05/05/2025
Let's normalise emotions and talk about suppression...
Life is so hard for so many of us. We all try and put on a brave face and pull up our big girl pants and crack on...but sometimes it all comes rushing to the surface.
I guarantee, you are suppressing emotional trauma of some kind...we all are. Whether it's from a relationship breakdown, childhood trauma or just life experiences and life in general. Suppression is our go to, because it's easier to supress things than to own our sh*t and deal with it. But suppression isn't healthy and it comes out in all sorts of ways including both physically, mentally and emotionally.
This goes for our dogs too. When we use suppression to deal with behaviours, it often comes out in other ways. Ways that we don't connect to the suppressed behaviour. It might come out in health problems, gut issues, aggression, frustration, anxiety and that's if we are lucky enough to physically see these things. A lot of the time, our dogs internalise these emotions, just like we do but that's not healthy either.
Why am I talking about this and what can we do to help our dogs?
Some of you may know, I've struggled with gut issues for a very long time after picking up a parasite in Iraq. I've worked with the NHS, a naturopath and more recently a homeopathic specialist. After taking a natural homeopathic remedy, what I didn't realise was how it would bring to the surface all of my suppressed emotions, to the point where today (I took the remedy last night and this morning) I'm an emotional wreck. I've been suppressing so much for so long and trying to stay strong on the surface but honestly, it's not healthy and eventually all comes out (or it certainly does with the help of homeopathy)
Unfortunately our dogs can't have therapy to talk about how they are feeling, so it's up to us to try and help them deal with those emotions when they come up, rather than using punishment to supress them. This is where training goes beyond just training and this is why I will always try and help dogs from the inside out and target the root cause, rather than just treating the obvious symptoms, or worse, suppressing them.
If you've tried training your dog and you're just not seeing any progress, then you may only be trying to treat the symptoms rather than the root cause. If your dog struggles with anxiety, frustration, reactivity or a general imbalance of emotions, then training alone may not be the answer.
One of my reactive dogs recently had homeopathy after her mom reached out to a homeopathic vet, and it worked incredibly well to help rebalance her, alongside training.
So let's start having a whole approach to training, rather than just relying on quick fixes and suppression because believe me, it won't help in the long run and let's start normalising emotions in ourselves and our dogs!
