Featured in the Arabian Horse Times
For anyone who has experienced overwhelming anxiety or panic, you know what it feels like. For those who don’t, imagine going through a tunnel, having the light turn dark around you, unable to see the light on the other side. It becomes all encompassing. It often strikes out of nowhere, with no warning. And it feels like there is nothing you can do to “snap out of it.” For some athletes and performers, these feelings often attack while they are doing their sport or art.
Performance anxiety is defined by the American Psychological Association as, “apprehension and fear of the consequences of being unable to perform a task or of performing it at a level that will raise expectations of even better task achievement.” In a sport with as much financial, emotional, and social investment as the competitive Arabian horse circuit, it is no surprise that some people in our industry can become crippled by their anxiety.
Arabian horse competitor and Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Tiffany Kurth-McNeill describes anxiety in the following way.
“Everyone experiences varying degrees of anxiety in daily life," she shared. "It's actually important to never entirely eliminate anxiety through treatment, it can be a superpower and improve performance. But, when the volume of the anxiety symptoms is too high, it can impair daily functioning and ultimately hinder performance.”
Grace Raleigh, a familiar name to the industry, is courageous enough to tell her story about performance anxiety. She describes how it ultimately kept her from the show ring – and for the most part – the barn for nearly two years. She was defeated by her anxiety for a time but had a major comeback at the recent 2024 Midsummer National Championships, where she earned a national championship and reserve national championship with her teammate Tap Out (Teddy). She is a self-described work-in-progress when it comes to her performance anxiety, but has made impressive strides in the right direction.
“I go to horse shows as escape from stressors and triggers in my everyday life,” Raleigh said. “I could go horse shows to feel good and block it all out. Then, all of a sudden, when I went to shows and those stressors and triggers were there too. It was so frustrating to not be able to enjoy my horses in the way I used to.”
Grace wanted to perform, but her circumstances got the best of her, resulting in mental and physical symptoms that kept her from showing. If she made it into the gate, she seldom finished a class. And more importantly, her trusted people at Daniel Training Center realized she was no longer having fun. And as a “fearless barn rat,” according to Julie, this lack of joy raised real concern in her specifically.
During the height of her struggles, the entire Daniel Training Center staff continued to show up for Grace in ways that they could. Julie recounts many times when they would take Grace’s horses to horse show, and they would not see the show arena. Sometimes she would come to practice, sometimes she would not. But, they were there and ready for her when and if she decided to join them.
At the 2022 Youth Nationals Julie sat down with Grace, in her concern, to suggest Grace take a step back from showing the way she was trying to. She knew that Grace needed to find her love of the horses again. They bought some broodmares to try and start breeding, keeping Grace engaged that way.
Grace did the things necessary to get herself in a healthier place with her anxiety surrounding the horses. As she walked through that journey, she says that she stayed a huge fan of Tap Out who was earning more and more notoriety in the Half Arabian Country and Show Hack divisions. At the 2023 U.S. Nationals Grace had the opportunity to make Teddy her own. She worked her confidence and comfort up to get her through some competitions in the 2024 season. She finds the same calm in Teddy as she did in JSN Manhattan (Finn), the only horse she could successfully show in the depths of her struggles.
Grace is not without her performance anxiety anymore, but she says that shifting her mindset to just try and have fun. “Now I just realize it is not as serious as my brain was making me believe,” Grace said about her mindset shift. “This is fun. I am meant to be having fun. If I am not, then what is the point? I am having so much fun again and am grateful to Julie and the whole Daniel Training Center team and family for sticking with me through this.”
“I was so present in the moments immediately following Grace and Teddy’s class,” Julie shared about the HA/AA Country Pleasure AATR 19-39 victory. “So many people who are close to us and know this part of Grace’s story congratulated her. Some trainers and fellow competitors [from that class] even got off the horses they were working or showing to be able to share that moment with us. It was really moving as a trainer to see my colleagues and other amateurs behave that way.”
Julie’s best piece of advice to trainers who may have riders who experience the same way, is to utilize this incredible community she spoke of earlier. She reflected on reaching out to Ray LaCroix when Grace was in the depths of her experience. She knew that since he had dealt with so many riders over the years, he had maybe experienced something similar. She is grateful for his advice and the support of so many other “trainer friends.”
May Tiffany’s expertise, along with Grace and Julie’s story be a sign that together as an industry we can normalize this experience like the world is trying to normalize the conversation about mental health. Our young riders, amateurs, and professionals can find ways to handle performance anxiety so that more stories end up how Grace’s did – with victory in the arena and in her mind.
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