The participants’ presentation of their past and current difficulties

We begin by introducing the subjective self-presentation of the participants and their personal histories. Since the adolescents in the study had experienced social exclusion throughout their lives, we sought to make their voices heard and enable them to define and introduce themselves in their own words. We focus here on the main difficulties shared by the participants. Sixteen participants reported histories of frequently moving between schools and residential care facilities. All of the religious adolescents had experienced social exclusion and entered residential care at their parents’ request or following the recommendations of members of their extended families, friends, or community members after not fitting into other schools. The following excerpt provides examples of such experiences:

I was not accepted in the religious community, and I was not accepted at any regular religious boarding school. So I went to a residential care facility for boys with attention and concentration difficulties, but they expelled me after about four months because I was messing around. I didn’t like being there. Then I was at home for about two months until I arrived at this residential care facility. (Joseph)

The adolescents from juvenile justice facilities also experienced social exclusion, as the following excerpt demonstrates:

I was in some other boarding school for a year and then I left, and I had no educational framework. I tried to get accepted to another residential care facility and didn't succeed, so I stayed at home for more than six months. During this time, a police case was opened against me for assault, and that’s how I ended up here. (Benny)

Eighteen of the adolescents shared a lack of a sense of belonging and a strong sense of alienation. These feelings stemmed from their experiences of being from immigrant families, failing to integrate into schools, moving frequently, lacking acceptance in religious society, feeling different, and more:

I wasn’t like the other kids there. In terms of behavior . . . how I dressed, my appearance … They liked to go and play … with their friends at that youth center, and I liked to smoke and drink and go out with kids from another settlement. (Billy)

Some of the interviewees spoke of abusing drugs and alcohol (eight participants) and engaging in theft and violence. Seven participants mentioned their age-inappropriate responsibilities or experiences:

From age eight … I worked in gardening. I would clean stairwells [in apartment buildings]. I didn’t want to ask my parents for anything. I didn’t want to need anyone or ask for money. At age thirteen, I would hang around with people aged seventeen, eighteen, twenty-nine, or thirty. Let’s just say that a thirteen-year-old kid shouldn’t have been hanging around with them. (Eli)

Five participants described the negative influence of their neighborhoods. The following excerpt is an example of this type of experience:

I can tell you that in my neighborhood, everyone who was with me, people in their twenties and thirties, they’re all in prison now. It’s the neighborhood … I went through things there that I shouldn’t have gone through . . . (Shon)

The above excerpts highlight a variety of difficulties experienced by the study participants, who revealed a series of past and present struggles and challenges such as frequent moves between schools, a lack of a sense of belonging, social exclusion, criminal offenses, drug abuse, and age-inappropriate responsibilities. The participants’ past challenges can shed light on THR’s contribution to their present ability to cope.

The benefits of riding as a mechanism of change in THR

Sixteen of the adolescents described the THR as a positive experience. They experienced excitement and expectation before coming to the farm. They spoke about enjoying the experience, which encouraged them to stay despite the obstacles and challenges they faced at the residential care facility. They emphasized riding and horse care as enjoyable activities. Eight referred to the benefits of riding as a way to release aggression and energy. The riding itself had a relaxing effect on them. This effect is an important contribution of THR, especially for at-risk adolescents, who may exhibit physical and verbal violence at the beginning of the therapeutic process. They felt that riding on a given day had a positive impact on their functioning for the rest of that day and even the next day. This means that the riding itself was a mechanism of change in terms of relaxing and functioning better at school. Five of the participants described the calming effect of the farm’s natural surroundings and open space. The following quote relates to these aspects of the intervention’s effect:

It’s a little hard to see the impact of riding and understand what affects me, but I do understand and know it only does me good. It makes me more energetic at school and it’s a place to come and let go. It’s not like you get up in the morning and go study. You get up, come to the farm, to a place that’s more comfortable, somehow easier for me and more … I don’t know how to explain … and then I go back to the residential care and feel much better there. (Moni)

Participants also spoke of their efforts to cope with their low frustration thresholds while riding. One of them explained:

Sometimes it’s a bummer here, sometimes not. But I have to cope with it if I want to stay here. When you don’t succeed at something, you need to work collaboratively. I have a low frustration threshold, so I get upset quickly, and then I have to deal with it . . . Here I have to make an effort. Because I like it. Yes, I like it, even if there are frustrations … (Abe)

Through riding, the adolescents underwent a process that required perseverance and long-term investment. At some point, they began to see the fruits of their hard work; their riding techniques improved, and they gained the horses’ trust. This persistent investment in riding was beneficial since it influenced them to invest more consistently in other activities (e.g., other sports) and in their studies. One participant told us the following:

After the farm, I have a math lesson and the day is much harder, but even though it ends in the evening, it’s an easier day for me. That’s what I feel. It’s good for me. It helps me let things out, you know, not sitting all day … I don’t know if I could do it. (Moni)

The adolescents’ persistence was an additional benefit of the riding process and helped them learn how to cope with failures and enjoy success, as one of the participants explained:

The road to success involves falling several times and either succeeding or falling. When you’re with horses you have thousands of failures every day and once in a while a small success. Most of the time, it’s failures and occasionally you have one of those small successes and it fills you with happiness. (Joni)

Fourteen of the interviewees mentioned their improved sense of competence following their THR experience. They attributed this improvement to having learned how to ride successfully and how to be patient, having undergone a long process that required perseverance, and having made progress and acquired skills in riding, the fruits of their labor. Participants also spoke of the experience of not giving up on themselves. In addition, they mentioned hard work, meeting riding challenges, and competition as meaningful factors that significantly impacted their sense of competence. The following excerpt shows how competition boosts confidence:

When I ride the horse and it’s hard for me to do what I need to do, I struggle with myself and, in the end, I succeed and overcome the difficulty. … I feel that I learn something new every time I ride. (Dan)

Six participants emphasized their perception of autonomy and free choice in riding. One of them described the benefit of the independence and autonomy he gained by developing an inner motivation to ride:

If you don’t come [to THR] for a while, they will kick you off of the farm. But even here [at the farm], let’s say I have a choice. If I don’t want to ride today, I won’t ride. There was a time when I didn’t want to ride, and then I saw how everyone was progressing, and I said well, I’ll try. Slowly, slowly you evolve and progress. You know? This is what I have wanted all my life. I wanted my independence. (Avraham)

In short, the participants’ subjective experiences revealed different benefits of the THR intervention in terms of their functioning, coping, and mental states. From the participants’ subjective experiences, it emerged that the main mechanism of change of the THR intervention was evident in the riding experiences.

The benefits of the relationship with the horse as a mechanism of change

Alongside the riding itself, the relationship with the horse was a dominant mechanism of change. Some participants reported that their relationships with the horses and the processes they underwent increased their sense of competence. One spoke of the horse’s strength and its contribution to the confidence and ability involved in horseback riding:

Sure, once you get on a horse and learn how to control it you realize, wow! The first time you get on a horse, you don’t understand how people do things with it … it increases your self-confidence and sense of self-worth … you see that you’re controlling such a powerful animal and the more you learn, the more you understand its power and its gentleness. You learn about yourself. (Joni)

The relationship with the horse also helped some of the adolescents to face and overcome their fears. One described his inner struggle with his fear of the horse and the satisfaction of mastering it. Another spoke of overcoming the trauma he had experienced after falling off the horse and how this experience had contributed to his sense of competence:

At the farm, I fell. A horse threw me. I went to the hospital, got X-rays. Then I was afraid to mount the horse. I didn’t want to do it anymore. So, for about six months, I … got on for a few minutes, my hands shaking, and said “no, not interested,” that’s it. Until I got to my horse, Donatello. I reached out to him and trusted him. I don’t know why. I had a connection with this horse. In the end, he helped me . . . I don’t know how. Today … with the help of the horse I . . . [can] go in, hug him, kiss him … I do everything alone. I don’t need anyone to be with me …

In the last two excerpts, it is apparent that the participants’ sense of competence and ability to control the horses increased thanks to their relationships with the horses. These relationships helped them gain a sense of control over the horses and overcome their fears and failures.

The next excerpt shows specifically how the relationship with the horse affected the need for autonomy and demonstrates how it clarified for participants the boundaries of their autonomy and the meaning of autonomy in a relational, intersubjective context.

It’s … easiest to give up and say it doesn’t depend on me, it depends on the horse, the horse decides. And what it mainly taught me is that many things depend on me too. We work together … I started looking for the gray areas in riding … like the difference between pulling too hard or too weakly to get the [desired] action and doing it exactly right … (Nathan)

A sense of freedom and choice are part of autonomy. In the context of the relationship with the horse, some of the participants discovered the boundaries of their own autonomy and became more sensitive to their horses. The participant quoted in the following excerpt described the horse as an extrinsic entity that had the power to decide and take control when he attempted the jumping exercise with it. As this excerpt reveals, when the rider relinquishes control, the horse begins to cooperate, and the resulting mutual trust can lead to success.

Once, there was a competition that I trained for a lot and … I was supposed to do jumps … I was the only one on the team who did jumps, and I was very excited. And I was last. Everyone was finished and then I came in with the horse … I was very, very stressed and I had done these obstacles with the horse dozens of times. Because I was stressed … I completely ignored the horse and was only focused on myself and … I got to the obstacle and the horse didn’t jump and I was so frustrated and started cursing … I blamed the horse and said, “he’s having a bad day” and … then a week later I succeeded, and the horse was the same horse, and everything was the same, and I realized how much my stress had affected those subtleties. (Dave)

Autonomy is a universal need. Through their relationships with the horses, our adolescent participants learned to sublimate their need for autonomy. Doing so helped them to be more sensitive to the horses, cooperate with them, and progress.

Gaining trust within a relationship was another important benefit of the relationship with the horse. We identified the central, fundamental need for trust when the participants spoke about their meaningful relationships with the horses (10 participants). One participant talked about the different ways in which he allowed himself to connect with his horse, despite his difficulties in connecting with people:

It annoyed me that they took [my horse] Shrek… and didn’t tell me ahead of time. I was suddenly informed two weeks later, as if they had just taken him. It was very annoying. It’s your horse, yours. So, with the new horse, I was devoted, I gave him all my love, all my warmth. But today I know that even if I leave someone, even though I don’t know what will happen, I know that … I’ll soon take everything he says with a grain of salt. I’m very emotionally closed in that way. I also have a hard time with love. (Eli)

Another participant spoke of the process of relinquishing control after establishing a connection with the horse and learning to trust it:

I think the most significant thing … was … the jumps. There … you do something beyond [the usual]... it requires a lot of precision and … trust in the horse and suddenly you’re in situations … where you know that you’re not in control … that the work here is both the horse’s and yours … and at the moment of the jump you let go of everything and let her do the work. I learned to trust. (Nathan)

Some participants talked about nonverbal communication with the horses, the sense of responsibility for them, and the mutual understanding between them and the horses. In this regard, Guy explained the following:

I felt as if [the horse] felt safe with me because she was insecure and used to being scared and hadn’t found a leader and was part of the herd … even today she loves me when I come to say hello. What I learned is that she’s an animal … she can’t talk … I have to know when something hurts her, when she doesn’t want to do something, when she feels good, what she likes. (Guy)

Seven of the participants talked about the horse as a symbolic projection of a human being, as in the following excerpt:

Yes, sometimes … like people, horses can get up on the wrong side … and then you go to the horse and immediately notice that he’s a little sad or nervous. And then you need to know what to do. And how to communicate with it and how to calm it down if necessary … or how to say to it, OK, get up, wake yourself up. (Doron)

Seven participants also felt that the relationship with the horse made them more sensitive to others, as this excerpt demonstrates:

Riding … is working together, working with the animal, understanding it and being considerate of it. For example, it’s having a hard day and you have to understand it and say, OK, don’t make such an effort. And you’ll still do it. And that is teamwork. You have to take care of the animal after you ride, wash it. It’s like a part of you … The work with the horse helps you show more emotions, notice things. The horse may be limping a bit or something like that and sometimes you can’t see it, but you understand it doesn’t feel well. You learn to look from the outside, to check all kinds of things to make sure they’re OK. It taught me a great deal … to invest in relationships … (Moses)

The participant felt that he could give something to the horse, teach it, lead it, and have someone to care for, love, and nurture. These are all meaningful relationship experiences for participants. The relationship with the horse was significant in terms of participants gaining competence and balancing autonomy and trust.

Notably, only three participants described their experiences as negative. Each one of them had a different reason for feeling this way about the THR, for example, a lack of connection with the horse or a lack of interest in the riding style taught at the farm. The following quote provides an example of such sentiments and attitudes:

I never connected with this animal or the one I was forced to ride from the beginning. I didn’t want to ride. Over time it changed a bit. I started to be less against it, but I never liked it. There were some lessons when I wouldn’t go up to ride. Instead, I would just work on the farm.

For all of the participants except these three, THR was a meaningful and constituent experience, as the findings demonstrate (Table 1).

Table 1 Theme and sub-themes: cross-case analysis