Meet Cerys

Meet Cerys

Meet Cerys, age 9, who attended our Animal Assisted Emotional Regulation 4 week programme to help her with her emotional regulation and behaviours.

What is Animal Assisted Emotional Regulation? 

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: Cerys was first introduced to HugglePets during one of our half-term activity sessions where her mum was able to talk to HugglePets staff about potential support. Cerys was struggling to regulate her anger while at home and this was causing Cerys and people around her to feel distressed. It was decided that Cerys needed a safe space to talk about her emotions and find safe ways to regulate.

Methods used: Cerys has a bubbly personality and would prefer not to sit down for the whole session. To support her with this, a session timetable was created together to give Cerys autonomy over the support she receives and allow for movement breaks between activities. Activities were also tailored to suit her needs by creating more hands-on practical tasks that she would enjoy engaging with.

 

Animals that helped: The animals that were most useful in Cerys’ sessions were the guinea pigs. Their calm manner encouraged Cerys to be calm when handling them and she really enjoyed hearing them squeak while she stroked them. The squeaks reassured her that she was doing a good job.

 

Outcomes: It was important for Cerys to understand that is normal and ok to feel angry, she just needed some support on what to do with this anger. Many regulation techniques to support her when feeling angry were explore such as deep breathing and de-escalation toys. Cerys showed a lot of self-awareness in sessions so she could easily recognise different emotions and identify potential ways to support herself.

 

What activities were used: A range of regulation techniques were explored, especially different ways to use deep breathing exercises. Some problem-solving activities were created as the client responded well to this kind of challenge. A self-care box full of wellbeing resources was also created. 

What useful tips for home/school were identified: It was identified that Cerys responded very well to social stories to help her understand situations better so this was shared with home and school. Understanding a situation eased Cerys’ worries which prevented an overwhelming emotional response.

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

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