Riding Instructor magazine Spring 2020

Sport psychology

Tips for Thinking About— and Handling— Burnout

By Laura King, CHt, NLP & Life Coach

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here’s a lot of talk about burnout lately. And although most of the articles and studies I’ve seen pertain to the corporate workplace, I see many similarities in my own work and in the equestrian world. The essence is that the individual (hereafter, the trainer) has long been the responsible party regarding their burnout. They shoulder the responsibility; it’s their “fault.” Now, individuals of course do have some control over their workloads.

The refreshing part of the conversation is about context. Training doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It occurs in a societal, economic, and personal context that influences the individual. Why is this so important?

Trainers are under a profound amount of pressure and they frequently develop anxiety as a result. They have to manage barns, riders, and horses, and the work is physical and mental and emotional. They wear—and are expected to wear—so many hats. The load the industry puts on them is enormous and if they become exhausted, stressed out and burned out, it’s unfair to see that as some kind of personal weakness or failure.

Trainers are in a culture that is about getting in the ring and performing at peak levels and they are constantly being judged— and I’m not just talking about by judges.

The culture is so competitive and judgmental that trainers can’t help but internalize that pressure and pass it along to their riders and horses.

Three Tips for Handling Burnout 1. Give Your Self-Talk a Makeover As a hypnotherapist, you’d think I do most of the talking. And I do at one point— 24

Spring 2020 | Riding Instructor

the hypnosis part. But in order for me to determine exactly what the trainer in my chair needs, I have to listen first. Every person is unique. I have to listen for how the trainer talks about their job, their relationships, their industry, their routines, their thoughts . . . themselves.

What I hear most in burnout cases is a person who frames what they do as “stressful,” “difficult.” And they do it in an industry with “impossible standards.” Now, if you know anything about self-talk and/ or about framing, you know that how you speak about things—how you name them— is a crucial component to how your mind and body responds or reacts to them. If you speak about your job as stressful, difficult, and having impossible standards, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage before you leave the house in the morning.

Language creates a shift in the way we respond. The simple act of replacing negative words with positive ones goes a long way to changing our experience. Believe it or not, I swap out the word “easy” in the sentences of many trainers and that alone creates positive change.

2. Self-Care The language we use when we speak about our jobs and our conditions is part of selfcare in that it influences our experience and we can be more or less at ease depending on the language we use. Other crucial aspects of self-care are:

a. Nutrition. Remember to enjoy plenty of protein! b. Good sleep habits. c. Allow yourself to be authentic with friends and let them support you! d. Exercise in a restorative way. Your work can be very physical. How about including some gentle movement into your daily routine? e. Self-compassion. This can be challenging. When you spend most of your day judging yourself and others, it’s can be difficult to have compassion. Like sleep and good nutrition, though, self-compassion is a habit that can be cultivated.

3. Self-Examination I could count this as self-care, but it’s so important that I want to address is on its own. All of us—not just trainers—all of us need to develop a habit of examining what we do, what we think, how we speak, and our underlying intentions for our work and relationships. This is a colossal practice to ask anyone to do if they’re not already used to it. It can be facilitated through talk, writing, and even meditation. But if you don’t have clarity about all of the Whys of what you are doing, your life is just passing by without your intention. You’re just a passenger and not the driver.

Go back to your original Why for training. You might be surprised by what you find. When I do this with trainers a variety of things happen, but none of them are