lavenderenergy: A place to express love, affection, and tenderness. Pets are very important to
lavenderenergy: A place to express love, affection, and tenderness. Pets are very important to trauma survivors for a variety of reasons by Kathy Broady LCSW of Abuse Consultants. Many abuse survivors have difficulties with attachment issues due their extensive histories of trauma, abuse, and neglect. Because people were the perpetrators, trauma survivors frequently find it difficult and complicated to express caring and affection to other people. And yet, many survivors can still feel loving connections, and they have the desire to appropriately express that. Animals and pets feel safer for bonding than people, and because of that added safety, animals can become the positive target audience for the survivor’s feelings of love, affection, and tenderness. Sometimes it just feels good to be able to hug a cat! An Acceptable Substitution for Maternal InstinctsMany trauma survivors do not have children, or are not with their children, or do not want to have children, or cannot have children, are not ready for children, etc. However, being away from children does not eliminate maternal feelings and maternal instincts (or paternal feelings and paternal instincts). Many survivors purposefully choose to have a variety of pets and animals as an appropriate substitution for children. Some survivors will purposefully get pets to learn how to nurture and care for others prior to having children. If you can’t manage taking care of animals, you won’t be able to tend properly to children. Keep reading -- source link