Animals, MLSS and You
As indicated on other pages of this website, Vicky relies quite a
lot on the wisdom and comfort of her animals. She works with animals
within the business in two distinct ways:
1. Animal-Assisted SFBT: This is where Vicky will employ one or more
of her animals to help a person achieve their own goals for the
therapy.
2. Therapy for animals (dogs & horses mainly) who challenge their
people (owners).
Animal-Assisted Solution
Focused Brief Therapy
Vicky’s animals have shown themselves to be great conversation
pieces. People seem to feel better able to talk about anything and
everything when they are stroking or playing with an animal.
There are various pieces of research that support the use of animals
in promoting the well-being of people which can be used as an
evidence base for Animal-Assisted SFBT. One of these studies showed
that the presence of an animal helps keep the attention of the
client and predisposes the client to respond favourable to the
therapist. (And sometimes Vicky needs all the help she can get!)
In addition, when Vicky is co-working with animals, the therapy
atmosphere is much less formal, which again often appeals to clients
and makes it easier for them to talk.
The presence of an animal helps people to focus on something
positive and rewarding. Very often, the people Vicky gets to meet
are weighed down by not being listened to, not fitting in, not
feeling competent or useful. When with the horses or dog however,
people absolutely are useful, competent, listened to and usually
both licked AND liked.
Animals in therapy help a person to practice focusing outside
themselves, and give Vicky lots of opportunities to notice and name
the person’s strengths, competencies and coping skills. These
excellent characteristics and skills can later be put to use to help
the person reach their own aims.
In addition to bringing out the competencies already present within
the person, the opportunity to interact with an animal can teach new
skills. Skills of observation, coordination, learning about cause
and effect, hygiene, improving fine motor skills, and practicing
social skills are just a few potential new skills that come
immediately to mind. Animals teach us about seeing things from their
point of view (otherwise they won’t play with us!), building a
partnership, accepting and giving affection as well as respecting
another culture. Often within one session there are opportunities to
point out how the person has made one small change that has led to a
bigger change in the animal’s behaviour. All of these opportunities
will help a person to develop more robust social skills.
Animals have much in common with people who have autism, thus are
quite well suited to developing a therapeutic relationship with such
people. Animals live in the moment, for example and they arrive at
the therapy session with no ideas about what the client ‘needs’ or
what would make the client happy (much like Vicky actually). They do
not use emotionally-laden language and are easy to ‘read’ in that
sense. Deceit and sarcasm are not part of the animal language, and
it is nice for people to recognise that the animals are ALSO
confused by much of the emotion or hidden meanings present in human
to human interactions. At least those of us who use logical, fact
based language can know that we are in good company sharing our
preference for straight forward talking with animals.
The aims of Animal-Assisted SFBT, and the principles that govern the
therapy are the same as SFBT, namely:
- If something is
not broken, we won’t fix it (so if your traumatic past, for
example, is not something you want to revisit, we do not have to
talk about it)
- If something isn’t
working, we will stop doing it and do something different
- If something IS
working we will do more of it
- Small changes lead
to bigger changes, so we only need to do a little thing first
- ‘Solutions’ are
not necessarily related to the ‘problems’
- There are ALWAYS
exceptions to the ‘problems’ which we will want to learn more
about because something is working during these times
- Part of getting
the future we want involves describing it in detail
- People already
have at least some of the resources they require in order to make
the changes they want.
It is easy to refer yourself for
Animal-Assisted SFBT. Click on the ‘Contact
Us’ link and ask for an appointment, saying you would like to
work with Henry (and Vicky of course). It is possible on some
occasions, for people to combine therapy with the horses, so if this
is your aim, you and Vicky will have to have a chat about how to
arrange it.
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