I’m a junior rider that just started showing in the medium junior jumpers (1.30-1.35) and get terrible nerves every time I enter the ring. I’m lucky that my horse is a saint and will jump anything I point him at, but I can’t get over my anxiety at the ingate and am worried I won’t be able to get over this, especially if I want to qualify for Young Riders next year. I can tell I’m making my horse uncomfortable too. I’m not having fun when every time I compete I have to throw up or have a panic attack, and am starting to debate whether it’s worth it at this point to show at this height. Any advice?
Back down and jump lower jumps until they bore you. Work on your seat. Try to get some sports psychology coaching, to deal with competition nerves.
Are you scared at home or just at competitions?
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Definitely if it’s just at shows, get some sports psychology work. Also, are you jumping 1.30-1.60 at home? Higher? Lower? If you aren’t jumping above competition height (not daily, but once or twice a week on your horse or another another would work) you’re definitely going to run into anxiety at shows. Competition adds stress, which is why it’s a good idea to show at or below your very comfortable zone. The jumps (both in height and course complexity/question difficulty) shouldn’t be a massive challenge in and of themselves.
If you’re nervous at home too, you may want to take a step back and work on some basics (what exactly scares you? Single triple bars on a long gallop? Combinations? That one max height vertical on a slice?) at a lower height for a bit. Ask your trainer to bump jumps up and down without telling you how big they are or even if they changed them at all. This can help get you used to the RIDE over worrying about the height itself.
If you find that the key answer is the height itself, it’s worth talking to your trainer about stepping back a division for a bit. Maybe not even a whole year. Let them take the horse in a few rounds at the 1.30 or close for horsie confidence and get yourself solid solid at a lower height. There’s no shame in that. The last thing you’d want to do is create a stopper in your horse, scare yourself, or god forbid one or both of you get hurt.
Look at it this way: anxiety and panic attacks aren’t conducive to a good ride on your saint of a horse, aren’t conducive to good/winning rounds (or qualifying for YR/anything else), so it just makes sense to save the jumps your horse has for a division you can build confidence and skills and create a good experience for both of you. Horse showing is supposed to be FUN and RELAXING you know 
hard as that is to remember, especially as a junior (not that long ago for me, hard as that is to believe)!
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A long time ago somebody suggested to look at it from a different angle:
We are having a pony picnic. We meet with friends, play games, eat, play more games, then we go home.
I laughed at it at the time, but it is a wise point of view.
You need to delve a little into sports psychology, why it makes you so sick.
You are paying to have fun, not summon dragons.
You know you can do the task.
Are you worried you forgot to put the breeches on?
Are you worried people will judge?
Are you worried you will make mistakes?
Even if you forget to dress, 99% of the bad things that can happen are of no consequence
The sun will set, and rise again.
The horse won’t care one way or another, as long as the food keeps coming.
(a thought, not sure if it works: A while back I saw a thing that suggested we should do a ‘super hero pose’ for 2 minutes - and that is not as easy as it seems! It is supposed to release endorphins or something - it’s been a while - that make us feel bigger and braver. Nothing to lose there! /slings cape over the shoulder)
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As others have said, if it’s all the time, and not just in the show ring, then go back to basics! If you keep jumping fences that make you anxious, you’ll just end up developing an association between jumping and anxiety (i.e. you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot). We always talk about giving positive experiences to our horses, but sometimes we forget to give positive experiences to ourselves.
If it’s only the pressure in the show ring, I would try to recreate that atmosphere at home. Have your coach set courses, walk it with you, warm up just like you would at a show and then go in and jump it with no second chances. You could have a jump-off course too. I bet there would be other people at your barn who would like that experience as well. If that’s not high enough pressure for you, or you get acclimated to it, then raise the stakes! You could have “teams” where every rider on the team has to ride clear, otherwise the whole team loses their stirrups for the rest of the lesson or something.
On a personal note, I’ve always found visualization to be extremely helpful! Visualizing is proven to cause your neurons to fire and actually helps develop muscle memory, even without actually doing anything, and odds are your riding and confidence will improve alongside it. In your head, you can slow things down and focus on perfecting each moment of the course. Imagine where you’re looking, what you’re doing with your hands, with your legs, with your seat, with your upper body, etc. Imagine how your perfect canter feels, and how you developed it. What do you do at takeoff, in the air, landing, etc. Visualize the tricky parts of courses. How do you perfectly approach that huge square oxer, or the vertical on a slice, a tough rollback, etc. You can visualize what the perfect response is when things go wrong too - maybe your horse gets too deep or takes a very long spot. You can visualize how you’re going to handle that situation and recover from it even in the trickiest circumstances until you’re imagining a round where your horse bucks at the ingate, rushes to the first fence, gets strong through the combination, trips on the slice to the vertical, chips hard at a big oxer, and on and on and you can handle each thing in stride. Odds are, you’ll never have a round that’s quite that wild, but even if you do, you know exactly how to handle it!
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Thank you everyone for the kind and helpful pieces of advice, I really appreciate it. It makes me relieved to know I’m not the only one that has struggled with back gate nerves lol. In regards to some of the questions, I have only really been struggling with this at shows, and it’s only popped up very recently. I never have had nerves like this before, even when I did the USET and had to jump the open water. It’s really just been when I’ve shown at this height. I’m very lucky to have a super supportive trainer who cares a lot about my success. He always has us show in the same height for about a year until we’re ready to move up, and I’ve schooled 1.45-1.50 a few times at home and have jumped consistently at the 1.30 height too. It’s just when I get into the show ring it feels like everything I’ve learned just goes down the drain. I have a call scheduled with Tonya Johnston who was recommended to me by my trainer, I’ve heard really good things about her so I hope it helps.
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I had this same problem too even though I know my horse is more than capable and willing jumping 3’+. I went to a small jumper schooling show to do the 2’ and was almost embarrassed that I was nervous about jumping something so small. That was one of things that snapped me out of being so worried about height. So I agree with jumping small stuff until you’re bored with it and your horse is bored with it and then you’re ready to move up.
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People get nerves about riding dressage tests or even flat rail wtc classes. I’m sure there are Western Pleasure riders who get nerves. It’s more about the competition format than real danger.
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I feel like I’m going to puke when I’m in the start box at a horse trial. Stage fright affects a lot of people.
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My first few months of lessoning after not having ridden in a few years had my stomach churning the entire drive to the barn every week. I almost cancelled nearly every single lesson 
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Find out exactly what makes you nervous. For me, it’s not the jump height that makes me nervous but the first jump on course, especially if it’s an oxer. So at home, I do a lot of tall and wide first jumps so when I get to the competition it’s not a new thing. For other people it’s any oxers, some people hate combinations.
I’d drop down a height too. Doing the 1.20 or 1.10 will give you more confidence.
Can you find a show that you can do the 1.20 and then the 1.30 immediately after? That can be really helpful too, because the jumps don’t really look like they got any bigger.
I also find that I CANNOT course walk. It’s crazy but if I’m on the ground, next to the jumps, it makes it way scarier for me. It doesn’t matter if I’m walking a 1.10 or a 2ft course. I estimate what I need to do in my combinations from the sidelines. I count how other people walk it. So far this has not put me at a disadvantage yet.
Also, don’t worry about qualifying for anything. If it happens, great, but don’t try too hard for it. Equestrian sports are a long game. We compete in the upper levels well into our 60’s. It will do you no favors to qualify for young riders if it messes with your confidence.
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When I started back showing again a few years ago, I used to faint before going in. Everyone thought I was super calm, but I actually was just momentarily blacking out every few seconds 
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This! I will jump anything at home but I have severe show nerves. For me it wasn’t anything technical, it was just stage fright about people watching me and the pressure of the show environment. I found Tonya Johnston’s book extremely helpful with this, I’m sure she’ll be an amazing resource.
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To be successful, you’ve got to WANT to do it… really WANT it. Gotta want it so bad that you can taste it. Visualize “wanting” it, dream about it. If you don’t want it when the jumps get bigger, bad things may, indeed, happen. So that “burning desire” to jump those jumps has to be there. Your horse can’t cover for you forever.
I found it helped to raise your jumps at home, raise them right up. You don’t have to jump them, in fact, don’t jump them, just ride by them, walk around them, get used to looking at that size. Then go to the show and the jumps look small when you walk the course, and you feel confident about jumping them.
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To be honest, one fo the best ways to get over the fear is to have a few crashes. It lets you learn that you can fall and not be destroyed. It also lets you learn if you really want to do this.
I am a firm believer in most of our fear of fence heights is based on the simple fact we don’t want to get hurt. Yet, that risk is always there. When we avoid falling off the fear will magnify because we don’t understand the real level of risk. We imagine things worse than reality.
Failure is the only way to learn to succeed in any aspect of life. Even learning to walk and run required failure. For me, I had a couple of near death experiences competing and from those I learned I can survive the crashes, I do love what I do, and I have fun doing what I do.
It doesn’t mean I don’t get nervous. I do. I be more worried if I didn’t! I remember one time at a FEI competition I was in the warm up and as I jumped the oxer before my go I had to pull up and choke down the puke I had when I realized I was one away. As my dear friend then said, “Lean out if you have to puke, and beer puke doesn’t stain a bay! Just don’t pull up!” I didn’t and I had the best run ever! Even beat a few olympic riders.
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I do think there are different types of fear. I weirdly don’t fear getting hurt. And I have been hurt. Broke a femur as a 16 year old brave rider on a horse who went Up, lost its balance in deep sand and went completely over. Falling doesn’t scare me much. My fear is about failing. Not being perfect. It’s a mental mind F. That I manage. I know it’s silly. No one is perfect. But that’s my fear.
Think about what you are saying.
Fear is a reptilian response such as feeding, fleeing, fighting, and sex. Fear is the result of the desire to flee in the face of danger, to avoid injury or death as the result of the lion lurking in the brush.
When we are injured, our brain dissociates the pain pathway in order to enable flight or fight, if we are physically able. Thus, in memory the injury can actually seem “pleasant.” However the reptilian brain will file the experience away in the subconscious and it will become associated with any stressful emotion.
When you fear failure, you are taking an artificial construct (failure) and transposing it on top of the fight or flight response. Physical injury is fundamental to avoid if we are to survive.
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Makes very good sense ! I know what I wrote seems insane but I have always felt very brave. Have fallen off plenty of times and have been hurt. And for some nonsensical reason I fear more not being perfect. I know it’s stupid! My horse is a GD unicorn of a saint. I am more than capable. But my nerves aren’t about falling they’re about not being my best. So falling (don’t care) failing … gives me anxiety. Neither keeps me from riding. Or showing or jumping. It’s just what I have to push through. And when I do … I feel golden.
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I also fear not being perfect. And while I do hunters and eq and that is partly performance anxiety, it also is about not getting hurt. I know how to fall, I haven’t gotten scared just because of a fall. But somewhere, my brain knows that things can go badly if I’m a bad pilot, and so sometimes that causes a fear response rather than making me more assertive in my riding. I realize that now because I have even more fear since I’m older, get to practice a lot less, took a long time off, and break more easily. I’ve had horses who were not tolerant of mistakes and would let me know it. I also really do not want to hurt my horse, because I feel responsible for his well-being, especially now when I have a good boy who wants to do what he’s told (even when he really shouldn’t listen to me!). It’s all versions of the same fear really that crashing is bad, and not being perfect might mean a crash can happen.
Visualization really does help. As does creating a show like atmosphere in practice if you can, including making sure you practice some of the tricky questions not just the height.
As part of the visualization, you have to think in terms of positive actions, not negatives. You have to think about what you will do, not what things you are trying to avoid happening. Like, don’t think, I’m not going to crawl to that first jump oxer. Think instead, I am going to really get my pace early to that oxer. You can see what it looks like when you say that.
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I’m more of a dressage rider (although dabble with jumping) and I feel the exact same way. Not worried about getting hurt but fear failure instead.
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