Therapy Dog Quotes

The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.

I am a cutter, you see. Also a snipper, a slicer, a carver, a jabber. I am a very special case. I have a purpose. My skin, you see, screams. It's covered with words - cook, cupcake, kitty, curls - as if a knife-wielding first-grader learned to write on my flesh. I sometimes, but only sometimes, laugh. Getting out of the bath and seeing, out of the corner of my eye, down the side of a leg: babydoll. Pull on a sweater and, in a flash of my wrist: harmful. Why these words? Thousands of hours of therapy have yielded a few ideas from the good doctors. They are often feminine, in a Dick and Jane, pink vs. puppy dog tails sort of way. Or they're flat-out negative. Number of synonyms for anxious carved in my skin: eleven. The one thing I know for sure is that at the time, it was crucial to see these letters on me, and not just see them, but feel them. Burning on my left hip: petticoat. And near it, my first word, slashed on an anxious summer day at age thirteen: wicked. I woke up that morning, hot and bored, worried about the hours ahead. How do you keep safe when your whole day is as wide and empty as the sky? Anything could happen. I remember feeling that word, heavy and slightly sticky across my pubic bone. My mother's steak knife. Cutting like a child along red imaginary lines. Cleaning myself. Digging in deeper. Cleaning myself. Pouring bleach over the knife and sneaking through the kitchen to return it. Wicked. Relief. The rest of the day, I spent ministering to my wound. Dig into the curves of W with an alcohol-soaked Q-tip. Pet my cheek until the sting went away. Lotion. Bandage. Repeat.

I've always had this feeling," Henry says, "that all dogs are really therapy dogs.

And why do you want to be near me?" Because you're all I can think about, day and night. I don't know what the hell is going on with us; I only know I can't get rid of it. I don't care if you're batshit insane and think you're the reincarnation of Cleopatra. I hear voices; you hear dogs. We'll work it out. Maybe get a discount on therapy.

The most traumatic aspects of all disasters involve the shattering of human connections. And this is especially true for children. Being harmed by the people who are supposed to love you, being abandoned by them, being robbed of the one-on-one relationships that allow you to feel safe and valued and to become humane—these are profoundly destructive experiences. Because humans are inescapably social beings, the worst catastrophes that can befall us inevitably involve relational loss. As a result, recovery from trauma and neglect is also all about relationships—rebuilding trust, regaining confidence, returning to a sense of security and reconnecting to love. Of course, medications can help relieve symptoms and talking to a therapist can be incredibly useful. But healing and recovery are impossible—even with the best medications and therapy in the world—without lasting, caring connections to others.

Dogs needed no words to console you. Dogs were the ultimate practitioners of the therapy of touch. Dogs knew and accepted the hard realities of life that human beings could not acknowledge until those obvious truths were exhaustively described with words, and even then there was often more bitter acknowledgment than humble acceptance.

I thought therapy was a sort of magic, that you just kept talking and the very act of talking unlocked some forgotten key.

Therapy helped, but it is not magic. It does not change our thoughts or behaviours. It only teaches us what they might be. It does not work unless we take from it what we have learned and put it into action.

Therapy dogs visit people in nursing homes, hospitals, and wherever else they are needed. They cheer people up who are sad or lonesome and just need a furry friend to hug.

The responses of traumatized children are often misinterpreted...Because new situations are inherently stressful, and because youth who have been through trauma often come from homes in which chaos and unpredictability appear "normal" to them, they may respond with fear to what is actually a calm and safe situation. Attempting to take control of what they believe is the inevitable return of chaos, they appear to " provoke" it in order to make things feel more comfortable and predictable. Thus, the "honeymoon" period in foster care will end as the child behaves defiantly and destructively in order to prompt familiar screaming and harsh discipline. Like everyone else, they feel more comfortable with what is "familiar". As one family therapist famously put it, we tend to prefer the "certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty".

It’s all very well learning why I behave in the way that I do. That doesn’t stop me behaving in those ways. I am just more conscious of them.’ Consciousness is where therapy stops and we begin. Therapy can only give us knowledge. It is up to us to use it.

Since I am in this pain, the pain of having what is special taken from me, I look inside myself and I don’t like what I see: a man who is broken and alone. I think of all the time Lily and I spent together, just the two of us—the talks about boys, the Monopoly, the movies, the pizza nights—and I wonder how much of it was real. Dogs don’t eat pizza; dogs don’t play Monopoly. I know this on some level, but everything feels so true. How much of it was an elaborate construct to mask my own loneliness? How much of it was built to convince myself the attempts I made at real life—therapy, dating—were not just that: attempts?

Mrs. Leene says I should think about people in the present tense. “It forces you to take responsibility for them,” she says.

He's a unique dog, Mr. Bell had said. There is no other in the world that looks or acts just like him.

Their parents may fill the children’s hours with therapeutic equipment, tutors, drivers, therapists, psychiatrists, and special schools, while what a child wants and needs most desperately is a friend. Often a child longs for a friend despite rejecting everyone who reaches out. Such a child may be convinced to come out of hiding if the proffered playmate is a dog

Running held a prominent place in my mental health kit, as essential as medication and therapy. Running reduced the number of naps I took, increased my self-esteem, made me more accountable, prevented my psychiatrist from having to increase or change my medication, and likely kept me out of the hospital, but it hadn’t cured me.

Oh God, Harry, I just don’t know what to do.” “Have you ever thought..?” “What?” I ask hopefully. Harry hesitates. “That maybe there’s nothing you can do?” It is not the answer I’m expecting. I stare at him. “I mean, maybe – maybe this is what it’s going to be like when he gets ill,” Harry continues doggedly. “He’ll have an episode – either of mania or depression – his meds will be tweaked, therapy will be stepped up, and everyone will wait for it to pass. Which, of course, it will do.” “And so – you’re saying I should just weather the storm?” Harry nods slowly. “I think so, yes. Otherwise you’re going to wear yourself down, trying to help him, trying to make things better, when it’s basically out of your control.” I look at Harry. Somewhere, at the back of my mind, I think he might have a point. But I don’t want to admit it. Not yet.

One year later the society claimed victory in another case which again did not fit within the parameters of the syndrome, nor did the court find on the issue. Fiona Reay, a 33 year old care assistant, accused her father of systematic sexual abuse during her childhood. The facts of her childhood were not in dispute: she had run away from home on a number of occasions and there was evidence that she had never been enrolled in secondary school. Her father said it was because she was ‘young and stupid’. He had physically assaulted Fiona on a number of occasions, one of which occurred when she was sixteen. The police had been called to the house by her boyfriend; after he had dropped her home, he heard her screaming as her father beat her with a dog chain. As before there was no evidence of repression of memory in this case. Fiona Reay had been telling the same story to different health professionals for years. Her medical records document her consistent reference to family problems from the age of 14. She finally made a clear statement in 1982 when she asked a gynaecologist if her need for a hysterectomy could be related to the fact that she had been sexually abused by her father. Five years later she was admitted to psychiatric hospital stating that one of the precipitant factors causing her breakdown had been an unexpected visit from her father. She found him stroking her daughter. There had been no therapy, no regression and no hypnosis prior to the allegations being made public. The jury took 27 minutes to find Fiona Reay’s father not guilty of rape and indecent assault. As before, the court did not hear evidence from expert witnesses stating that Fiona was suffering from false memory syndrome. The only suggestion of this was by the defence counsel, Toby Hed­worth. In his closing remarks he referred to the ‘worrying phenomenon of people coming to believe in phantom memories’. The next case which was claimed as a triumph for false memory was heard in March 1995. A father was aquitted of raping his daughter. The claims of the BFMS followed the familiar pattern of not fitting within the parameters of false memory at all. The daughter made the allegations to staff members whom she had befriended during her stay in psychiatric hospital. As before there was no evidence of memory repression or recovery during therapy and again the case failed due to lack of corrobo­rating evidence. Yet the society picked up on the defence solicitor’s statements that the daughter was a prone to ‘fantasise’ about sexual matters and had been sexually promiscuous with other patients in the hospital. ~ Trouble and Strife, Issues 37-43

There were inquiries, Congressional hearings, books, exposés and documentaries. However, despite all this attention, it was still only a few short months before interest in these children dropped away. There were criminal trials, civil trials, lots of sound and fury. All of the systems—CPS, the FBI, the Rangers, our group in Houston—returned, in most ways, to our old models and our ways of doing things. But while little changed in our practice, a lot had changed in our thinking. We learned that some of the most therapeutic experiences do not take place in “therapy,” but in naturally occurring healthy relationships, whether between a professional like myself and a child, between an aunt and a scared little girl, or between a calm Texas Ranger and an excitable boy. The children who did best after the Davidian apocalypse were not those who experienced the least stress or those who participated most enthusiastically in talking with us at the cottage. They were the ones who were released afterwards into the healthiest and most loving worlds, whether it was with family who still believed in the Davidian ways or with loved ones who rejected Koresh entirely. In fact, the research on the most effective treatments to help child trauma victims might be accurately summed up this way: what works best is anything that increases the quality and number of relationships in the child’s life.

His phone dinged again. “This crazy-ass voicemail. It’s all jacked—Wait, when did you call me?” “Please don’t listen to that,” I blurted. He grinned. “Okay, now I have to hear it. Was this last night? Were you drunk? Did you drunk-dial me?” he teased. But it was too late, he’d already lifted the phone. Bile rose in my throat and the room became a thousand degrees hotter. “Please. Don’t.” “Why? What’s wrong?” He grew quiet and listened. “I don’t hear anything. Wait. You didn’t mean to call, did you? Is that another guy?” I put my face in my hands. Cade was quiet as he listened. And I prayed for a giant black hole to open and swallow me. His phone made a soft thump as he tossed it onto the coffee table. The couch moved with him as he settled back. “You can uncover your face now.” His tone didn’t sound angry but I still couldn’t face him. His hands slid around my wrists and gently tugged, forcing me to lower them. I swallowed the lump in my throat, annoyed that I didn’t even have my own car to leave. “Was that your roommate?” he asked. I nodded, my face still tucked down. “And…her boyfriend?” “No, her best friend.” “So you told your roommate about me?” I could hear the smile in his voice and looked up. “I mean, I assume you don’t know a bunch of ‘therapy dog’ guys named Cade, but I could be wrong.” “You aren’t pissed about what you heard?” “All I heard were some friends teasing you…about me. They think you want me. Bad.” He grinned. “And what I said?” “Were you serious? Because to me you sounded annoyed, maybe even defensive. And considering you stayed home last night and are with me tonight, I don’t think you really planned a, how did you put it? ‘Weekend fuckfest.’ ” He bit back a smile. “You were never supposed to hear that.” I crossed my arms. “And I expected you to be upset, not tease me about it.” He grabbed my hand. “C’mon, I’m sorry. Did you want to have a weekend fuckfest? I don’t want to interfere with your plans.” He tugged my hand, urging me to look up. “Look, we can have one. I’m game. Don’t stop on account of me.” “Shut up.” His hand made its way to my arm and he slid me along the leather couch, and tucked me into him. “Quit being all grumpy. I’m RSVPing to your fuckfest. I mean, I’ve never had one, but it seems pretty self-explanatory.” “You’re an asshole.” And by that I really meant the most perfect fucking guy ever. Who hears something like that and plays it totally cool? “So, am I also supposed to bend you over a table or something? Because I think your roommate might have mentioned that as well.” I shoved him back while trying hard not to smile. “I hate you.” He laughed and scooped me into his lap. “If it makes you feel any better, my roommate knows I have the hots for you too.” I rolled my eyes

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The Bible promises trials for followers of Christ, so we’re wise to prepare for battle now. A soldier doesn’t begin his training after he’s called into battle; he’s been sacrificing and preparing for months and years before his boots hit the battlefield. So, how do we put on our armor for a spiritual battle? By studying and memorizing God’s Word. It forms a protective shield over our souls, warding off enemy attacks. Many times this past year, I’ve had to cling to the Bible. From sad incidences like pit bulls killing our favorite family dog; to therapies not quite working to allow my youngest son to eat solid foods; to my oldest heading to Iraq again; to dangerous stalkers disrupting our lives; to parents’ health issues; to getting canned from one job and not knowing what was next; to a daughter’s long-awaited happy wedding that didn’t happen; to biopsy results positive for cancer; to all the messed-up political and national security issues I cover in my work; to . . . well, a whole lot more. It’s been a heck of a year, and I couldn’t get through it without God’s promises for a brighter day. SWEET FREEDOM IN Action Memorizing Scripture is a tool to get us through to the other side. Write verses on Post-It Notes and stick them on mirrors, the fridge, the TV. Commit to memorizing new Scripture every month so that when trials come your way, you’ll be locked and loaded and ready for spiritual battle!

Chronic Worrying. You constantly worry about your family, health, career, or finances. Your stomach churns, and it seems as if something bad is about to happen, but you can’t figure out exactly what the problem is. • Fears and Phobias. You may be afraid of needles, blood, heights, elevators, driving, flying, water, spiders, snakes, dogs, storms, bridges, or getting trapped in closed spaces. • Performance Anxiety. You freeze up whenever you have to take a test, perform in front of other people, or compete in an athletic event.

I’m going to guess that in our seventeen years together, Joe and I have eaten an average of at least one meal out a week—plus at least one or two weeks a year when we are on vacation and we get to enjoy twenty-one restaurant meals. Using this rough calculation, I have heard my husband utter that exact line approximately one thousand four hundred times. If I didn’t madly love the man, or I had years of bitter resentment born of unmet needs and unheard desires festering in me, I can see where this might make me want to stick something sharp into his eye socket and twist it around a few dozen times for good measure. But I do and I don’t, respectively, so his attempted joke is actually endearing. It’s one of his things that I’d miss tragically if it went away. It would be that “Yeah, I hated it” line—not his dashing good looks or prowess with power tools or skills on the basketball court or anything else the rest of the world can plainly see—that I’d get most choked up on if I were delivering his eulogy today. There was a breakthrough, pivotal scene in the epically good movie Good Will Hunting, where Robin Williams plays a therapist reminiscing about his dead wife with his patient (Matt Damon). “She used to fart in her sleep,” Williams tells the clueless Damon character during an otherwise unproductive therapy session. “One night it was so loud it woke the dog up . . . She’s been dead two years, and that’s the shit I remember . . . little things like that, those are the things I miss the most. Those little idiosyncrasies that only I knew about; that’s what made her my wife. People call these things imperfections, but they’re not. No, that’s the good stuff.” That.

Babies have the power to make grumpy people happy because they love you no matter what. Dogs are that way, too.

After seeing a couple therapists on and off through student health, I finally got sent to a private practice so someone could see me for more than 6 weeks. When I called to make my first appointment at the first therapist on my list, the last thing she said to me after setting up the appointment was "Oh, on Thursdays I bring my golden retriever to the office. Is that a problem for you? Let me know and I'll keep her home." I spent every Thursday for the next eight months sitting on the floor with Skyler as we worked through my general anxiety depression and family issues. And then when my class schedule changed for my last semester, Skyler's schedule changed, too. She started coming on Tuesdays to see me. Skyler wasn't a trained therapy dog, just a goofy golden with a pure heart, very soft fur, and a very amazing therapist as an owner. 7 years later I still haven't found another therapist team as amazing of Missy and Skyler.

I’ve tested half of them. And of the number I’ve tested I have disqualified one pit bull because of aggressive tendencies. They have done extremely well. They have a good temperament. They are very good with children.” It can even be argued that the same traits that make the pit bull so aggressive toward other dogs are what make it so nice to humans. “There are a lot of pit bulls these days who are licensed therapy dogs,” the writer Vicki Hearne points out. “Their stability and resoluteness make them excellent for work with people who might not like a more bouncy, flibbertigibbet sort of dog. When pit bulls set out to provide comfort, they are as resolute as they are when they fight, but what they are resolute about is being gentle. And, because they are fearless, they can be gentle with anybody.” Then which are the pit bulls that get into trouble? “The ones that the legislation is geared toward have aggressive tendencies that are either bred in by the breeder, trained in by the trainer, or reinforced in by the owner,” Herkstroeter says. A mean pit bull is a dog that has been turned mean, by selective breeding, by being cross-bred with a bigger, human-aggressive breed like German shepherds or Rottweilers, or by being conditioned in such a way that it begins to express hostility to human beings. A pit bull is dangerous to people, then, not to the extent that it expresses its essential pit bull-ness but to the extent that it deviates from it. A pit-bull ban is a generalization about a generalization about a trait that is not, in fact, general. That’s a category problem. 4.

I can’t be the girl who brings her dog to therapy, it’s a slippery slope, one day I’m bringing my dog to therapy, the next, I’m pushing two sweater-clad pugs around in a baby carriage.

Can we treat animal behavior with the same medicines, therapies, and approaches we use on humans? To me, the answer is an obvious yes. You

Can we treat animal behavior with the same medicines, therapies, and approaches we use on humans? To me, the answer is an obvious yes. You could effectively teach medical students brain anatomy using the brains of dogs. Transferring what you learned about dog brains to knowledge of human brain anatomy would be a breeze.

Well, good. I figured you were, but…” He turned down our street and glanced at me. “Wait, there’s another guy, isn’t there?” He grinned. “Ugh, Dad. I’m not talking boys with you.” “What’s his name?” I feigned a scowl. “Does he go to Sutton?” I rolled my eyes. “Where’d you meet?” A smile cracked. We pulled into the driveway. “What’s he do?” I sighed then rattled off his answers. “Cade. He’s a therapy dog handler who volunteers at the hospital where I did my internship, and he works at the university rec center.” Dad let out a low, long whistle. “I approve.” I rolled my eyes again. “If you tell Mom, I’ll deny everything and tell her I’ve started dating girls.” “Your life choices don’t change how I feel about you, though your mom may be slow to come around.” “I’m not a lesbian, Dad.” “I’d love you even if you were.” “Dad.” I covered my face with my hands. “This conversation is so over.” He chuckled. “C’mon, short stack. Later, you can show me a picture of this young man or special lady in your life, that’s your choice.” I groaned. “That was meant to deter this conversation.” With another laugh, he hopped out, grabbed my suitcase from the back and unlocked the front door.

here’s the thing about Frankie: He’s the only therapy dog I know who had to drop out of school due to a morbid fear of Crocs.

Humor is a passive form of terrorism, of resistance, and of pseudo-aggression that has less to do with changing the world than with mental hygiene. It is self-therapy...

From the den, they heard… like the busy whistling of a bird on a branch in springtime… a high-pitched breathy monologue, a squeaky soliloquy… Connor was talking, Connor was babbling, to Casey! They sat side by side on the den sofa – Casey, resting her head on her front paws, gazed off into the middle distance, while Conner looked down upon her from above and held forth. The mumble of little whispery syllables included, frequently, “Ay-ee,” followed by a deep breath, and then another arpeggio of nasally notes. The mother and the speech therapist couldn’t make out the subject, but they perceived emotion, syntax, punctuation, narrative arc, rising tension, and perhaps even denouement. Since Casey’s arrival, Connor had worked hard to speak loudly and clearly enough for his commands to be understood; now he seemed to have grasped the essence of speech as a medium for relaying one’s innermost thoughts and feelings to one’s closest friend.

Then she thought: What if I start my own agency? I could train four or five dogs a year, as a small nonprofit, for people rejected by the big agencies. It felt right and Karen didn’t generally engage in much second-guessing. The moment the idea struck her, she knew it was what she would do next, and that she would start immediately. She would invent a new kind of service dog academy. She would set a standard for compassion and generosity toward potential clients finer than anything she’d been shown when at her weakest. She would find and train service dogs for people in the depth of incapacity, sickness, and suicidal despair – her own state, before Ben had rescued her. Because of course Ben saved Karen’s life.

People like to say that what they love best about dogs is their loyalty, but the opposite is true. We love dogs’ self-centeredness, and their impression that our lives revolve around them. And it’s undeniable that, no matter what people struggle with day-to-day, there is great solace and pleasure in being able to arrange a dog’s life for maximum happiness. A well-cared-for dog, a contented dog, convinced that he or she is the center of the universe, is a great sign that you’re doing something right.

pound mutt that doesn’t belong in a hospital.” “Oh.” Mrs. Riley’s eyes filled with tears. “We had a dog. A small Yorkie. She died a few months ago. I know Kalinda misses her terribly. I remember reading something about hospitals using therapy dogs. Do you think that would help?” She was a mother who loved her

Monday, November 29 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. —Psalm 119:105 (ESV) Here you go!” my twenty-two-year-old son, John, said cheerfully, handing me a stack of hundred-dollar bills. Since he began working he has also begun paying me rent. He prefers to pay in cash, I think because it is concrete evidence he is contributing to the family. We both enjoy the monthly ritual. This has been a long, long time coming. There were the years in which John’s anxiety triggered rages, then the years when he was depressed and didn’t leave the house except to walk the dog or go to therapy. There were long stretches of time when there seemed to be no path forward. Through those I learned that my inability to see how life could improve meant only one thing: that I couldn’t see the way through. Oddly, in retrospect, I can’t see the path we took, either. I think that’s because John’s progress was so incremental, each step forward so infinitely small as to be almost unnoticeable. It may also have something to do with the fact that the “lamp to my feet” that lit my path was much like the handheld oil lamps of biblical times, casting only enough light to illuminate my next stumbling step. Yet now my son is gainfully employed, a taxpaying citizen. He does not earn a lot, but he works hard and his boss likes him. Someday, I think, he will probably be able to afford his own apartment. I’m not worried about when that happens. There are those who might argue John “should” be doing X or Y or Z. For me, those “shoulds” don’t matter: I’ve learned we can’t move forward from where we wish we were. We can only move forward from where we are now. Lord, let Your word illuminate my next step. And then the one after. And the one after that. —Julia Attaway Digging Deeper: Psalm 44:18

Running held a prominent place in my mental health kit, as essential as medication and therapy.

Wool was just an idea for a short story. It was a bit of therapy following the death of my beloved dog, Jolie. I wanted

In America, particularly in non-unionized workplaces, this sort of chronic understaffing acquires a logic all its own. If you can stand to lose employee weight, you should; if you don’t, you’re leaving profits on the table. Appropriately staffing isn’t a way to create a better work environment; it’s “bloat.” Workplaces attempt to counter the negative effects of understaffing with professional development, bonuses, perks, snacks, therapy dogs, subsidized gym memberships, swag, happy hours, access to meditation apps; the list is truly endless. One HR person told us that she was always amazed that employees complained about stress and overwork but then never took advantage of the perks. It makes sense, though. They don’t have the time. What would really make their lives better isn’t a meditation app, but adding a few more employees without also adding the expectation of more work.

Rocking, rocking, blinking my eyes. Well I really wanted to cry. A sort of therapy. Dogs eat grass, boys rock. Am I a lonely, pathetic, little figure in the landscape? From 'Somewhere Night Falls

They don't want to see me lose my home. They want me to come to my senses before it's too late. I need a better way to cope with my feelings of loss and guilt. I need bereavement therapy. Here are some names. I should think about medication. Here's what worked for them. There are books. There are websites. There are support groups. Healing won't come from withdrawing into a fantasy world, isolating myself, spending all my time with a dog. There is such a thing as pathological grief. There is the magical thinking of pathological grief, which is a kind of dementia. Which in their collective opinion is what I have.

Our time is up. One hour on the dot. Connect the dots. It’s a puppy dog. The kind you wanted when you were a kid. The kind you got. The kind that got ran over the day you turned six and realized how you lose things. And I’m not talking about your keys.

When you date from thirty onward, get ready to meet someone with 550 pounds of rucksacks absolutely brimming with history, complications, and demands. There will be divorces and children and houses that half belong to an ex; IVF attempts and dying parents and years of therapy and problems with addiction and jobs that take up all of their time and ex-partners they still have to see once a week because of a custody-battle dog. It can be daunting, serious, intense, grown-up, and not very fun. The older you get, the more baggage you carry, the more honest, open, and vulnerable everyone allows themselves to be.

Displacement (shifting a feeling toward one person onto a safer alternative) is considered a neurotic defense, neither primitive nor mature. A person who was yelled at by her boss but could get fired if she yelled back might come home and yell at her dog. Or a woman who felt angry at her mother after a phone conversation might displace that anger onto her son.

He was making up for it now, even if only to himself, because he still felt impelled to put on a good face for the world, it seemed bad manners to do otherwise. 'If you can't say something nice.', his mother had tutored him, 'then don't say anything at all.' The hair was real. Crystal had no idea who it had once belonged to. She'd worried it might have come from a corpse but her hairdresser said, 'Nah, from a temple in India. The women shave their heads for some kind of religious thing and the monks sell it.' That's how Crystal referred to it - 'Got your head stuck in a book again, Harry?' It would be funny if his head did actually get stuck in a book. Her heart wasn't shattered, just cracked, although cracked was bad enough. "Are you Mrs Bragg?' Reggie asked. "Maybe," the woman said. Well, you either are or you aren't. Reggie thought. You're not Schrodinger's cat. What do you call a nest of lesbians? A dyke eyrie. "Great,' she said, so he knew she wasn't listening. An increasing number of people, Jackson had noticed lately, were not listening to him. Dogs, you know, stay by their master's side after they've died. Fido, Hachiko, Ruswrap, Old Shep, Squeak, Spot. There was a list on Wikipedia. I am the repository of useless knowledge. Jackson had never really seen the point of existential angst. if you didn't like something you changed it and if you couldn't change it you sucked it up and soldiered on, one foot after the other. ('Remind me not to come to you for therapy,' Julia said.) This was better, Jackson thought, all he had to do was utilize the lyrics from country songs, they contained better advice than anything he could conjure up himself. Best to avoid Hank, though - 'I'm so lonesome I could cry. I'll never get out of this world alive. I don't care if tomorrow never comes. Poor old Hank, not good mental fodder of a man who had just tried to jump off a cliff. 'Diaeresis - the two little dots above the "e", its not an umlaut. Reggie thought if a day would ever goes by when she is not disappointed in people. "Jesus Christ, Crystal,' he said, dropping the baseball bat and pulling off his shoes, prepare to jump in and save Tommy. So he could kill him later.

Some people hope that therapy will help them find a way to be heard by whoever they feel wronged them, at which point those lovers or relatives will see the light and become the people they’d wished for all along. But it rarely happens like that. At some point, being a fulfilled adult means taking responsibility for the course of your own life and accepting the fact that now you’re in charge of your choices. You have to move to the front seat and be the mommy dog driving the car.

We need a revolution in mental health awareness to help us grasp the wonder and complexity of human behavior, health and functioning, and the nuances and intersections of brilliance and madness. This starts with dismantling myopic myths that prevent us from seeing the simultaneous wonder and complexity of our fullest selves. It involves providing access to the tools that mitigate being overtaken by the ravages of burnout and mental decompensation: the very risks of living in the modern world. Our sense-making approaches need to be comprehensive- grounded both scientifically and medically, steeped in love, and in ways that account for the multidimensionality of emotional and spiritual essence. Those that go beyond what the mind can first conceive of. This new mental health imperative relies upon universal precautions and a vehement resistance to linear checklists and binary labels that frame our gorgeous spirits solely as either complex and fraught or indomitable and wondrous. It also relies not on good will and best practices but the moral courage of policy makers to treat human beings like human beings. Dogs are often treated better than people. This is our new imperative: to radically change the way we care for ourselves and one another. We cannot extricate ourselves from the fact that the lines we walk are incredibly thin and blurry, and our only hope is to rewrite and navigate them together in solidarity, with every measure of creative reason and conscious community that can be mustered...

When Jia Jiang graduated with an MBA from Duke, he wanted to be an entrepreneur. Like so many of us, however, his fear of hearing no was holding him back. To face this fear head-on, he started a video blog called 100 Days of Rejection Therapy. His endearing, perplexing, and absurd videos document what happened as he approached complete strangers, day after day, with off-the-wall requests: to speak over Costco’s intercom, to become a live mannequin at Abercrombie and Fitch, or to borrow a dog from the Humane Society. I love his rejections so much that I challenge my students to replicate them. Jia’s tolerance for rejection and vulnerability reveal the delight and playfulness that can emerge out of the most awkward situations.

Mai found me in our apartment hours after the magistrates dismissed me. I was curled up on our old brocade couch wearing Eeyore pajamas with a melting pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Therapy on my lap. She walked through the door as episode fourteen in season eight of Supernatural ended, just in time to catch me wiping drool off my chin from watching Dean slide on his Clark Kent-style glasses. Life didn’t get better than this. How had I forgotten Netflix was my soul mate?

Interestingly, when you look at the entire literature on animal-assisted therapy, patterns begin to emerge. Of the different animals used in therapy, dogs are the ones associated with the largest beneficial effects on health. And although positive effects were observed in most age groups, children seem to derive the most benefit.

Sounds Is Love of All, the World Sounds create soulful existence, When the oceans tide, it is sound; When fervency of love creates sympathy of sobbing, sighing, jubilating, and tears drops, it’s a hymn of sound and presence. When rains, it creates symphonies that therapeutic the body and mind, it is sound. There is sound. When sharing a glass of wine while looking at your significant other swallow its taste, There is sound. When night becomes morning, noise of the birds tweak, the dogs bark, pancakes sizzling on the pan, bees gathering for honey, it is sound. There is sound. When listening to music for a moodily Spirit, moving rhythmically to the music, it is sound. When coitus makes quakes, it is sound. In durations of lovemaking; the breathing, the objects banging, the thrusting, and the instrumental tones from the mouth, the kisses, the clapping and rubbing of flesh, it all surrounds the atmosphere, it is sound. There is sound. When love cuddles in your significant other sleeps, and hear breathing, heart beats, maneuvering, it is sound. There is sound. During intensity of love at its silence and loudest, there is sound. As penetration of love goes deep and pulls out a sound of intensity opens and reactions follow, it is sound. There is sound. Beauty is the penetrating sound of the verses, the Psalms, the Proverbs, the Song of Solomon, the Gospels, and overall the Holy Scriptures spoken from a fervent tongue, power of thought, and sensible recovery from what aches, in all its sound. Sound surrounds all ways. It is sound. Sound is therapy to the love and Spirit, a sound mind, in all, the world is sound.

What do you think of when you think of mourning?' Jenny asks. The question snaps me back to attention. I answer without really thinking. "I guess 'Funeral Blues' by W.H. Auden. I think it was Auden. I suppose that's not very original.' 'I don't know it.' 'It's a poem.' 'I gathered.' 'I'm just clarifying. It's not a blues album.' Jenny ignores my swipe at her intelligence. 'Does your response need to be original? Isn't that what poetry is for, for the poet to express something so personal that it ultimately is universal?' I shrug. Who is Jenny, even new Jenny, to say what poetry is for? Who am I for that matter? 'Why do you thin of that poem in particular?' "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, / Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, / Silence the pianos and with muffled drum / Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.' I learned the poem in college and it stuck.

involved in.” “I hear you. I hear you,” I muttered as I crossed my arms. I felt my bottom lip start to pop out and I immediately caught myself and stopped the pouting before it started. By then we were at the Rectory and I suppressed any errant indignation while I enjoyed a scrumptious meal cooked especially for us by the owner, Anthony Lasorda. After a glass of sweet wine for dessert, George dropped me off at home. We both had early mornings the next day and decided to sleep at our respective homes. The next day was indeed busy. Clancy and I went to work, and saw some clients. Clancy is a therapy dog and makes a big contribution.

endorses massage therapy for dogs, as well as the use of “nutraceuticals

Is the condition prolonged, recurring, or getting worse? (Yes.) Is the condition no longer responding to therapy? (Don’t know.) Is your dog in pain or otherwise physically suffering? (After hearing from the neurologist, Paul Cuddon, my answer was no.) Is it no longer possible to alleviate that pain or suffering? (No.) If your dog should recover, is he likely to be chronically ill, an invalid, or unable to care for himself as a healthy dog? (Don’t know yet.) If your dog recovers, is he likely no longer to be able to enjoy life, or will he have severe personality changes? (Don’t know yet.)

In AAC therapy, “once the individual has the idea of what a particular word means and understands that there will be a natural response when appropriate, then it’s okay to respond by saying ‘no more right now,’ ‘we’re finished with that,’” or something else of that nature.30 Saying no to a request can still provide reinforcement for the learner. For example, if a child asks for cookies all day long, you would at some point probably tell them “it’s not time for cookies now,” or “we can have cookies later.” You would not be afraid that by saying no, the child would lose understanding of the word cookies. You still acknowledged and responded to what they said, which provides reinforcement for their learning.

Each night after the children went to bed our team would meet to review the day and discuss each child. This “staffing” process began to reveal patterns that suggested therapeutic experiences were taking place in short, minutes-long interactions. As we charted these contacts we found that, despite having no formal “therapy” sessions, each child was actually getting hours of intimate, nurturing, therapeutic connections each day. The child controlled when, with whom and how she interacted with the child-sensitive adults around her. Because our staff had a variety of strengths—some were very touchy-feely and nurturing, others were humorous, still others good listeners or sources of information—the children could seek out what they needed, when they needed it. This created a powerful therapeutic web.

The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.

Life is like the lunar cycle, sometimes it is full shining, sometimes it is half shining, other times it goes totally dark. The unpredictability of life is what makes life predictable. Sometimes it rains cats and dogs, the next moment sunshine is unavoidable.

We learned that some of the most therapeutic experiences do not take place in “therapy,” but in naturally occurring healthy relationships, whether between a professional like myself and a child, between an aunt and a scared little girl, or between a calm Texas Ranger and an excitable boy. The children who did best after the Davidian apocalypse were not those who experienced the least stress or those who participated most enthusiastically in talking with us at the cottage. They were the ones who were released afterwards into the healthiest and most loving worlds, whether it was with family who still believed in the Davidian ways or with loved ones who rejected Koresh entirely. In fact, the research on the most effective treatments to help child trauma victims might be accurately summed up this way: what works best is anything that increases the quality and number of relationships in the child’s life.

We learned that some of the most therapeutic experiences do not take place in “therapy,” but in naturally occurring healthy relationships, whether between a professional like myself and a child, between an aunt and a scared little girl, or between a calm Texas Ranger and an excitable boy. The children who did best after the Davidian apocalypse were not those who experienced the least stress or those who participated most enthusiastically in talking with us at the cottage. They were the ones who were released afterwards into the healthiest and most loving worlds, whether it was with family who still believed in the Davidian ways or with loved ones who rejected Koresh entirely. In fact, the research on the most effective treatments to help child trauma victims might be accurately summed up this way: what works best is anything that increases the quality and number of relationships in the child’s life.