Internal Energy Awareness
We know our “shit soup” affects our animal friends. How do we change our energy, or help our pets to understand what’s happening when they don’t speak our native language?
Just talk to them about it!
Talking to your pet is one of the biggest ways to mitigate the stress for your pet. Keeping them in the loop on changes, plans, struggles, worries, fears, and everything else going on in your life will help them feel like a valued member of the family. If you’re not comfortable speaking out loud, then journal it, dedicate it to your pet(s), and they’ll get the message. Just as long as you are speaking or writing from the heart, they’ll understand. Getting into the habit of doing this as a practice daily, or a few times a week, allows the energy to keep moving in the household so that it doesn’t get stuck or stagnant. It is only a problem when it gets stuck.
So how do you know when it’s stuck?
This is where the power of observation is so important. When we can start watching the world around us objectively it gives us an opportunity to notice patterns that are happening. Developing the habit of noticing how our animals are interacting with us can tell us a lot about our own internal state. For me personally, my cats get sick when I am stressing out about something. My one dog would pick fights with the other dog. And if I wasn’t in the right frame of mind when I went to catch my horse, I couldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole if I had thrown it at him.
Our pet’s behavior IS feedback about how we are doing. When we are suppressing feelings and not really sitting with our stresses, that energy becomes the Sh!t Soup that we’re all stuck in. The key is to not take our pet’s responses as personal attacks. They’re simply feedback, and letting us know that we need to be more honest and open (with them and ourselves) about how we are feeling and what we are going through.
Here’s a list of behaviors and things that might happen when in the thick of the Sh!t Soup:
Dogs fighting together, despite being companions for a very long time
Cat getting sick
Dog barks excessively
Dog/cat chewing/destroying things, especially things that are ‘important’ to you (favorite shoes, remote control, etc)
Dog/cat licking excessively
Horse not wanting to be caught
Dog refusing to come when called or running away if they get loose
Cat hiding and not wanting to interact when you are home
Cat peeing/pooping outside the litter box (literally… pissed off!)
Eating/not eating excessively (too much or too little can be a stress response, depending on the pet)
Horse being nervous/spooky/uncontrollable in situations where they are usually calm
Any one of these things on their own may or may not be related to our own situation. The most important thing to do is to first check in with ourselves.
In an ideal world, we would have a deep practice that would allow us to process all of our Sh!t before it turns into soup. But let’s face it, that’s a practice, and there’s a reason they call it a practice… because you have to practice. Even my mentors still practice this stuff, because it’s a never ending journey. So while we are all practicing, the key is noticing the patterns as they emerge (and the more you practice, the faster you get at noticing those patterns). So when you go to yell at the dog for the fiftieth time that day for barking… you can pause and take note and ask - what’s going on internally that might have the dog acting more excited/anxious than usual? Is there something within my energy that is causing the dog to react outwardly?
The key is getting quicker and quicker to notice the pattern and do a check in to find out if it is something that is within your own energy field that is causing your pet to react outwardly. Once you identify it, acknowledge it, and just be ok with whatever it is, then the energy can begin to shift, and you can ask the dog to stop barking from a much different place than when the Sh!t Soup is all stirred up.
