Susanne A. Hays is a licensed marriage and family therapist whose office rooms are in an unusual place: her barn. The arrangement puts her and her clients close to her horses, which provide a key therapeutic tool.Among the therapies Hays offers is Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy, or EFP, which involves interaction with horses. The idea, as explained on the website of the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship International, is that the horse acts as a giant biofeedback machine, ìproviding the client and the therapist with information regarding the client’s moods and changes within those moods.î”The horse allows us to form healthy relationships,” Hays said. “This can be particularly helpful in healing from early attachment wounds and trauma.” Studies have shown that the horse initially reacts to and mirrors the human’s inner state, but eventually the human tunes into the horse’s emotional state.”As people, what we often do so well is we are pretending or have a mask on,” Hays said. “The horses are really great at helping us see what we actually feel inside.”While horses are large animals, they’re also prey animals and rely on the herd, she said, “so for them, the first thing that is essential in a relationship is that the relationship is safe.” People often put their goals over our relationships, ìand that’s when we become unsafe,î she said.The equine activities vary, Hays said. “It could be touch, it could be grooming, it could be leading. It really depends on what the person needs.” EFP can be done with one client, couples, families or groups.EFP is not the same as therapeutic riding, but Hays is also a certified therapeutic riding instructor. Volunteering at a therapeutic riding center started her on the path to becoming a therapist. “We were working with children and adults there with physical and developmental disabilities,” she said. One of those was a young man on the autism spectrum, and Hays was struck by the rapid progress he made, speaking his first words after just two rides. “It was quite remarkable,” she recalled.Hays, who grew up with horses, is from Germany, where she met her husband, now retired from the U.S. Air Force. They moved to the United States in 1992 and have lived in Black Forest since 2005.EFP, she said, is “extremely effective, especially when healing from little or big trauma.” But it’s just one therapy she offers. Hays is among just a few Somatic Experiencing Practitioners, and has completed a three-year trauma treatment training. SE looks at the whole person, and the practitioner learns to track their own and the client’s central nervous system.What happens in trauma is that our sympathetic (arousal) and parasympathetic (calm down or freeze) nervous system is offset, Hays said. “It’s like operating a car and pressing the brakes and gas pedal at the same time.” When traumatized, the client often has incomplete fight or flight responses,”which need to be completed and discharged.”Through the SE lens, Hays also offers EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), art therapy and sand play/tray therapy, among others. “Sand is great for sensory integration and lends itself to covering, uncovering, externalizing and gaining a sense of control over a situation that was out of control,” according to Hays’ website.As an example of sand-play therapy, she points to a child who might have worries after being in a car accident, and is ìhyper-vigilant.” That child might crash toy cars together or bury them in the sand. “Then some superhero comes to the rescue and helps them out. This is one way that an incomplete flight or fight†response can be completed ó the child is able to do the rescuing, and the people in the car are no longer stuck and fearful, but escaped and are now safe. We are basically aiming at reprocessing the event to put it in the past.”The property itself provides a calming and therapeutic environment, with the wind whispering among the trees, hawks flying overhead and occasionally a deer drinking at the waterfall.”I love it here, especially now that everything is kind of growing back and coming back, and the houses are rebuilt after the fire,î Hays said. The barn housing her office is new; the old one was destroyed in the 2013 Black Forest fire, which also melted a cover over the round pen. But the house was spared. “My flowers in the window boxes were still blooming,” Hays said.To learn more about her practice, visit http://pegasus-healingtrauma.com.
