Tag Archives: Claire Dorotik

Can Equine Therapy Be Useful for Trauma Clients?

By Claire Dorotik, LMFT

“The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man.”

If this statement is really true, there should be many uses for equine psychotherapy. However, being that the field of equine psychotherapy is relatively new, do we know if this is an appropriate method of treatment for trauma clients?

Sure, there have been many alternative forms of treating trauma clients — EMDR, biofeedback, meditation, even yoga — to describe just a few. What these forms of treatment share is the task of engaging the client’s awareness of both emotional and sensory responses to traumatic events.

In doing so, these methods attempt to identify the client’s emotional personality (EP), or the part of the personality that develops in response to being emotionally overwhelmed, and provide a means through which the client can integrate the EP with the apparently normal personality (ANP), or the part of the personality that develops in order to function on a daily basis.

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Direction of Attunement in Equine Therapy, by Claire Dorotik M.A.

Horses have, for some time now, been showing promise as a complementary modality for humans experiencing psychological distress. As the unconscious guarding that is so typical of human interactions is absent from these horse-human relationships, people often develop an affinity and camaraderie with their equine partners. Especially in the case of trauma, the hallmark neurobiological changes, such as increased excitatory neurochemicals, and exaggerated startle response, tend to obfuscate human social dynamics. As these particular individuals often feel outside of the human experience, and even detached from the self, they typically find a kinship with horses that extends beyond a cognitive congruence. Physiological changes register a calming response, and mitigation of some of the trauma effects while in the presence of horses.

Similarly, several studies have indicated that human-animal touch, and the resultant syncing of mind and body responses to be integral in trauma recovery, (Brooks, 2006; Perry, 2006; Van der Kolk, 2003; Yorke, Adams & Coady, 2008). This response has been particularly strong in human-equine interactions, (Bass, Duchowny & Llabre, 2009; Davis, 2009; Schultz, Remick-Barlow & Robbins, 2007).

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NO SECRET SO CLOSE excerpt #2, by Claire Dorotik

NO SECRET SO CLOSE is the story of a the most unthinkable betrayal humanly possible — at only 24 years old, Claire Dorotik’s father has been murdered, her mother arrested, and now, in a sinister twist of fate, Claire’s mother points the finger at Claire, accusing her of killing her own father. Battling the feelings of loss, abandonment, terror, and dissociation, and also learning about them, Claire struggles to stay in her master’s program for psychotherapy. However, when Claire’s brothers also betray her and side with her mother, Claire is left all alone to care for the 18 horses she and her mother owned. As the story unfolds, what is revealed is the horses’ amazing capacity for empathy in the face of human trauma, and the almost psychic ability to provide the author with what had been taken from her. Arising from these horrifying circumstances, the most unthinkable heroes — the horses — show Claire that life is still worth living.

Excerpt #2 from NO SECRET SO CLOSE:

When I entered the house, there was no warm smell. Only the faint odor of dog pee. My mother’s dog, Simone, hadn’t taken the news lightly. She was permanently planted on the couch. Her couch. She had done this before. Whenever my mom left her alone, she would retaliate. She’d claim the couch, and adorn it with whatever she wanted. Houseplants, her dog bowl, my mom’s underwear. Alex’s friends had tried to move her. But she snapped at them. Even though she wasn’t particularly a large dog, her bite was intimidating nonetheless. She was my mother’s negotiation. After years of breeding Irish Wolfhounds and discovering that an unmanaged pack of them became aggressive toward the neighbors pets, and even the foals a few times, she thought she should try something different. Simone was a Russian Wolfhound. They are lighter and supposedly more docile. Of course it wasn’t until the last of the Wolfhounds died, five small dogs and one foal with a slashed side later, that my mother thought it might be time for a change. One of those small dogs was mine. My little Rudy, a perfect little white Maltese that I’d got from a rescue. His previous owner had died, and I felt like I had won the lottery. I had always wanted a Maltese, but you never find them at the rescues. If you do, they don’t really look like a Maltese, and the rescues are just trying to pass them off as purebred to get them adopted. I had him only six months. But I should have never brought him home for Christmas with me. Merry Christmas. All I wanted was for my mom to stop the Wolfhounds from killing other dogs, or get rid of them. But my pleas, like many things, fell on deaf ears.

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NO SECRET SO CLOSE: A True Story of a Father’s Murder, a Mother’s Betrayal, a Family Torn Apart, and the Horses That Turned It All Around, by Claire Dorotik M.A.

NO SECRET SO CLOSE is the story of a the most unthinkable betrayal humanly possible — at only 24 years old, Claire Dorotik’s father has been murdered, her mother arrested, and now, in a sinister twist of fate, Claire’s mother points the finger at Claire, accusing her of killing her own father. Battling the feelings of loss, abandonment, terror, and dissociation, and also learning about them, Claire struggles to stay in her master’s program for psychotherapy. However, when Claire’s brothers also betray her and side with her mother, Claire is left all alone to care for the 18 horses she and her mother owned. As the story unfolds, what is revealed is the horses’ amazing capacity for empathy in the face of human trauma, and the almost psychic ability to provide the author with what had been taken from her. Arising from these horrifying circumstances, the most unthinkable heroes — the horses — show Claire that life is still worth living.

Excerpt from NO SECRET SO CLOSE:

We approached the house in a tense silence. Inadvertently, I glanced at the stalls underneath. I had long since made a habit of averting my eyes from them, focusing instead on the stairs. They were just too eerie. The old wooden stairs creaked as we stepped up them simultaneously, as if, at any moment, they might give way, sending us plummeting down.

Reaching the deck overlooking the riding arena, I gazed out, wishing I could be out there.

“Come on, Claire,” Alex snapped, pulling the sliding glass door open.

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The Space between a Human and a Horse, by Claire Dorotik M.A.

While there is no debate that something clearly happens when people and horses come together, just what transpires has been described in a multitude of different ways. Some practitioners of equine therapy prefer to characterize the horse as a reflective mirror in which the person can see his/her own behavior carefully mimicked. Still others have alluded to the idea that horses “attune” to the physiological rhythms of people, thereby having a sedative affect on factors such as heart and breath rate. And others, who perhaps are just fond of horses, purport that they respond to people when they are in state of “congruence” and withdraw when they are “incongruent.” Yet for all the intrigue these often elaborate descriptions hold, do they really accurately capture what happens between horses and humans? They are, after all, our descriptions of animal behavior that is not akin to us. And perhaps in attempting to characterize the horse as something that makes sense to us, we have failed to miss the central point that the horse is a herd animal. His very safety depends of maintaining the sanctity of the herd around him, and his behavior, therefore, must make sense from that perspective. To be sure, the only equine behaviors that exist outside of this spectrum are those that we humans have created. Weaving, for one, is a perfect example. Weaving does not exist in a herd because it has no survival basis. It is not until we house a horse in a space that makes sense to us, for a time that we prefer that he begins this repetitious swaying, akin to the self-soothing rocking seen in autistic children.

So when we say that the horse “mirrors” us, we must define this from the basis of a herd animal. That is to ask, what would the survival purpose of mirroring be in a herd? Just how would this behavior preserve the contiguous nature of a herd? Reflecting another, after all, fails to send a direct message. And further, if all horses reflected one another, how would order be upheld?

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Do Horses Really Mirror People?

Claire Dorotik M.A.

In the world of equine facilitated psychotherapy, the fascination of working with an extremely large and often frightening animal, especially in a way that offers insight, and possibly healing, has held an exclusive allure for those who have come to know of this powerful therapy. Not unlike the almost magnetic draw that a great racehorse can bring to even those not familiar with horses, the art of healing through horses offers an often imperceptible gift, housed in a mysterious package. And while people lucky enough to have experienced the strange feeling of wellness, calm, and centeredness that a horse can bring have struggled for words to describe this feeling, practitioners of equine therapy have put many labels on just what it is horses can do for people. Certainly these terms have allowed some insight for people for whom horses are foreign; however, they have also struggled to accurately describe just what happens between a human and a horse. Possibly the most rudimentary of these descriptions of horse healing is that horses actually mirror people. Almost a given in the world of equine facilitated psychotherapy, the concept that horses mirror people has become so popular that it is now quite difficult to find any description of horse healing that doesn’t include this term. Yet, is there any documented research behind this idea? And if not, where did the idea really generate?

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