I've been riding for three years and I'm suddenly terrified.
Hi. I ride at my local stables, and have been doing so for three years now. I've only ridden at this location, and while I do love horses, I ride entirely for fun and don't have a huge frame of reference for equestrianism besides my stable. I ride western, and while I tried english, back issues made it extremely difficult.
Three weeks ago, I was sent to grab a horse for my lesson. This horse is a mustang, and known for being spooky and difficult to catch. He is in kind of a ○| shaped pasture, and housed with the stable owners other geldings. They are all male horses. I went to grab him from their summer grazing area, which is the long line area in their pasture. Everything was going well, and the horses were all fine, until Benedict, the biggest horse in that pasture, suddenly decided he didn't like me. For reference, the stable owner owns five dressage horses, all Dutch Warmbloods 17-18 hands tall. The mustang is housed with them. Benedict is known for charging people, especially if they have food. I did not. He charged me once, and I got out of the way, then bluff charged me four more times as I'm panicking and trying to figure out what I should do. As he's going for another charge, I scrambled under the electric fence separating the summer grazing area from the normal pasture. I'm now laying on the ground in their normal pasture and panicking, because that was terrifying. Then I hear the herd galloping. They were galloping around the summer grazing area to come back into their main pasture. I panic again, scramble under the fence a second time, this time into the pasture of the beginning lesson horses, who paid me no mind. The herd came galloping over to where I was just moments ago, and I'm almost pissing myself. I climb the gate out of the pasture, and try to act like it's no big deal, as all the volunteers and riders at the stable seemed to brush it off as normal.
Since that happened, I've been terrified. I haven't been back to that pasture, but even going to grab beginner horses who I know won't charge me and won't hurt me unless something happens to make them freak out makes me uncomfortable and nervous. I get shaky and my breathing gets really fast, which certainly doesn't help when I'm trying to get a horse that can sense I am nervous.
I really don't want to quit over this, because I have fun when I'm riding and I love my instructor, but I'm also suddenly terrified around these horses. I'm scared to bring it up to my instructor, since I didn't make a big deal of it when it happened and I don't want to be seen as trying to get out of catching horses or having an excuse to get out of riding or work.
Any advice would be extremely helpful. Thank you. I may crosspost this to other subreddits as well.
Edit: Unfortunately since this scary situation happened I have been having some breathing difficulties that I thought were panic attacks. After a visit to a doctor, it was confirmed this event was the trigger/revealing event for the fact I have a breathing issue called Vocal Cord Dysfunction, where my Vocal cords don't stay open correctly after periods of strenuous activity (Scrambling under fences and ducking out of the way of a charging horse/stressful situation)