What is Equine Assisted Dialectical Behavior Therapy (EA-DBT)?
Equine Assisted Psychotherapy, or EAP, is a specialized form of therapy where a human therapist partners with a horse or pony and an equine behavior specialist, to provide therapeutic growth, emotional support, and healing.
Although there is contact with the horses, it does not involve mounted work and/or riding. No prior horse experience is necessary.
Individual EA-DBT Sessions will last between 60-75 minutes. Groups are 1.5-2 hours and give folks a chance to practice a wide variety of DBT skills in a fun and safe way.
EA-DBT sessions take place at our partner ranch — T-K Ranch in Farmington
“My favorite horse, True, is well named. She always seems to know my truth even if I can’t speak it aloud. I don’t have to say anything. She just knows if I am getting the ‘feels’ and she comes over to comfort me and make me laugh and let go.”
What Happens in EA-DBT?
In Equine Assisted Dialectical Behavior Therapy, horses teach us some very important lessons in animal (including human) behavior. Having an opportunity to witness and practice skills like behavior modification, emotion regulation, mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, distress tolerance, and even patience and compassion, makes it more likely we will apply these same skills in other environments.
In St. Louis DBT's Equine Assisted Therapy groups and individual sessions, participants get to try out new skills with the horses before they use the tactics on people in their lives. Imagine learning to observe and set boundaries with a 1000 pound animal and how empowered you might be to then do that with the humans in your life?
This video is a small example of the types of skills our clients get to practice that can then be applied to their own lives. Watch and then ask yourself, "How can I use this shaping technique to influence my own/my child's/my parent's/my partner's behavior?"
True, the horse, and June Proctor, an equine behaviorist, demonstrate the power of using positive reinforcement to shape a new behavior. In EA-DBT, groups of participants can similarly learn from interactions with the horses — things like regulating emotions, improving mindfulness and being in the moment, and how to modify the behavior of self and others. Horses are AMAZING teachers!
““Gunner understands me, gets me, in a way no human ever has.” ”
Do we meet with the horses for every session in EA-DBT?
We have both hybrid programming and 100% EA-DBT options:
We have opportunities for groups to do most of their classwork either in-office or virtually and then go to the ranch for a culmination session.
We have opportunities for doing all your group therapy sessions with a horse and a DBT Therapist.
You can also request for your office-based or virtual St. Louis DBT individual therapist to take you to the ranch, where, together, you work with the horses for a 60-75 minute session.
Contact our intake department by contacting us using the form below and we will assess which program will work best for you.
Get in touch. We would love to answer your questions or get you signed up!
Teen EA-DBT
This Equine Assisted group helps teens find healthy ways to communicate, express feelings, and tolerate tough emotions and situations. Teens will learn traditional DBT skills of mindfulness, distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness with in-person sessions with the therapy horses at TK Ranch in Farmington, MO
Teens must have an individual or family therapist while in our DBT skills groups.
Use the message box above to get more information on the scheduling and costs of this group.