, emotional, and psychosocial wellness since 5 B.C. Horses share a strong connection with humans, from body‐to‐body contact to their capacity for understanding and empathizing with human emotions. Listed below are some of the ways equine therapy for trauma can help heal various disorders and conditions:
- Improves self-esteem and self-confidence
- Reduces anxiety and depression
- Encourages empowerment and assertiveness
- Supports independence and competency
- Creates feelings of freedom
- Supports adaptability
- Encourages emotional regulation and impulse control
- Improves social skills and problem-solving skills
- Enhances connection
- Expands emotional awareness
- Teaches mindfulness skills and the value of vulnerability
- Builds trust in yourself and others
When you bond with a horse in equine therapy, you can rebuild trust in yourself and with others in your life. Thus, by discovering or rediscovering skills like communication and emotional awareness, you can dismantle the pains of trauma.
Finding Equine Therapy for Trauma Recovery at The Guest House
At The Guest House, we know trauma and self-defeating behaviors can strip you of your ability to form healthy and constructive interpersonal bonds. Thus, we are committed to providing holistic trauma-specific treatment modalities like equine therapy for trauma recovery. Through trauma-specific equine therapy, you can discover your capacity for love, trust, and care in companionship with horses. You are reminded in your relationship with horses in equine therapy, that you are safe, loved, cared for, and valued. Then with support, you can transfer the skills you learn from bonding with horses to your human relationships.
We know forming healthy mutually supportive connections in your relationships is foundational for fostering a sense of belonging to heal. Therefore, we utilize a wide range of holistic and therapeutic modalities like equine therapy to help you learn how to rebuild those interpersonal bonds and nurture healthy relationships. Trauma does not have to fracture your relationships or weigh you down from living a meaningful life in recovery. With support in a nonjudgmental and loving space, you can build the tools needed to thrive in long-term recovery.
Social bonding is a vital and naturally rewarding aspect of human relationships. Social connectedness supports a sense of belonging, feeling supported, loved, cared for, and valued. Moreover, social connection and trust in your relationships also encourage mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Yet, trauma can disrupt social connection and increase challenges with SUD and other mental health disorders. Trauma can shatter your sense of trust and safety in yourself, others, and the world. However, equine therapy for trauma recovery can support dismantling the harm of trauma. Humans have an innate bond with horses through non-verbal communication and empathy. Thus, horses can help you rediscover your capacity for love and trust. Call The Guest House at (855) 483-7800 to start healing today.