12 Points Psychology Blog
AAT in Action!
I had a lovely example of the power of AAT in action this week and I thought it was a good time to start sharing some ‘golden moments’…
But I’m Not Crazy! Who Exactly Needs Psychology?
It’s a sad and often over-quoted fact that more people commit suicide in this lucky country each year than die on the roads (over 2,000 versus around 1,000)…
A Day in the Life of an AAT Dog
People often ask what exactly we do with our therapy dogs in sessions so I thought I’d do a bit of a run down of a typical day…
Good Table Manners
Apparently someone famous once said, “Never work with kids or animals”, but I have never really understood that! Yes, both kids and animals can be messy and unpredictable…
What’s in a Name?
It’s time to address a controversy that leads to more questions than anything else in our AAT work. Not, do the dogs enjoy the work, not the debate…
Why Our Girls Make Such Good Visitors
A lot of people have concerns about letting a dog into their workplace. This is usually because they’ve had negative experiences in the past with dogs who didn’t…
Pet Bereavement Sessions
Grief is a universal and unavoidable experience for most of us. Considering it’s almost one of the few guarantees we have in a life that includes any…
Not All Therapy Dogs are Created Equal
The graduates from the April 2015 advanced animal-assisted therapy course. When Rory and I completed our first training course in animal-assisted therapy (AAT) back in 2013, we joined…
Evolution of a Therapy Dog – Part I
Meet 4-month old Rory. We found Rory when we were looking for our first dog and speaking to a breeder about different types of dogs and their temperaments…
Evolution of a Therapy Dog – Part II
So when we left Part I, Rory was going through her ‘rebellious’ phase and I was wondering if she had what it takes to be a therapy dog…
Learning to Quiet the Mind
Guest post & comic strip from Mat: You could say that I’ve always been somewhat of a worrier – not quite full-blown anxiety, but certainly a lot of…
When an UNO Game is More Than Just an UNO game
“How is it therapy when all you do is play games with them?” Ah, this question. I’m not going to lie, I get it a lot. It’s…
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Another year, another season of Married at First Sight and another group of people in desperate need of some real therapy throw their emotional lives under a bus…
EMDR & Trauma Therapy
We’re very pleased to have so many of our clinicians trained in EMDR, including Madeleine, Megan and me, as well as a dedicated EMDR therapist in Nina. However…
Thriving Through the Impossible
My beautiful cousin, Gemma and her partner, Dane, were recently faced with one of those moments in life that tests us in ways we never imagined we’d be…
Up Until Now – A Client’s Story
I am so proud to be able to share this post with you all. Psychologists and mental health clinicians are actually really restricted with what we can do…
AAT in Action – II
Thanks to Facebook memories, I was reminded of a beautiful moment that Jersey shared with a client 3 years ago today and I thought it was just too…
12 Points about… Gratitude
Gratitude. Now there’s a word that’s getting a serious workout of late in ‘buzzword bingo’. But to truly understand the meaning and the purpose of those cute Instagram…
Can I Bring My Dog to Sessions?
As an animal-assisted practice, a question we get all the time is ‘can I bring my dog to my sessions?’ While we’d love to accommodate everyone, and we love…
2 Hours in the Life of Admin
Danielle here! As most of you know, I’m the founder and director of 12 Points Psychology and as such, I was the one who set up a lot…