A COUNSELLOR in Ballinamallard is using her horses as therapy to help clients through anxiety and depression.
Meloney Maye, who also owns a stable in the village, insists that working with horses can help people who find the confines of a counsellor’s office intimidating to open up more.
Sessions are held at the indoor arena at Castle Irvine and clients have found being around the horses to be relaxing and helpful.
Meloney who is originally from Belfast but moved out to Fermanagh aged 16 to study agriculture and has been here for 24 years, is also a counsellor with the Swell Fermanagh Cancer Charity.
But her other counselling work has proved to be a hit with those attending the sessions gaining enormous mental health benefits from being around her 10 horses and ponies and two donkeys.
She said: “The reason why we choose to work with horses is because they are a prey animal who are always on alert or in tune with their environment.
“They allow us to look more at ourselves than what we are actually aware of. In others words, they can actually react to things that are going on inside of us.
“They can hear our heart rate from three or four feet away. For example, if a client told me that they were feeling OK, the horse kind of might be telling something different – they’re very instinctual.
“They are non-judgemental – they take everybody as they see them. This allows people to feel more free with the horse.
“Especially kids who may find counselling in a room to be intimidating. The horse becomes a welcome distraction and helps them to open up more and give them more freedom to explore and express things.
“It’s very hard to explain into words because a horse brings out more feelings and emotions that we wouldn’t necessarily think were there.
“We work with anxiety, depression, trauma, PTSD and it can also help with relationship problems, goal setting and friendships.”
“The feedback has been fantastic. Clients have said that a lot of things came up for them when they had originally come for something else such as memories from childhood that were buried so deep but being with the horse brought these things out.”
Meloney, who holds qualifications in counselling from Ulster University and equine assisted learning from Festina Lente in Bray, herself admits that a horse she owed as a child helped her during her adolescent years.
She added: “From personal experience, I got my first horse aged 14. My horse, Kibitz, brought me a lot of comfort in those teenage years. Growing up we all have our own things to go through and my horse was my saviour.
“Over the years, I started rescuing some of the ponies and I thought what am I going to do with them. I wasn’t going to sell them because I didn’t want to risk putting them in the wrong hands again.
“I went down the counselling route and then wondered what would be the best way to offer the comfort I got from horses to people who don’t own them.”
To contact Meloney for more information or to book a session, email: thyolotherapy@gmail.com
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