What a Horse, a Tarot Card and PTSD Taught Me About Breaking Stuck Patterns

Someone asked me recently "Have you ever consulted a psychic to help with your PTSD?"

Not exactly.

But I HAVE let a horse choose a tarot card for me in Sedona.

So....close enough :)

Lemme explain...

Back when I was in the worst of it all, desperately trying to find a way through my tsunami-induced PTSD, I tried pretty much EVERYTHING you could imagine to give me some kind of relief.

I'm talking Meditation.

Coaching.

Counselling.

Sensory deprivation tanks.

Sound therapy.

Various forms of bodywork.

At one point I even had a Hopi medicine man dancing around me with drums and chanting.

(No shit, I mean it!)

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I've always been open minded but during that phase of my life I took open-mindedness to extremes.

I guess when you’re REALLY struggling, your definition of “that sounds a bit weird” changes a fair bit, right?

So...

Among my MANY experiments on the mission to 'fix my brain' one of the weirdest experiences happened in Sedona, Arizona.

I met a horse whisperer.

Well, not just MET.

I mean, I actually booked an appointment with her as part of a bigger package of treatments.

So, when I arrived at her consulting offices (AKA 'The Stables') I was explicitly told NOT to tell her what my problem was or the solution I was seeking.

Instead, I had to walk around the stables until one of the horses 'picked me out' and I felt some kind of connection with it.

No idea what that meant.

But somehow...

...it happened.

Then this lovely, calm and quiet woman handed me a pack of beautiful cards.

Sort of like tarot cards, except every card had a different image of a horse on it.

She told me to shuffle them.

Fan them out.

Hold them in front of me.

Then THINK about the problem I was struggling with and the solution I wanted most.

So far, so weird.

Then she said “Now let the horse pick a card.”

Yeah.

I know.

I KNOW!

I remember having brief visions of some weird magic show with the bloody horse performing card tricks... honestly, it felt ridiculous.

But at this point my life had become dark enough that I was willing to try pretty much anything that might give me even a tiny bit of relief.

And let's face it, I'd already flown half way around the world and paid my money so there wasn't really much to lose by playing along.

So there I was...

...standing in a stable in Sedona...

...holding a fan of horse tarot cards...

...waiting for an actual horse to make a therapeutic decision on my behalf about what I should do next to sort out my weird ol' brain.

And (crazy as it sounds) she DID!

She nudged the cards with her nose and pushed one slightly away from the others.

Then the horse whisperer told me to put the rest aside, take a few deep breaths, then turn the card over.

So I did that too.

Slowly.

And on the card...

...was a giant TSUNAMI wave.

Crested with white horses.

Exactly like that scene in The Lord of the Rings where the river rises up against the Black Riders.

I shit you not.

The horse picked the bloody tsunami card.

I still have no explanation for that.

None.

I don’t know whether it was coincidence, pattern recognition, some clever setup I didn’t understand or something genuinely strange and unexplainable.

Or whether the horse just had an unusually developed interest in metaphor :)

But I DO know that it messed with my already messed-up mind just enough to somehow level me out a bit.

And THAT'S the bit that really stands out and interests me most.

Because one of the things I learned during that period was how dangerous it is to believe you ALREADY know what the answer is SUPPOSED to look like.

So we get attached to FAMILIAR solutions.

The SENSIBLE ones.

The RESPECTED ones.

The ones that fit neatly inside our EXISTING worldview.

Yet sometimes that worldview is PART of the problem.

Sometimes you need to try something differently enough to interrupt the pattern.

Not because weird is automatically better.

It isn’t.

Not because every unusual idea contains some hidden spiritual truth.

It doesn’t.

But because if your existing way of thinking keeps producing the SAME stuckness then more of the same thinking probably isn’t going to rescue you.

Sometimes the REAL progress you've been waiting for begins when you’re willing to admit “I don’t have a bloody CLUE how to fix this!”

Which, weirdly enough, can be one of the smartest things you ever admit.

And yeah, that CAN mean trying something unfamiliar, uncomfortable, unexpected and occasionally ridiculous.

Maybe even something you’d have pissed yourself laughing at six months earlier. (I know I would've)

The thing is, you DON'T have to believe everything.

You don’t have to become gullible.

There’s a big difference between being open-minded and being gullible.

Sometimes the pattern gets broken by some kind of profound insight.

Sometimes by a conversation you've been avoiding.

Sometimes by jumping on a flight to the other side of the world (or just walking to the coffee shop) and changing your environment.

And sometimes...

...apparently...

...by letting a horse choose your tarot card in Arizona.

I still don’t have a bloody clue what happened that day.

But I’m REALLY glad I was open-minded enough to let it happen.