Dr Claire Bennett, Clinical Psychologist, is here to help you with any life or riding challenge you might face.
Claire can help with psychological therapy and strategies for your mind on or off the horse.
Why focus on your mind as a rider and get psychological therapy?
It goes everywhere with us and can’t be turned off! Just like managing your hydration and nutrition, understanding and then managing our brain is an essential skill in daily life.
Getting better at understanding our mind is not just helpful for challenges in riding. We are one person and challenges in our non-riding lives spill into our riding or use up our skills to cope that are essential for owning horses. Do we want our hobby or lifestyle to become impacted upon by another area of our lives?
Sometimes our thoughts and feelings can have a major impact on our lives. Finding ways to understand these and develop new ways to cope is important to our lives as a whole.
Have you ever felt overwhelmed and not understood why?
Blame yourself when things go wrong?
Have thoughts such as I should be able to…. or I am not good enough to be here?
Psychological therapy to help us cope
Having strategies to help our mind is essential. In our modern lives we are all challenged with multiple demands and pulled in opposing directions.
How many of us use or say: ‘Riding is my therapy’ or use riding as an escape or as a coping strategy to this hectic life? But what happens if the ‘going riding’ strategy stops working, or if a problem creeps in from another part of life, or you have a confidence challenge in your riding? What then – how do you cope?
What psychological therapy might be like with Claire?
On the horse sessions
These sessions include putting strategies to help you manage your thoughts and feelings into practice at the same time as riding.
Claire draws on mindfulness principles to help you stay present and in the moment with your riding.
This can help you manage worries or nerves, improve focus, and self belief.
These sessions on the horse are usually around 45 minutes.
You can bring your horse to Claire in Hathersage, or Claire can travel to you (by arrangement).
Off the horse sessions
Claire is a fully qualified and registered Clinical Psychologist. This means she is able to work with all different types of problems you might face.
With experience and training in several different psychological therapies, Claire can select the best fit for you and your challenges.
Sessions can be face to face at her base in Hathersage or Sheffield.
Claire also offers sessions remotely or virtually.
These sessions are usually 50 minutes.
You might want to combine the two approaches!
All sessions are fully confidential and GDPR compliant.
Common problems Claire can help with
- Confidence or feeling nervous
- Stress or worry
- Trauma
- Motivation
- Concentration and memory
- Injury – coping with pain and illness
- Things not going to plan and tolerating uncertainty
- Work/life/horse balance
- Relationship challenges
- Low mood
- Burn out
- Not feeling good enough or that you are an imposter
- Bereavement
- And more….
