How Animals Help With Therapy
Did you know that animals may play a key role in helping people make the most of therapy? If you have yet to experience animal-assisted therapy, consider scheduling an AAT session to discover how helpful animals can be.
During an AAT session, you will interact with a licensed therapist like you would during a traditional talk therapy session. However, you will also interact with a therapy animal that can provide companionship, emotional support, and so much more throughout a session.
Are you interested in learning more about how animals help with therapy? Continue reading.
Set the Stage for Your Therapy Sessions
Traditional talk therapy sessions might help you achieve anxiety and stress reduction, but they can also cause anxiety and stress in some cases. You may worry about what’s to come as you walk into a therapist’s office for sessions.
It shouldn’t take long to see how animals help with therapy. Their mere presence will create a safe and encouraging therapeutic environment.
Encourage You To Open Up During Therapy Sessions
Opening up during therapy sessions doesn’t come easily to everyone. This is an aspect of therapeutic treatment that causes some people to suffer from increased anxiety and stress.
Thankfully, therapy animals often help patients open up more than they might otherwise during their sessions. Animals, especially therapy dogs, are incredibly intuitive and instinctively sense distress in therapy patients.
These animals might recognize when you’re ready to open up and even encourage you to express your feelings with your therapist. This will enable you to get more out of all your therapy sessions and give you access to more mental health benefits, such as improved social interaction and enhanced self-esteem.
Offer Comfort and Support Throughout Your Most Difficult Therapy Sessions
If you know your therapy sessions will include discussing difficult topics with your therapist, it could help to have a therapy animal on hand. This animal will provide comfort and support as you tackle these topics and try to make sense of them.
Dogs, rabbits, horses, and cats are just a few animals that assist therapy patients. Outside of extending the necessary comfort and support, they will also help you:
Regulate emotions
Decrease depression symptoms
Explore emotional and behavioral issues
Establish trust with your therapist and others
They may even benefit your physical health. For example, therapy animals might reduce your blood pressure by eliminating anxious thoughts and feelings.
Let Us Show You How Animals Help With Therapy
Unleashed Counseling would be happy to help you discover more about how animals help with therapy. We also advise you to consider participating in an animal-assisted therapy session to get a glimpse of our therapy animals in action.
After just one session, you should better understand how therapy animals benefit our patients. This will help you gain a new appreciation for animals and their essential role in improving the physical, mental, and emotional health of the people they encounter in therapy.
Touch base with us at (484) 933-4370 today to schedule an AAT session.