Solutions Can't Land on Anxious Ears

I was on a long flight, sandwiched between an older woman and a younger woman.

The older woman, seated by the window, was fussing with her phone and becoming visibly frustrated. I asked if she needed help.

“My headphones won’t connect,” she said. “I downloaded movies for the flight, but I can’t hear any of them.”

I took a look at her phone, checked the settings, and made sure everything appeared to be connected properly. Satisfied, I handed it back to her.

“It still isn’t working,” she said.

Now she was becoming increasingly upset. The prospect of spending the next five hours without her movies seemed to be creating genuine anxiety.

I was puzzled. Everything I had done should have worked.

The younger woman in the aisle seat perked up and offered to help.

“I work in tech support,” she said.

She took the phone, checked a few things, and then handed it back to the older woman with exactly the same result.

She took the woman’s headphones from her, handed back the phone, and said, “This should work now. But I need you to put the headphones in very slowly and carefully.”

The woman nodded and did exactly as instructed.

This time, it worked.

Within moments she was happily watching her movie.

Once she was settled, I asked the younger woman what she had done differently.

“Nothing,” she said.

“I did the exact same thing you did. But when she was anxious, she kept jamming the headphones into her ears and accidentally pressing the mute button. I just needed to slow her down.”

Then she winked and added:

“Ninety percent of tech support is keeping the client calm.”

That comment struck me harder than she probably intended.

As riding instructors, trainers, coaches, and teachers, we often assume our job is to provide solutions. We spend years accumulating knowledge, building skills, and collecting answers.

But a panicked rider can find nine hundred problems for every one solution.

Often the solution is surprisingly simple:

The horse needs a clearer rhythm.

The rider needs to breathe.

The hands need to soften.

The rider needs to look up.

The horse needs more forward.

Simple things.

But anxiety has a remarkable ability to press the mute button on good information.

When people become overwhelmed, they stop hearing. They stop feeling. They stop processing. In their effort to solve the problem, they unknowingly recreate it over and over again.

I’ve found that some of the most effective teaching doesn’t come from knowing more answers. It comes from helping someone become calm enough to receive the answer that is already there.

The solution may be simple.

It may even be free.

But no solution can land on anxious ears.

Sometimes the first step in helping someone isn’t fixing the problem.

It’s helping them stop pressing mute.

Photo by Jesse Cardew