Healing Through Awareness
Photo by Boys in Bristol Photography on Unsplash
This is the 4th in a 3 part series. Here is part 1, part 2, and part 3 in case you missed them.
The snarling and growling from my dogs was becoming overwhelming. At first, I’d hear it just after I closed the door to go outside. And then it started happening when I was in another room; suddenly, there would be teeth snapping and ferocious noise. Each time I broke them up, I wondered if I’d be able to manage the next time, or if it would spiral out of control. Their fights made me feel so much sadness, and on really bad days, despair.
Around the same time, routine moments with my horse were also getting more and more challenging. One fall day, leading him into the barn, dry leaves rippled across the driveway just outside the barnyard. He spooked, spun, and jerked me around, finally stopping with his head twenty feet in the air, eyes wide in terror, blowing at the beast that was surely over there somewhere.
I broke down, sobbing. His bolt of fear had ripped through me, and my entire body was terrified. Tears stinging my face and whole body shaking, I asked him to face me, which he could barely do, and I yelled, “You’re what’s scaring me! It’s YOU that I’m afraid of!” He stood facing me trembling.
Those words seemed to suck all the air out of the entire world, and nothing moved while we stared at each other, both breathing heavily.
His head slowly dropped, and he licked and chewed, showing me that he was calming down. I realized that what set him off wasn’t really the leaves. It was me, and my energy. He was simply responding to the unspoken and unmanaged energy of me.
My dogs were fighting, my horse was struggling, and I’d been so mad at them when all the time, the source of their stress was my own. Ouch. This really broke my heart, and it was tough for me to face. I felt ashamed and sad that we’d been crossing wires and things had become so painful. Maybe you can relate?
Realizing how important it is to manage my own emotions and energy field shifted everything. It wasn’t that I was struggling, that was the problem. It was that I was trying so hard to be ok on the outside, when everything was chaos on the inside. The energy that I was broadcasting was the problem, and I was entirely unaware of it.
Our pets heal us by making us confront the truth; if we let them.
Recognizing and Managing Your Energy
This is the root cause of many behavior challenges with our pets. They often don’t listen because the energy we are broadcasting conflicts with our verbal requests. They rely on energy to tell them if something is safe or not.
People are the same way, both responding to the unspoken energy, and frequently entirely unaware of the energy they are broadcasting themselves. This can create a lot of chaos and strain in relationships (with both pets and people) when reactions are disproportional to a situation. That can lead to the next interaction that comes along (which is often entirely unrelated) cascades into more chaos and negative energy. It snowballs from there on and on.
Stopping the Cycle
The most important step is recognizing that you have an energetic presence and acknowledging your feelings. Without awareness, making changes is impossible.
Once the awareness is there, then it’s a matter of making choices that navigate the feelings that are there. Checking in with the body, learning what your energy field feels like, doing body scans, and moving the body are all ways to manage your energy field to help keep it balanced.
It is an active process that requires present awareness moment to moment, and the needs will change based on what is happening externally moment to moment. Some days meditation and body scans will be all that’s needed, other days getting out and doing some vigorous movement will be helpful.
Our pets want to help support us in any way they can, and helping us manage our energy is a great way to deepen the bond that you have. Simply being aware of their behavior is a helpful way to double-check where your energy is. If their behavior starts to slip back into patterns that aren’t helpful, then it’s time to assess our own energy.
Putting this into practice can feel exhausting at first. But with time and patience, it becomes second nature to recognize when things are slipping, reach for a tool to help reset, and then continue. The best news is that the better you get at managing this, the deeper the bond with your pets will grow.
If you’re interested in exploring this within your pet relationships, I invite you to book a session with me.
