I get her to rate how anxious she feels, 1 to 10. You can’t bring something down if you haven’t clocked how high it is. She tells herself, right, I want this gone now. Sounds too simple to work, but it does. It’s the bit that tells her body she’s doing something about it, not just sitting in it. She unclenches her jaw and lets her tongue go soft. Stops the running commentary in her head mid-sentence. She taps the centre of her collarbone in a steady rhythm, the whole way through. Keeps her hands busy and her body calm while everything else is happening. In through the nose for 2, hold for 3, out through the mouth for 4. She keeps going until her heart rate actually settles, not just until she reckons it should have. Once she’s on, that’s it, tools are done, she just rides. It was never that she wasn’t brave enough to get on. It’s that nobody had ever shown her how to bring her body back down first. I run people through this properly in my Stop Anxiety, Enjoy Riding Workshop. DM me for more details.