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Animal-Assisted Therapy

Therapy with Heart – And Fur

Sometimes words aren’t enough.

For clients who feel stuck, shut down, or like they’re carrying a weight no one can see, animal-assisted therapy offers a powerful alternative path to healing. At Arizona Connection Counseling, we partner with Jake, our certified therapy dog and “CEO of Emotional Support,” to help clients regulate their nervous system, access emotions, and experience safety in new ways.

Why Animal-Assisted Therapy?

When we’re overwhelmed, our brains go into survival mode—making it harder to talk about what’s really going on. Animal-assisted therapy can:

  • Support emotional regulation and grounding in the moment
  • Strengthen attachment and trust
  • Reduce anxiety and physiological distress
  • Increase openness and emotional connection
  • Offer comfort during trauma processing or hard conversations

Who It’s For

Animal-assisted therapy is helpful for both adults and children—especially those dealing with:

  • Trauma and PTSD
  • Anxiety, grief, or depression
  • Emotional numbness or dysregulation
  • Trust issues or relational wounds
  • Life transitions or loss

What It Looks Like

Jake isn’t a distraction—he’s a co-regulator. His presence helps calm the nervous system and creates a warm, connected atmosphere. Clients are never required to interact with Jake, but many find that:

“With Jake around, it often feels more like being home than being in therapy.”

Whether you’re sitting in silence, processing a painful memory, or just trying to stay present—Jake offers quiet, nonjudgmental support.

A Gentle Invitation to Heal

Animal-assisted therapy isn’t about tricks or treats. Research shows that being around therapy animals can lower cortisol (stress hormone), reduce blood pressure, and release oxytocin (the bonding hormone). But more than that—it helps people feel calm enough to feel.  When you’re ready, we’ll be here—with soft ears, warm eyes, and no pressure to perform.

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Eating Disorders - It's Not About the Food

By Kelly Lopez

If it’s not about the food, what is it really about?

The eating disorder serves a function, it does a job. Despite the problems an eating disorder creates, it is an effort to cope, shield against, communicate, and solve problems. Behaviors may be a way to establish a sense of power or control, self-worth, strength, and containment. Bringing may be used to numb pain. Purging may be a way to release emotions. When one cannot cope in healthy ways, adaptive functions (behaviors) are created to ensure a sense of safety, security, and control.
According to Carolyn Costin*, some of the “adaptive functions that eating disorder behaviors commonly serve are”:
  • Comfort, soothing, nurturance
  • Numbing, sedation, distraction
  • Attention, a cry for help
  • Discharge of tension, anger, rebellion
  • Predictability, structure, identity
  • Self-punishment or punishment of "the body"
  • Self-cleansing or self-purification
  • Protection or safety (through creation of a small or large body)
  • Avoidance of intimacy
  • Proof for self-blame instead of blaming others (for exampl, abusers)
It’s not about the food, it’s a way of coping with low self-esteem, negative emotions, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, unstable home, difficulty resolving conflict and much more.
*Costin, Carolyn. The Eating Disorder Sourcebook: A Comprehensive Guide to the Causes, Treatments and Prevention of Eating Disorders. 3rd. edition, McGraw Hill, 2007.
Fuller, Kristen. “Eating Disorders: It’s Not All about Food.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 22 Mar. 2017

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/happiness-is-state-mind/201703/eating-disorders-it-s-not-all-about-food