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Animal
Rescue -- How
Pets Can Save Us
by Judith K. Acosta, LCSW
To handle yourself, use your head;
To handle others, use your heart.
Eleanor Roosevelt
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What is it about the wagging tail of a dog or the purr of a cat that
makes us feel so calm, so safe, so present? Not a few clients have
said, “I came to see you for psychotherapy because you work with
dogs.” I remember one patient who came in and said, “Y’know I didn’t
know you from beans, but I figured, how bad could you be if you
rescued two dogs?” Another young man was so traumatized by abuse
that he held onto one of the dogs and cried for two months. He could
not yet tolerate the vagaries of human relationship, but he could
let the dog love him. And through that a bridge was formed back to
life. |
“Chochi,
Acosta’s therapy dog”
Photos
courtesy Judith Acosta |
Animal-Human Bonding
One of the major sources of disease is the stress of loneliness and
isolation. Even in the midst of a crowd, we can feel alone, anxious,
disconnected. As a result, one of the essential elements to healing
is connectedness. A physician without empathy, compassion, and love
is doing half her job. So the question becomes, do animals feel?
More specifically, do they feel with us and like us?
The evidence seems to suggest they do. When my patients cry, my dogs
go over, nuzzling them with their snouts, licking away their tears,
looking for ways to soothe them and make them feel better. Anyone
with pets has seen the same thing. They know when we’re angry, when
we’re afraid, when we’re sad, when we’re angry. And the only way
they could know would be to have similar emotional states
themselves.
“Chochi,
Acosta’s therapy dog”
Photos courtesy Judith Acosta
The Field of Pet Therapy
Something about animals—not just cats and dogs, but horses,
dolphins, birds, geese, mice and rabbits—helps us to heal. It is not
simply a sentimental fantasy. It’s science.
Aaron Katcher MD and Patricia Gonser PhD are currently
engaged in research that suggests that animals can have a
positive effect on people’s mental health. I know one fellow, a
55-year old teacher who was going through a terrible spot with his
adolescent son, who eventually needed hospitalization. He had also
suffered from depression off and on through his life. And he said,
in no uncertain terms, that if he had not had his dog, he would have
lost his mind or left his home.
In the Ohio Reformatory for Women, Susan Kestella is the Director of
a pet therapy and wildlife rehab program. They started with wildlife
rehabilitation as a way of helping the community (because it is such
time-consuming work, few people can or will do it) but it turned out
to be much, much more. The inmates became intensely involved,
developing exquisite rapports with the animals as well as with each
other, building self-respect, skills, and resources they weren’t
aware they had. What they found was that the disabled pets that they
could never release and had to keep in the prison, were able to help
not only the inmates who worked with them, but dozens of other
low-functioning or disabled inmates. They found that the simple act
of holding the rabbits on their laps calmed the women and changed
the environment in the prison itself.
There are a few ways that this therapy is conducted.
1. A clinician can suggest that a client (if it is appropriate, safe
and useful for both patient AND animal) get a pet to have at home.
We would not pair a high-maintenance animal with someone who goes in
and out of psychotic episodes, primarily because it would not be
safe for the animal.
2. A clinician can have an animal in the office setting as a safety
zone, which is not the same as animal-assisted therapy (see below).
3. Animal-assisted activities may be used when trained volunteers
and pets visit individuals or groups at prisons, nursing homes,
psychiatric hospitals and children’s wards of hospitals.
4. In animal-assisted therapy, therapists and trained volunteers use
the pets in therapy sessions to help patients accomplish certain
therapeutic objectives (build self-esteem, stay focused, access
traumatic memories). For instance, having children learn to
ride a horse, touch a dolphin and swim, care for a lizard.
Animal-assisted therapy seems to work particularly well with those
who have difficulties with communication—autistic children and
elderly patients with alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. Also,
it seems to work with those who have been hurt or abused by humans,
with the animal gently reconnecting them to the world.
5. Psychiatric service dogs are used to perform specific tasks and
help to ameliorate certain symptoms of the person’s disease, e.g.,
get medication at a specific time or alert them to an impending
panic attack and lead them to a safe place. These dogs are also used
for general medical conditions, such as cardiac care, physical
handicaps, etc....
Some Science Behind the Magic
How does this work? Those researchers who study emotion
and neurology are in agreement about certain major
points, one of them being that EMOTIONS COMMUNICATE.
Even without words, the positive or negative emotional
expression of one person will tend to produce a positive
or negative emotion in another.
Most emotion is centered in the hypothalamus, thalamus
and limbic system (amygdalar, septal and
thalamocingulate). This is the Papez circuit. The
emotions that come from there are most primal—fear,
anger, sexuality, hunger, goal-directed (avoidance of
pain). The higher level emotions such as love,
compassion, etc…need to be mediated by the cerebral
cortex. The hypothalamus is responsible for the release
of stress hormones, such as adrenalin (epinephrine,
norepinephrine, cortisol, ACTH).
Pets have been known to have the following effects:
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ability to command attention and increase its span
power of diversion and substitution
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capacity to modify mood
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capacity to stimulate to action
-
capacity to relieve internal tensions
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capacity to facilitate self-expression
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capacity to stimulate re-socialization.
Some time ago there was a wonderful documentary about a Midwestern
penitentiary which started a dog rescue and training program in
partnership with local humane societies. Dogs would be saved from
death and brought to the inmates for year-long training programs.
At first the warden and the administration was wary. What would the
inmates do to the animals? What would the animals do to the inmates?
They were deeply concerned, but proceeded, taking detailed notes
along the way. What they found shocked them.
It was the most successful rehabilitation program ever initiated.
Inmates found new meaning, new self-esteem, learned incredible
skills that were marketable, felt loved perhaps for the first time
in their lives, gave of themselves, learned how to love
unconditionally, learned how to let go when the dogs had to be given
up for adoption, and found out that they had something to live for
and that they had a place in the world. And the dogs, who
would have languished in cages or been put to death, became
adoptable, well-trained, loving companions.
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Judith K. Acosta, LCSW,
CHT is a licensed psychotherapist,
hypnotherapist and crisis counselor with
a private practice in Placitas, New
Mexico. Her areas of specialization
include Ericksonian hypnosis, and
mind/body therapy in the treatment of
trauma, women’s fertility issues,
anxiety disorders, and depression.
Ms. Acosta is a Phi Beta
Kappa, Summa Cum Laude from CUNY and
Fordham University. For 10 years, she
was a writer with major advertising
agencies and periodicals. She created
the Somamente Group with Tullie Ruderman,
CSW and Dorothy Larkin, RN in 1994 to
train health care professionals and
first responders in neurolinguistic
strategies to increase compliance and
promote healing.
She is trained in
Critical Incident Stress Management, a
member of the Hudson Valley CISM Team,
of the International Critical Incident
Stress Foundation and of the clinical
panel of POPPA—Police Organization
Providing Peer Assistance with New York
City police offices. She has had her
work published in Women’s News, Omni,
Inner Realm, Listen Magazine, and the
International Journal of Emergency
Mental Health.
She has appeared on
television and radio and is a regular
lecturer in the tri-state area, having
presented the Verbal First Aid concept
to peer support officers of the New York
City Police Department, the Hudson
Valley EAP Association, law enforcement
and EMS agencies, hospitals, and school
districts.
She is the co-author of
The Worst is Over: What
to Say When Every Moment Counts.
(Jodere Group, 2002)
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