Meet Brodie

Meet Brodie

Brodie, age 12, attended our Animal Assisted Emotional Coaching 4 week programme at school to help him with his emotional regulation and behaviours.

What is Animal Assisted Emotional Coaching? 

Emotional Coaching: 
  • Is a universal, relational approach that supports emotional regulation.
  • Helps children recognise, label, manage and understand emotions in themselves and others. 
  • Is NOT dismissing or disapproving of emotions. 

Added to this, Animal Assisted Emotional Coaching is:

  • being able to work on the above points, aided by a therapy animal to help convey the message or topic explored. 

Reasons for attending: Brodie was put forward by his school to attend HugglePets Emotion Coaching programme because he was presenting as nervous around school and expressed that he had experienced bullying. This left Brodie feeling anxious when attending school which was becoming quite upsetting for him.

 

Methods used: Brodie enjoyed distraction techniques to help ease his worries so he would enjoy engaging with mindfulness colouring activities during session. Brodie felt more comfortable to express his feeling while completing some colouring.

 

Animals that helped: Due to Brodie not having a lot of confidence following being bullied, he was generally very quiet during sessions. Murphy the dog is very confident, and he encouraged Brodie’s confident side to come out during sessions. Murphy’s big personality helped Brodie to feel comfortable and this promoted a lot more discussion from Brodie.  

 

Outcomes: Brodie felt a little bit isolated around school at times so it was important for him to identify a trusted adult at school who he could talk to when he felt worried. Brodie was able to recognise this trusted adult during session and he made a plan on how he was going to approach this person for support.

 

What activities were used: It was identified that there were many stressors around school that would trigger Brodies worries so the stress bucket activity was introduced to show Brodie the importance of self-care when we are feeling overwhelmed. This was then followed by creating a self-care box containing idea that Brodie can use to look after his own wellbeing.

 

What useful tips for home/school were identified: The idea of Brodies self-care box was shared with school so that they can support him with the activities inside to prevent him from feeling overwhelmed. The stressors around school were also shared so school could support Brodie by providing him with a corridor pass and regular check ins with a trusted adult.

 

If you are interested in booking our Animal Assisted Emotional Coaching programme please contact us here. 

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