Training horses always involves some risk of injury (or even death) to the horse, the trainer, any spectators, equipment used, etc. - this risk is totally your own as you will be making your own judgements on what to do. As with any suggestions on any subject you must weigh them out for yourself and proceed accordingly - at your own risk.
Helping horses overcome fear is KEY to developing a "go where you point it" trail horse. Many people bump the fear/anxiety of the horse up by trying to force the horse past something it is afraid may eat it. What you need to do is actually help the horse lessen its fear/anxiety so that it can figure out it does not need to fear for its life and can safely go where you are pointing it. Watching the horses body language is KEY - so listen as I describe what I am reading in horse body language. The objective is to help the horse reason out that it is NOT risking its life to go where you are pointing it - so it will then willingly go there. By taking that approach you help the horse increase its personal courage while simultaneously increasing its trust in its master. You will see two different horses approach the same trail obstacle they have never seen - a dead tree which has been felled then cut into firewood lengths. You can watch the "reasoning it out" process take about 6+ minutes with a 3yr old with a bit over 100 miles on it outside the arena (yes you need to be patient so they have time to reason it out) and then you can watch a 10yr old horse which started serious training as a 7yr old make a hard stop - rapidly decide "not a predatory threat" and go right through - because of over 2,300 miles outside the arena. So now watch the video.
Did you notice that I helped that blue roan, Steele, to overcome fear with just one hand on the closed loop rein? I did NOT ramp up the anxiety of the horse. I kept things calm which is what allowed me to hold the phone with one hand and take the video while only having one hand on the closed loop rein. A KEY to helping horses reason out that they do not need to fear something which they initially are scared of is to be calm yourself - to NOT ramp up your anxiety - to NOT ramp up their anxiety. You cannot learn well if your anxiety is high and neither can a horse - so help them be as calm as possible so they can think as clearly as possible.
Did you notice that when each of those two different horses stopped because they suspected a predatory threat I let them stop but also calmly insisted they face their fear. They chose where to stop (when they believed it was too dangerous to proceed on). I did NOT try to force them closer (I understood they feared for their life right then - even if they did so mistakenly.) I just had them keep their eyes on what they suspected was a horse eating predatory threat OR an ambush point from the distance they chose to stop at because they felt it was not safe to get any closer.
Did you notice that I then very carefully watched the horse's head - used the horse's head as an anxiety barometer to tell me when the still scared horse had given away a bit of its fear and was then willing to get a little closer? If the horse lowered its head height OR casually looked away from what it was scared of I then very calmly and very gently asked if it was willing to move a wee bit closer - I let the horse choose how much closer to move. And then I repeated the process over and over until the horse first got close enough to smell what it was scared of (a foot to several feet away) and then got close enough to touch the allegedly scary thing with the "whiskers" on its nose and chin area - which are tactile organs. Smell it - then touch it - so they can tell it is an inanimate object which they do not need to fear. And all the while letting them reason it out at their own speed but with me insisting they do not run away and thus avoid reasoning it out - rather calmly focusing them on reasoning out that they need not fear this thing they mistook to be a horse eating predator.
What if as you are just starting to learn to read and talk horse body language and thus you are not yet at the point where you catch what they are saying well enough to correctly implement the approach I demonstrated in the video? You are sensing this because when you calmly and gently ask the horse to move closer it is not moving forward at least a little bit (because you read it wrong.) Is there another method you can use while you work on improving your ability to read and talk horse body language? Yes there is. As the horse notes a scary item and stops you keep it facing it. You let it draw a figurative line that it will not cross. You again watch the head. When the head lowers a wee bit or if the head looks away from the scary item you then calmly ask the horse to back up 3-4 steps and stop. The horse is now further away and thus feels a wee bit safer. Watch the head closely - when it lowers or looks away again ask it to move towards the scary item and again let it choose where it feels safe to go to and stop. MOST every time it will go past the original line it would not go past. Repeat the process until it smells then touches the scary item and determines for itself that it need not fear it.
Once the horse has smelled then touched what it was previously too scared of to approach - calmly back the horse up - calmly stop - calmly ask the horse to move toward the object. It should walk right up and touch it. Do this from several angles if that is safely possible - so that you can tell the horse fully thinks it is safe to approach it and does not just think it is safe to approach it via this one "magic" path - while it is too scary to approach from any other angle or from some other angles.
It is often also helpful to then have the horse walk closely around the item noting if it is flaring any part of its body away as it does so (typically the hip - sometimes the whole body) - if it is flaring away then it has not fully given away its fear. So just calmly keep circling the item as closely as possible until the horse will circle it VERY closely with ZERO flaring away TWICE in that direction. Then repeat going around it the other way - if it flares away that way then work at it calmly until it willingly circles very closely with ZERO flaring away and thereafter double check the first direction to ensure it is still solid in that direction. Be thorough. You are trying to get it to figuratively use a Sharpie marker to completely cross this item off the suspected horse eating predator list it wrote it on. If you come back to this same item later and it fearfully reacts then you know your horse did not use the Sharpie marker but used a Highlighter instead. So work on it again - with the objective of eventually getting the horse to quit using the Highlighter and start using the Sharpie marker right away (or at least much sooner in the process.) My own mare, Avi, (the most anxious horse I have ridden in my entire life) initially did not act like she owned a Sharpie marker - because 99.9% of the time she pulled out and used a Highlighter - and candidly on certain things like trash cans it took HUNDREDS of times working through it before she finally "remembered" she did own a Sharpie marker and could actually choose to cross this item off her suspected horse eating predator list. Whenever I noticed something that Avi was highlighting rather than crossing off her list with a Sharpie marker I went looking for repeated opportunites to work on that. What that looked like with garbage cans was noticing that trash pick up was done on Monday mornings - so most folks set out trash cans Sunday evening. I saddled up early Monday morning after Monday morning to go work on trash cans and yes at first every driveway with a trash can or two or three was a new training opportunity to help Avi overcome an irrational fear and thereby as well to learn to trust her master more. It took a LOT of focused work. Yes it is worth the effort. And yes if your horse like mine is very quick to write new things on its suspected horse eating predator list then you need to work on getting it so good at using that Sharpie marker to cross things off its suspected horse eating predator list that the list shrinks in length rather than constantly grows in length. Well perhaps it may be very long but it should have a LOT more crossed out with Sharpie marker lines than legible lines of writing. The number of legible lines should shrink faster than it writes new items on the list and I do know from experience that can be a LOT of work if you are riding a highly anxious horse - where it truly is horse anxiety and not human anxiety being reacted to by the horse.
When you are working with the horse - to do so safely the horse MUST regard you as the herd leader in the herd of two (you and the horse.) If you as herd leader get anxious then you are telling the horse the herd is in danger - which will quite naturally ramp up the horse's anxiety because the herd leader is saying "get ready to flee." I am not saying it is easy - but you need to work on yourself - so that you can calmly lead your herd of two. You need to work on "oozing calm from your every pore" and actually learning to get calmer when you sense the horse getting even a wee bit anxious. The work on yourself is the hardest part of the work to be a good horseman - but it is also the most productive work - and that is assuredly true in learning to manage your own anxiety - calm your own fear - learn to "ooze calm from your every pore."
Yes you can help your horse(s) overcome fear. It helps a LOT if you understand that horses are flight response prey animals - meaning that when they believe (correctly or incorrectly) that their is a predatory threat their natural response is to flee - to put distance between themselves and whatever they suspect is a predator OR am ambush point a predator might use. Given the space they tend to put about a quarter mile between themselves and what they have suspected to be a predatory threat and then they stop, turn around and view that suspected threat from what they consider to be a safe distance. Distance is their friend. Being far away from anything they suspect is a predatory threat is what keeps them from getting eaten by predators. Horses are looking for body language of predators - movement common to predators - and also ambush points that predators would tend to use to hide in and ambush them. Yes they are looking for something to be scared of - to flee - because in Nature that is what keeps them alive - the horses that did not rapidly flees from suspected predatory threat got eaten by predators long ago.
Meanwhile humans are apex predators - yes, even if they do not personally hunt - humans think like predators - humans move like predators - and thus humans naturally speak predator body language which is naturally scary to prey animals including horses. To be truly effective in working with horses humans need to learn to think like horses (so they can understand horses) and talk horse body language to horses (so they can be correctly understood by horses.) When a human does both of those things it changes how they work with horses and it changes how well horses respond to them DRAMATICALLY. It makes a BIG difference when you understand and are understood. The horse cannot learn to speak predator body language and it is naturally afraid when predator body language is spoken to it - but humans can learn to talk horse body language which the horse already knows and speaks. So it is the human that needs to learn to speak the language of the horse IF there is going to be accurate communication between human and horse. And yes you can learn to read and speak horse body language, if you apply yourself to the task which IMO will help you increase your horsemanship more than any other single thing.