Animal Communication
Grief Counseling
Mentoring
• Consultations are scheduled via this web site, not by phone or email
• Sessions are conducted by phone, not email or zoom. However, clients outside of North America are welcome to send a link for
Zoom or other similar service.
IMPORTANT BOUNDARIES FOR 30-MINUTE CONSULTATIONS:
• These brief sessions are for one animal only, not multiple animals, because this time frame does not provide adequate time to effectively help multiple animals. An exception to this is if there are multiple animals in the household and the issue is the same for each of them—such as discussing details of an upcoming trip.
• These brief sessions are not appropriate for serious, longstanding behavior problems (such as a cat not using the litter box for years, conflict or fighting between animals, etc.) or other serious, in-depth issues. Effectively exploring and working to resolve such issues—to do justice to the animal, the human(s) and the issues—cannot be adequately done in 30 minutes.
I am here to give you my very best knowledge, skill and compassion and want to be sure that important issues are not rushed and leave you disappointed and the issues unresolved. If you are looking for help for more than one animal, for serious, longstanding behavior problems or other serious, in-depth issues, please schedule a 60 or 90 minute session. Thank you and many blessings!
There are three general windows through which we can better understand and care for our animals:
Through medicine and healing we keep our animals healthy.
Through training and understanding species specific behavior we learn to live together safely and within acceptable boundaries.
It is only through love, however, through the portal of the heart, that we come together as fellow souls, to communicate what is most important to one another and to grow in intimacy and harmony. It is through this third window—the path of empathy, compassion and love–that we employ the universal, natural skill of telepathy to learn what individual animals are thinking, what they are feeling, what they may need, and who they really are.
A professional animal communication consultation can help you understand your animals’ thoughts, feelings, energy, behavior and any messages they may have for you. It can help facilitate problem solving, decision making and foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of your mutual needs and concerns. Overall, it almost always contributes to a deeper sense of intimacy between you and your animal.
Some of the situations in which you may find it beneficial to talk with your animals with the assistance of an animal communicator may include:
Understanding the root cause of emotional issues such as fear, anxiety, aggression, withdrawal, depression etc. and how you might help your animal heal them
Travel and moving: Helping your animals understand that you will return from trips and vacations and who will care for them to reduce or prevent separation anxiety; showing them “pictures” of a new home beforehand, including any important physical boundary concerns.
Helping your animals understand and feel supported during family structure changes: New arrivals of animals or humans; discussing your animals’ needs before adding a new animal family member; departures of animals or humans from the family due to divorce, separation, death or other reasons.
Behavioral Problems: Discovering the causes, negotiating changes and solutions
Understanding how your animals view their lives, their everyday likes and preferences and needs
Understand how your animals view your relationship, the purpose of your coming together, and how any past life issues may be relevant to the present
Deepening your understanding, intimacy and sacred bond with your animals by discovering what they are thinking, feeling and what means most to them
Helping to heal trauma, such as from injury, illness, neglect, abuse, abandonment, serious illness or death of a human or animal loved one
Helping rescue animals: For those not yet adopted— understand sheltering and fostering, identify what they want in a new home (i.e. children, other animals). After adoption— helping them adjust to new family and home, and learn more about their life before you came together.
Supporting and understanding your animals’ needs through grief and anticipatory grief regarding death of other family members (animals grieve the death of animals and humans just like we do)
Understanding animals’ view and experiences of illness, health issues and interventions: Learning directly from them where they may experience pain or discomfort, explaining the needs for medications, temporary confinement, preparing an animal for surgery, post surgery care, or other medical interventions and gaining their perspective about it.
Helping them during the challenges of hospice care and decision before death: Supporting and understanding your animals’ needs through death and dying, gaining their input regarding important decisions such as treatments, when to end treatments, and euthanasia.
Talking with the Spirit of your animal after their death: to learn how they are, what their transition was like for them, discussion of any unfinished business between you, discussion about possible return via reincarnation and anything you may both want to talk about. Please note: There is no time limit on when we can communicate with our animals who have died—it can be as soon as the next day or decades after their transition.
Recommendations for flower essences to assist with follow up care, healing and growth are included in consultations when the client is interested in this resource. I am a certified flower essence practitioner with FES, and have also completed classes at Perelandra and Desert Alchemy.
Communication with Animals Who Have Died
Many people inquire about whether I communicate with animals who have passed. Yes, connecting with animals in spirit represents a large percentage of my work. In addition, there is no time period regarding how soon this communication can occur, and no limit on how many years may have passed since their death in order to communicate with them.
You can read much more detailed information about Teresa’s consultations at these links:
• How animal communication works
• Understanding the difference between an interactive consultation and a one way psychic reading
• What to expect in a session
• How to get the most out of a session
• Client-Centered, Empathy-Based Approach to Animal Communication and Healing
• How to use animal communication effectively for behavior issues
If you are interested in learning more about animal communication:
How to Communicate with Animals: Introduction to Telepathic Animal Communication
The Animals’ Perspective About Death, the Other Side and Coming Back
Connecting With the Soul of Your Animal After Death
Missing Animals
I do not handle missing animal cases but instead refer to colleagues who have greater strength and specialty in this area:
Tim Link, Cumming, GA 404-422-6355 or timlink@wagging-tales.com
Diana del Monte, Los Angeles, CA TEXT: 213-361-5623
Annette Betcher, Washington 509-246-6415 or annettebetcher@nctv.com
Morgine Jurdan, WA 360-686-9886 or morgine@tds.net
To schedule an animal communication session, click here
While the words of this quote reflect an inescapable truth about grief, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Talking with a grief counselor to help us through it, and can be a deeply supportive, comforting and valuable part of our healing process as we face our loss, or impending loss, of our beloved animal.
We often think of grief as what happens after a loved one dies. But in reality, our grief begins the day we find out that our loved one may soon be dying. The ensuing period of anticipatory grief is often emotionally overwhelming as we are faced with knowing we are going to have to let go of our beloved animal, making medical care decisions, and perhaps are unsure what they want and when. In addition, there is often logistical overwhelm from the stress of frequent vet visits, coordinating their treatment which may involve multiple veterinarians, specialists and other practitioners, researching what the diagnoses, prognoses and treatments mean, administering home care nursing which may not come naturally to us, possible financial burdens, etc.
Whether you are in pain because you are in such a time of anticipatory grief, or because you’ve already had to say goodbye, support is here for you.
If you are feeling overwhelmed with the pain of your grief, feeling guilt or regret about whether you made the right decisions or took the best actions on behalf of your animal, feel alone and unsupported and wish someone really understood what you are going through and would acknowledge the reality of your loss, or feel stuck in your grief and perhaps worried that you will never feel better, working with a pet loss grief counselor would be very beneficial to help you heal.
The pain of losing a beloved animal and the grief it brings is not a crisis to merely endure and try to put behind us, leaving an unhealed hole in our hearts. It needs calming, gentle, loving support as we cope, as we consciously move through our loss in a way that we can truly heal and find meaning.
When we lose an animal loved one it can feel as if we are grieving alone–people around us may not understand the magnitude of our love for our animal, the true significance of the relationship, or the depth of our grief. It can often seem like others just don’t comprehend what we are going through. Even those who genuinely care about us may not truly understand what our animal means to us or the level of pain the loss brings. This can leave us feeling alienated, misunderstood, angry, disappointed or wondering if something is wrong with us at precisely the time that we most need support and acknowledgement of the significance of what we are experiencing and what we have lost.
Sometimes, even when we are blessed to have people in our life who understand our relationship with our animals and care about us, they may not be skilled in listening without imposing unsolicited opinions, advice or platitudes, or may not have the knowledge or skill to help us through overwhelming feelings such as anguish and guilt, in making those heartbreaking decisions about end-of-life, or feeling stuck in our grief and not knowing how to get through it.
Working with a grief counselor with a specialty in pet loss can bring you many benefits:
• A safe place to tell your story, one-on-one, without interruption, with someone who cares, who understands, who listens attentively and will not judge your decisions, how you feel, how long you’ve been grieving or how you are grieving.
• Loving acknowledgement of the depth of our bond with animals and the true scope of our loss, or impending loss, helping us know we are not alone, and certainly not crazy or somehow wrong to love and mourn for our beloved animals as much as we do.
• Support and guidance for how to deal with the anxiety, stress and challenge of terminal illnesses, anticipatory grief and making end-of-life decisions.
• A safe place to express any and all of your feelings, to have someone listen to all that is in your heart—however strong, confusing, contradictory, or overwhelming your feelings may seem at times—and have them accepted without judgement, with love, compassion, empathy and understanding.
• Support and professional guidance to cope with and heal the very common, challenging and often overwhelming feelings of despair and guilt (i.e., feeling like we may never get through the immense pain, questioning whether we did enough for them, made the right choices, made those choices in the right timing) .
• Tools and guidance for everyday coping with the despair of loss and for long term healing to find peace, meaning and growth. These tools may include providing insights, expressive art therapy, guided visualizations, meditations, EFT (tapping to release the intensity of pain and being stuck in pain), journaling, written exercises and others—all of which are suggested and offered when they seem relevant and helpful, but are never imposed.
• Perhaps most of all, having a person who deeply cares, understands and who will not attempt to pacify you with platitudes or imposed personal religious, spiritual or new age beliefs about how we are supposed to view animals, our loss, or how we are supposed to heal. Having a compassionately skilled, unconditionally loving witness to your loss, your grief and your process of healing can make all the difference in how you heal your heart and come closer to finding peace.
The great love we created with our animals transcends everything else–it is bigger than illness, bigger than grief, bigger than death, and bigger than all the pain. But to feel the grace of that love in the midst of pain takes conscious intention to allow it in, to be part of our process, even as our hearts are breaking. The healing process does not occur by passively waiting for theoretical stages of grief to come and go. It takes work, emotional therapy work, just as our bodies need physical therapy work after injury. It is a great privilege for me to guide and support others through this process with love, compassion, empathy and skill.
If you schedule a grief counseling session, you’ll be asked to read Preparation for Grief Counseling: Questions for Reflection and Pictures of Your Heart and send your responses before our first session. Even if you do not schedule a session, the questions and art exercise could be very beneficial to your healing.
You’ve taken loving care of your beloved animal in times of joy and through times of illness and challenge.
Now it’s time to take loving care of you.
• For those who desire it, these sessions can also include communication with their animal.
• If counseling is not affordable to you at this time you may want to consider asking a friend or family member who has voiced a desire to help you through your grief if they may want to sponsor all or part of the counseling fee as a gift of support. Six month payment plans are also available.
• If you prefer the privacy of working through your grief without talking with a counselor, you can still receive professional guidance and support with a self-paced, on demand workshop on healing pet loss which costs less than one counseling session, yet still provides you with comprehensive, in-depth, loving help for your loss and your pain:
Legacies of Love–A Workshop of Healing for Those Who Have Lost Their Animal Loved Ones
To schedule a grief counseling session, click here
Scope of Practice
Teresa holds a masters degree in counseling psychology from Villanova University, has completed post graduate work at Columbia University and Nottingham University with Dr. Carl Rogers; completed the Clinical Training Program in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at the National Center for PTSD, Dept. of Veterans Affairs; and has studied with Elizabeth Kubler Ross, Stephen Levine, and completed classes at The Grief Recovery Institute and the Association of Death Education and Counseling. She has been providing pet loss grief counseling sessions and workshops since 1986, and is the founder of The Animal Loss the Grief Support Institute.
The counseling she provides is short term pet loss bereavement counseling, not psychotherapy. If issues beyond bereavement of an animal loved one emerge in her client sessions, a referral is made to a licensed therapist.
To read Teresa’s full educational and professional bio, click here
For me, mentoring includes two equally valuable components. One involves sharing my own experiences and expertise as concepts and tools for consideration as we review the issues for which the person has asked for help. Just as importantly, mentoring is an act of love—caring deeply about, nurturing and empowering those who’ve come to me for help to find their own way, their own voice, their own best, most effective and unique way of conducting their work in a way that will effectively help clients and also bring the practitioner a sense of confidence, meaning and fulfillment.
When I began my grief support practice in 1988, and my animal communication practice in 1991, it helped me tremendously to seek help from my teachers and mentors to review cases and to receive private and confidential coaching and support as I built my practice and skill. In the years since, I have learned a great deal from the joys, rewards, challenges and stresses of working full time in these professions, from the wisdom of other teachers and the wisdom of my animal and human clients. I find it very meaningful and fulfilling to mentor others to pass on what I have learned and received from others.
Some of the reasons to seek the benefits of private coaching and mentoring:
• Workshops and classes are sometimes not enough. Workshops can be extremely valuable and even essential in learning basics, developing more advanced skill and receiving coaching from teachers and confirmation from class exercises. As valuable as these experiences are, sometimes after we return home from a “workshop high,” the skills that perhaps flowed easily during the workshop may now seem harder to access, perhaps more questions and concerns emerged for us that were not covered in the class, or the information that seemed so logical in a teleclass may seem a lot harder to apply in the real world than in theory. These are ideal times for private coaching and mentoring to continue your learning and skill development with help that is tailored specifically to your needs.
• Animal communication and grief support is fairly solitary work. As deeply rewarding as this work can be, we do it alone. Because of this, sometimes having compassionate, expert support and guidance to review one’s progress, growth and cases can be very extremely valuable so that continued learning is not done in a vacuum but with support and feedback. One of my favorite teachers in the grief support field, Louis Gamino, Ph.D., a fellow with the Association of Death Education and Counseling and an associate professor at Texas A&M University, talks about the importance of acknowledging that we are all subject to having blind spots. He describes that in the novice stage of our work this may be from inexperience, which can be supported by seeking guidance and counsel for case reviews from teachers or mentors. At the mid-level practitioner and expert stage, this can be from an illusion of infallibility (have seen it all, handled it all, have all the answers) which can be supported by having a trusted senior peer or professional buddy to whom we can turn, even informally, with difficult cases or situations.
• Help and support for difficult or challenging cases. All of us—beginners and established professionals alike—can find ourselves in what seems like a questionable or challenging ethical situation that would benefit from discussion with a trusted person with experience in the field to gain some clarity and guidance. In both grief counseling and animal communication, we all occasionally experience a particularly complex client or situation that leaves us feeling overwhelmed. Working with a mentor in such situations can help us find solutions, place the difficult situation in a helpful paradigm that perhaps we did not previously consider, receive support for our work, our role and who we are, and regain or strengthen our confidence in our ability to do this work.
• Career counseling and support. This can be a valuable part of mentoring when you may be unsure of how you want and are meant to fit animal communication or grief support work into your life and feel in need of help to become more clear. For instance, do I want to combine animal communication or grief support with other healing arts work or practice? If so, what are the issues of having a dual practice—ethically, logistically? Am I at a point of wanting to change direction in some way, but I am not sure how, or how to get there?
• Guidance and support for the logistical boundaries and emotional issues inherent in creating and managing a private practice. How can I best serve both others’ needs with my work and also meet my own needs (time, money, fulfillment of doing what I love, career satisfaction, etc.)?
How do I make the transition from informal animal communication sessions or grief support with friends or as a volunteer to a professional fee-based practice with clients? A lot of issues arise during these transitions, such as developing policies for fees, scheduling, and hours that feel right and work for you; dealing with the emotional and boundary issues that inevitably come up when people still expect free help (sometimes 24/7) after you open a practice; building confidence when suddenly you are accepting fees for this work. The expectations you may have of yourself and the expectations clients have of you may feel very different from when your work was something you provided as a favor for free or as a volunteer. There are also unique stressors of managing the process of continuing a “day job” to pay the bills while building your practice.
How do I handle clients, even long term clients, who consistently disrespect the clear boundaries of my practice?
I work with both beginning and experienced practitioners, and would be honored to offer you encouragement, guidance, information and resources relevant to your situation in mentoring sessions.
To schedule a mentoring session, click here