Hello Brains!
It's been a little bit since the last vlog, but I have found a trainer
and Chloe is officially in training to be a psychiatric service dog.
You excited?
She's excited.
If you're just watching this video for the first time -
this is part of a series that I'm doing on training Chloe to be a psychiatric service dog
to support me for my ADHD and anxiety.
And it's a decision that I made, right as -
my mom died, unexpectedly.
The grief is still there.
It actually got worse before it started getting better
I was crying all the time, it was all I could focus on
all I could think about.
I was exhausted all the time, I was either working on the channel
and do things that would distract me from the pain or I wasn't, I would take a break from work
but then I would have this whole other kind of work to do this work of coping with the pain.
And I ended up needing support with that.
Luckily I reached out, and people started sending us support.
We got care packages, and people would bring us meals and it was so much more support than I thought was out there.
HOW IS IT?
- really good -
- Thank you Tony -
- So good -
It doesn't take the pain away, but it does soften it a little bit.
It softened it enough that I can start to focus on training Chloe to be a psychiatric service dog.
- Nose Five -
- Good girl -
After one of the vlogs, a trainer actually reached out from this community and I was really excited about it
- This is Chloe - - Hey girl -
They are an Animal Behaviorist and they have actually trained psychiatric service dogs for a non-profit organization before.
Now that that decision has been made for Chloe to be a psychiatric service dog-
I'm finding myself going through a bit of an identity shift.
The homework that the trainer gave me was to write out things that I struggle with, situations in which I struggle.
And then, what kind of support I needed.
- I have trouble getting out of bed in the morning -
And then think about what are the external signs that Chloe might be able to pick up on, that that's the case, that I need help.
The first time I taught her to go get my meds, I re-enforced it a couple of times
- cause I was so excited, I was like, "she knows how to do it."
So then she wouldn't stop, she kept bringing me my meds over and over and over again.
K, so you need to pair it with a command at first, so she only gets you your meds when there's some kind of a trigger for it
Whether it be like - whether you're freaking out, and that's when you want your meds
Or whether you specifically just want to have a a command of "go get my meds"
- Hey Chloe, can you bring them? -
- Bring me my meds -
- Good job, good girl -
And then I wrote down whether I needed a Low, Medium, or High level of support
and what she might be able to do that would support me in that situation.
- Hey Chloe, are you driving? Is that something you can do as my service dog? -
- Can you drive? -
I'm having to be mindful of my own ADHD in a way that I haven't been before.
What do I look like when I'm struggling with this thing? Like, what kind of help would help me?
And, it's making me have to accept that I need help.
Not that I need to help myself, but that I need help from somebody who is not me.
- Like I used to do these behaviors for her like she needs to know how to stay so that she doesn't get hurt. -
If I need to run across the street for something and she follows me, and she could get hurt, I need to be able to tell her to stay.
And now she's doing things that are for me, and it's such a difference.
I'm overwhelmed and grateful that she can help me because
my whole life I feel like I've needed help and not really, like, gotten it.
I'm getting emotional about this, I grew up feeling really invisible.
My problems didn't matter cause there were other people struggling harder than I was
and so, having a dog to like, see me
I just - when I'm around her, I don't feel invisible.
I have to come to terms with the fact that, a psychiatric service dog is trained to do specific tasks to help somebody with their disability.
And that word carries so much stigma, and it shouldn't
but it does.
- It's an identity shift - - It is -
And it's like -
the difference is you're wearing your disability on the outside now because it's not something that you can hide.
And that's hard.
And I'm working really hard on getting past that, because it almost feels like to justify me needing that help and asking for that help
It feels like I need to be struggling harder than I am
I don't know why this is so hard for me but it is something I'm fighting.
- It gets a little muddy because then am I disabled? -
If the only things that I struggle with are: I have trouble breaking out of hyper focus, I have a hard time regulating my emotions
and I forget to take my meds -
You're asking the wrong question
So what question should I be asking?
If Chloe can help you with them, than you should be able to have Chloe to help you with those things.
- Let's take a seizure dog - - Okay -
No one questions that a person who has epileptic seizures having a dog that can alert them before they're going to have a seizure and gets them safe
is a legitimate use of a service dog - Mhmm -
Do they need that service dog every day?
- No -
They need that dog because they don't know when they'll have a seizure.
- Right -
You don't know when you're going to get trapped in a hyper focus loop and need somebody to pull you out
if you did, you wouldn't need the dog.
My ADHD isn't going away
they're still things that I struggle with
and so I wrote down these are the situations that the strategies that I currently have aren't enough.
Having meds is great, but if I don't remember to take my meds that doesn't really help.
The last couple of days it's been pretty clear that one of the things that I'm not good at doing for myself is monitoring my tone and volume of voice.
Emotional dysregulation is a really big thing in ADHD and it is for me as well
I get social anxiety in situations in which I don't know what to expect and that social anxiety can be pretty bad
but I don't actually know what the external signs are
can - can Chloe do anything about my clutter? Um...
- The opposite of disabled is not abled -
- What is it? -
- Enabled -
Being disabled means that society is disabling you being enabled means that society is enabling you
it can be really empowering to say "I need help"
I'm honestly surprised that this is something that I'm struggling with as hard as I am.
Stigma is powerful barrier
Strength comes from vulnerability and the demonstration of vulnerability is a demonstration of strength
because you're saying "yeah, see my weakness. I'm not afraid"
Coming to terms with the fact that having a disability doesn't mean I can't accomplish all the things that I want to accomplish
it just means that there are certain areas in which I struggle
and that that's something that I might always struggle with.
- It doesn't make you any less of a person just because you need - - That, that feeling of "I shouldn't need this" -
- Mhmm, I shouldn't, but it's not true -
It's a treatment option, and it's right for some people and it's not right for other people just like every other treatment option.
Having a psychiatric service dog doesn't mean I can't function well in the world
it just means that I struggle with certain things and I need support
And it's not something I have to justify to anybody else by "looking disabled" by looking like "I need help"
The point is for me to be more functional in the world, not less
and I'm trying to remind myself of that.