Mike Couick
Overcoming traumatic events is never easy, and in military culture, the challenge is particularly difficult. The special demands placed on service members can sometimes lead to tragic consequences like depression, divorce, drug and alcohol addiction, and suicide.
As one veteran described his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) experience, “The dreams kept coming just about every night. I would wake up with a feeling of either hopelessness or sheer terror. Oftentimes I would see the event that occurred, and the auditory and visual hallucinations didn’t stop upon waking. … I spent the next four years engaging in risky behavior. I would get home from work and take a handful of Percocet to try and make it through the night. I still wasn’t sleeping because it was terrifying to fall asleep. I had night terrors all the time. My work performance was horrible, and I didn’t care about living anymore.”
Working through his trauma proved a daunting task for this veteran until he connected with Lowcountry Equine-Assisted Psychotherapy (LEAP), a therapy program on Wadmalaw Island bringing horses and therapists together to address behavioral, emotional and psychological challenges.
While sometimes confused with therapeutic riding programs, LEAP does not teach riding. Instead, LEAP’s activities take place with the patient on the ground, engaged with the horses in ways that help clients better understand patterns of behavior and translate those insights into life-changing action.
“At LEAP, we recognize that within the military culture, traditional psychotherapy can feel like ‘just a lot of talk’ among people who value action,” says Dr. Kathleen Broughan, founder and executive director. “Service members are hands-on. They trust their experience and the people they serve with. LEAP strives to engage them in their own healing process with solutions that understand who they are, respect their culture, and meet them squarely on their own terms.”
Each session consists of a task and objectives for the patient to accomplish with a horse. The animals have a unique capacity to respond to non-verbal signals and working with them can help people better understand their problems, with the horses serving as powerful stand-ins for the challenges in a person’s life. A recent study showed that when equine-assisted psychotherapy clients connect with horses emotionally, their blood pressure, heart rate and cortisol levels go down and their oxytocin (the feel-good hormone) levels go up.
“With a condition like PTSD, it’s not just an emotional reaction to trauma, but also a physiological response, leaving the victim in fight or flight mode,” Broughan explains. “By working with horses, we have an advantage over traditional office-based therapy in that we have a large space for clients to physically work through their physiological response.”
LEAP’s therapy is so impactful that their work with military veterans recently received a significant investment from The Boeing Company to help support and expand those services.
“One of our goals at Boeing is to support programs that set veterans up for success after they leave the military,” says Jessica Jackson, Director of Boeing Global Engagement. “LEAP helps veterans heal, which is a crucial step in transitioning to the next phase of their lives—that’s why Boeing is a proud partner.”
Another proud partner is Berkeley Electric Cooperative, which donated the working arena’s lights to illuminate and extend the time therapists can work with clients, especially during the winter with its early sunset. BEC not only donated the lights, they also helped relocate and re-install the lights when LEAP moved to their new Wadmalaw Island location, showing that it sometimes takes a group of shepherds to help make a single good thing happen.
For the veteran with night terrors, the experience of working with the horses and therapists at LEAP helped shepherd him from a place of chaos to one of peace. In describing his journey, this veteran says, “I tell the story of the human condition, the spirit of a man that was on the edge of the abyss and how I overcame an ocean of misery. I detail my journey through treacherous seas … and I tell of the people who diligently manned the lighthouse, never giving up on me, knowing I was out there somewhere, trying to find my way home.”
In addition to their work with veterans, LEAP also works extensively with children, adolescents, adults and families in the Lowcountry, addressing issues like attention deficit disorder, addictive behavior, autistic spectrum disorders, domestic violence, abuse and neglect, and depression.
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Learn more about equine-assisted psychotherapy by visiting leapinsc.org.