For riders with horse riding anxiety
How to break the ‘what-if spiral’ and ride without dread — without willpower, positive thinking, or “just getting on with it”
18 proven techniques + a 7-day practice journal + your personalised pre-ride routine.
Everything you need to break the what-if spiral. Less than the price of one lesson.
This is for you if…
You’re a rider who knows, rationally, that your horse is fine — but your body hasn’t quite got the memo.
You’ve been overthinking and trying to control everything, to try and combat your anxiety.
You’ve lost your nerve and you don’t know how to get it back.
You’ve been making excuses not to ride, and you know you’re doing it.
You’ve tried pushing through then beating yourself up with all the “shoulds”. It hasn’t worked.
You’ve watched the videos, read the articles, maybe even had a few conversations with your Coach and yard buddies about it. Still stuck.
You want to hack out, canter, compete, do the things you used to do – but the what-if spiral is running the show before you’ve even got to the yard.
If that’s you: keep reading. This is for you.
Here’s the problem (And it’s not what you think).
Every piece of advice you’ve been given assumes the problem is in your head.
Think more positively. Visualise success. Just get on and push through.
Here’s why none of that has worked: anxiety is not a rational response. The what-if spiral isn’t coming from the thinking part of your brain. It’s coming from your nervous system and it’s a key part of being human.
Anxiety helps us get ready for action, survival and it works to help protect us from perceived threats. It triggers your instinctive flight, fight or freeze response and primes your nervous system to dial up to high alert. And in this state, your nervous system simply does not respond to positive thinking.
When your threat response fires, your rational brain steps back, it literally goes offline. And it’s impossible to logic your way out of a physiological reaction. Telling yourself to calm down is like trying to manually override your own heartbeat.
Every time you’ve struggled or got frustrated with yourself for feeling anxious, it just means that you’ve not yet found the tools and techniques that actually work with your mind and body in the moment to bring you out of that high alert setting that has been triggered.
The solution isn’t more willpower. It’s the right tools – ones that work directly with your nervous system, through your body, and your subconscious mind, before your thinking brain even gets involved.
That’s what this workbook gives you.
What you get:
THE RIDER ANXIETY WORKBOOK — complete system
Part One: Your Quick Reference Toolkit (18 techniques)
Right now, when the psychological handbrake comes on, you have nothing. Or you have “try to breathe” – which does precisely nothing once your nervous system is already running hot.
After working through Part One, you’ll have a specific tool for every moment that currently trips you up.
For the mounting block panic – when your mind and body have already put the handbrake on and logic has gone out the window – body-based techniques that work directly through your physiology, not your thinking brain. You don’t need to believe in them. You don’t need to be calm first. They work because of how your nervous system is wired, and that doesn’t change based on how anxious you are.
For the what-if spiral before you’ve even got to the yard – cognitive interruption tools drawn from Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, designed specifically for the loop that keeps cycling regardless of what you tell yourself. These are the tools for when you know you’re catastrophising and knowing it isn’t helping.
For mid-ride anxiety spikes – a focus strategy backed by motor learning research that does two things at once – reduces the internal noise AND improves your actual riding at the same time. This one surprises most riders. It goes against everything traditional instruction tells you to do.
For the avoidance cycle: a clear, graduated method for systematically rebuilding your confidence – step by step, at your own pace, without white-knuckling anything. This is the section most riders say they wish someone had explained to them years ago.
Every technique tells you exactly what it is, why it works, and precisely how to use it. Written for real life situations (not theoretical ones where you’re already calm).
At £97 per 1-1 coaching session, the content in Part One alone represents a minimum of 2-3 sessions’ work: £194–291+
Part Two: Your 7-Day Practice Journal
Most riders read about techniques and then don’t use them consistently. No structure. No way of tracking what’s shifting. No accountability to anything.
The journal is what changes all of that.
Before you use a single technique, the journal walks you through something most anxious riders have never actually done: a proper map of their own anxiety. Not a vague “I get nervous” — but specifically which situations take the dial highest, what your body does when it starts, and the habits you’ve quietly built up around your anxiety that might be keeping the whole cycle going without you realising.
The safety behaviours section alone tends to be genuinely eye-opening. These are the patterns operating in the background, unexamined — and once you can see them clearly, you can start working with them deliberately.
You also build your own personalised toolkit from the 18 techniques in Part One — your go-to for each type of situation — and a pre-ride routine that’s specifically yours. Not a generic protocol. Yours. So when you’re riding and the psychological handbrake comes on, you know exactly what works for you.
Then seven days of structured logs. Before each ride: anxiety level, what’s physical, what’s mental, what you plan to use. During and after: what triggered the spike, what you actually used, whether any safety behaviours showed up, what worked, what you’d do differently. One thing learned. What to try next time.
Most riders who give up on this kind of work don’t give up because it isn’t working. They give up because they can’t see that it is.
Anxiety progress doesn’t always arrive as a breakthrough. It shows up as a slightly lower number on Tuesday than Monday. A trigger that didn’t spiral the way it usually does. A safety behaviour you managed to drop. A what-if you noticed and decided not to follow. Without a way of recording this, you miss every single one of those signals — and once you miss them, the easiest conclusion to draw is that nothing is changing.
The journal is how you see it. And seeing it is what keeps you going.
At £97 per 1-1 coaching session, this structured practice work represents at least one session: £97+
The Guarantee
Download the workbook. Read it. Use the the techniques. Test drive them all. Give it 14 days.
If you don’t feel measurably more in control of your riding anxiety, email me and I’ll refund every penny. You keep the workbook either way.
I’m offering this because I know these tools, techniques and strategies work, when riders go all in, explore the exercises and apply them to their specific situations.
In all honesty, I wnt you to absolutely love the Rider Anxiety Workbook, so if it doesn’t work for you, I don’t want your money!
You have two options…
You can close this page, keep doing what you’ve been doing, and hope something eventually changes.
Or you can spend less than the price of a lesson, get the exact tools you’ve been missing, and start working with your nervous system instead of fighting it. For good.
The rider you used to be is still there. This is how you start finding your way back to her.
Questions
Does this actually work? It works because it addresses the right problem. Most riding anxiety advice targets the thinking brain. These techniques target the nervous system directly. That’s why willpower hasn’t worked… and why this approach is different.
Is this the same as therapy? No. Educational resource, not clinical treatment. Works well alongside professional support if you have it.
I’ve been riding for years and was always confident. Is this for me? Yes. Anxiety appearing after years of confident riding is one of the most common patterns I see.
What format? Downloadable PDF. Screen, tablet, or printed. Print off your riding journal pages as many times as you like.
What if it’s not right for me? 14-day refund, no questions. You keep it.
Recommended Add Ons:
Rider Anxiety Workshop – Recorded Session
The Rider Anxiety Workbook gives you all 18 tools to reach for. This helps you understand exactly why they work, which makes all the difference to whether you actually use them.
The Rider Anxiety Workshop is a two-hour recorded session covering the true nature of riding anxiety: what triggers it, why it persists despite everything you’ve already tried, how your mind and body are responding, and the practical strategies for beginning to change that. When you understand what’s been driving the what-if spiral, the techniques in your workbook stop feeling like things you’re hoping will work and start feeling like things that make complete sense.
Watch it at your own pace, as many times as you like.
£19.99 £9.99 when you add it today – simply tick the box below.
Rider Confidence & Relaxation Hypnotherapy Session
The Rider Anxiety Workbook gives you conscious tools to reach for in the moments that trip you up. The Rider Anxiety Workshop helps you understand the psychology behind why they work.
This is the third piece – something that works quietly in the background, without any effort on your part at all.
Hypnotherapy works at the level where the automatic responses live – the ones that fire before you’ve had a chance to think, let alone choose a technique.
This guided Rider Confidence & Relaxation audio track is designed specifically for riders, gently helping your mind build a calmer, more confident association with riding over time. No prior experience needed. Nothing to do except listen.
Use it before bed, before a ride, or whenever you want to settle your system down without having to actively work at it.
£50 £9.99 when you add it today (80% discount) — simply tick the box below.
Ready to stop the ‘what ifs’ running every ride?
Get immediate access to the Rider Anxiety Workbook today.
Includes:
✅ 18 evidence-based techniques for managing riding anxiety
✅ 7-day practice journal with pre-ride, mid-ride and post-ride logs
✅ Body-based tools you can use in the car park, the stable and the arena on your horse
£27 | One single payment | Lifetime Access
Disclaimer
The Rider Anxiety Workbook and all associated resources from The Everyday Equestrian are for educational and personal development purposes. They have been created to help riders develop practical skills and strategies for managing nerves, anxiety, and loss of confidence in the context of riding.
Alison Buttery, founder of The Everyday Equestrian, is a BHS Accredited Professional Coach and NLP Practitioner. She is not a psychologist, counsellor, or licensed mental health professional, and no resources from The Everyday Equestrian, specifically the Rider Anxiety Workbook & any additional purchases, are a substitute for professional psychological or medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
The content within this programme draws on evidence-based approaches including NLP and principles from psychology and neuroscience, and is intended for educational and personal development purposes only. It is not designed to diagnose, treat, or address clinical anxiety disorders, mental health conditions, or trauma.
If you are currently experiencing significant mental health difficulties, or if your anxiety is having a serious impact on your daily life beyond riding, please speak with your GP or a qualified mental health professional before enrolling. This programme is not a replacement for that support.
Results will vary between individuals. The experiences shared by members of this community reflect their personal journeys and are not a guarantee of specific outcomes.
By enrolling in these resources, you confirm that you are participating voluntarily and taking responsibility for your own wellbeing throughout.