The Effect Of Human Emotions On Our Animal Friends
 by Kim Remillard

In this day and age society is moving at a very fast pace, many of us caught up in the warp speed of tight appointment schedules, ever-ringing cell phones and insurmountable responsibilities. Along with us for the ride, are our beloved animal friends. Our treasured pets, our furry children and in some cases our life’s greatest saviors, the animals stand by us during the good times and the bad. They support us with their gentle silent presence, their unconditional non-judgmental love, sometimes a meaningful lick and when they cast their soulful eyes into ours there’s just something that tells us everything is going to be OK. To humans life feels good and right to have these beloved animals to lean on when the world feels heavy, but have you ever stopped to wonder how the animals feel when we are upset, stressed or worried? How our emotions are really affecting them?

I learned my own personal answer to this with my dog Regis several years ago. I had just married and moved to Michigan after living in Canada my whole life. All at once I left a good career, got married and moved to another country away from family and friends. I had convinced myself quite readily that everything was absolutely great when really deep down inside I felt sad, alienated from everything I had known and was slowly growing resentful. I felt myself emotionally pushing away anyone who wanted to get close to me during that time and food became my best companion. One day while sitting on the couch luxuriating in what had come to be known as a comfortable dulled emotional state of denial, my dog Regis decided to hold up before me a large, rather glaring mirror.

Now you have to understand, Regis is the poster child for the Beatles hit song “All You Need is Love,” he is patient, kind, loving to his three other canine companions and falls immediately in love with any human who crosses his path. That day he came to sit beside me on the couch and as his sisters walked casually by him along the floor he lunged at them, growling loudly. I was shocked by his behavior and after he did this a few more times I became irritated and impatiently told him to “smart’n up!” What I didn’t realize at the time was that this was really Regis’s way of telling me that it was time to get my act together! I remember spending that day wondering what the heck his problem was, it’s always so easy to think the problem lies with someone else. Even into the following week when he began to get some digestive upset problems, I simply convinced myself that he’s just not feeling well or he must have eaten something that didn’t agree with him. Not once could I bring myself to see the effect I was having on my sweet dog. Then one day while meditating I got it; Regis was actually reflecting back to me my internal mental and emotional state. Although, I had painted on a bright smile for the world to see, I could not hide my emotions from my beloved dog. He was feeling right through me. Once I acknowledged the painful feelings that I had been carrying around so heavily within myself and started to work through these emotions, Regis relaxed and over time no longer proved to have digestive upset. Bless his tender heart for teaching me this much-needed lesson.

The animals love us and want to see us happy. In some cases, they feel their domesticated survival depends on it. When we bring them into our homes and hearts, our relationships with them are very much like a parent-child relationship. All our thoughts and feelings (being sent out as energetic vibrations) are constantly being absorbed by them. When we are happy, they are happy. When we are upset, they become upset and overtime if left unchecked, these negative vibrations work their way into their little physical bodies and wreak havoc.

It seems more and more of my clients who ask me to do energy healing work with their pets are sharing their stories regarding how illness or behavioral changes in their animal friends seem to correspond with human life events and emotional upsets in their households. Oftentimes during a session it is the animals themselves that communicate the repressed emotions of the humans in a valiant loving effort to bring awareness to their guardian friends.

So the question remains: How do we help our animals live a human existence with us where upsets and stress is often inevitable? I believe to begin with we simply need to bring our “awareness” to the fact that this energetic dynamic is going on between us and the animals. Next, it’s important for us to start bringing our “attention” to the feelings we are experiencing about particular issues in our lives. When we “own” and work through our feelings, the animals don’t have to do it for us. Now this notion of “feeling” our emotions isn’t always an easy feat for us humans. Western culture hasn’t exactly trained us all from an early age to get into touchy feely states with the self, especially during difficult times. Instead, many of us have been trained to live life from more of a mental perspective. However, here we are with these wonderful animals, these blessed teachers in our lives who are here to show us the way towards a greater level of personal health and balance. We need only have the courage to take a compassionate look in the mirror that the animals hold up before us to sometimes make profound and healthy changes in our own lives and our lives with them.

Blessings to you and your animal friends.

Kim Remillard is the owner of Animal Healing, LLC. Visit www.animal-healing.com.