This article previously appeared in the journal Species Link (Winter 2008 issue), the professional journal of animal communicators. The column was Voice of the Expert, and I wrote this response to a question from an animal communicator who was concerned because a client thought that animal communication could trigger seizures.
Dear Fellow Practitioner:
I have spent some time studying brain disorders, both when I ran a neurofeedback clinic, and working with a doctor doing brain maps (Quantitative EEG type). Many of my patients had seizure disorders, both from known causes (e.g. head injuries) and from unknown causes. The Epilepsy Foundation says that 70% of seizures are from unknown causes. Also, even the most potent anti-seizure medications are not 100% effective, so the dog having “ been drugged for x-rays earlier in the day, so he almost couldn’t have a seizure” is not necessarily true. A typical animal anesthetic for doing x-rays is not the drug of choice for preventing seizures, and may have only a tiny effect on seizures, if at all. The medication the dog received may only have caused a temporary sleep state, since during X-rays there are no invasive procedures requiring deeper anesthesis. It would be good to check with the vet about this and get some informed clarification.
How a seizure looks electrically: When you look at the brain map of a seizure, it shows chaotic and extra powerful (in voltage) brain wave spikes. When you look at the brain map during conversation of several types, both verbal, and non-verbal or telepathic conversation, there is a different pattern. The brain waves are finely modulated, with both rhythmic and variable aspects, but still orderly, both in amplitude and in physical locations in the brain. I hope this will help you understand how dissimilar seizures and communication are, in the brain. Also, multiple seizures in a short period of time are not uncommon, and the first one that day happened before your session. It is clear to me that the communication and the seizure were co-incident, that is, happening at the same time, not causal.
How the brain is safe: The skull is a pretty good insulator. The difference in the voltage of brainwaves inside the skull vs. what can be measured outside the skull is pretty big, about a thousand times more volts inside than outside. But the amount of voltage in static electricity (the kind you get in your hair when you rub it with a balloon) is over 1 million times the volts inside your brain (which uses voltage in a very delicate and fine-tuned way). The static electricity in your hair does not “penetrate your brain”. So it is highly unlikely that anything you could do during communication, with your brain, which is 1 million times less electrically powerful than static electricity, would be able to cause a seizure in the dog.
Accentuate the Positive: There is one more issue I observed in my neurofeedback patients. Several of them told me they did not like to talk or think about their seizures. It was not a matter of mere avoidance or denial, but a sense that thinking about it made them ‘go look’ at the damaged part of their brain, and they felt similar queasy feelings as they felt just before a seizure. It is something like the ‘aura’ that a migraine sufferer may feel prior to onset of a migraine. I never observed my patients get a seizure from discussing it, but it made them very uncomfortable and I respected that. We found it more valuable to change the subject to what healthy brain functioning looks and feels like, to focus on the goal rather than the problem.
What to do during a seizure: It is wise not to continue a conversation or communication during a seizure. Energetically modeling a grounding exercise, by you doing it, and envisioning the animal and their person doing it with equal success, necessary physical intervention to prevent self-injury, and prayer would be more timely. I also do Reiki then, as I would to support someone during any distress of this magnitude, but I have not observed it to change the course of a seizure.
How helpers feel about seizures: As a communicator I have worked on several seizure cases where I was present in person while animals were in seizure, and I know it is distressing for everyone present ‘not to be able to do anything’. I believe that helplessness activates some of the standard grief stages, particularly bargaining. This is quite similar to the point in every dying animal consultation where the person tells me they did some thing wrong, and if only they had not done it, their beloved animal would still be alive. (I’ve said the same thing myself when it was an animal in my family, even though I knew from my work as a communicator to expect it!) It is the sense of ‘I have the power to have stopped this, if only I had done the right thing’, when in fact we did not have the power to stop it, we are just bargaining after the fact, wishing to be able to change what cannot be changed.
What’s beneath the surface: When the client was afraid that you had caused the seizure, it would be very easy for you to have a subconscious thought of, ‘Oh, I wish I could have prevented this seizure,’ and to fall into that bargaining stage yourself, with its associated guilt. The client, after witnessing many seizures over the years, might even subconsciously want to believe that it was possible for someone to cause the seizure, because then maybe someone with more finesse could prevent seizures. No matter what the exact thoughts are, there is really a lot of hopeful thinking going on under the surface, for everyone. I hope all the discussion in this column will give you some more clarity.
It would be good to help both you and the dog’s person understand that it is not animal communication which is harmful, it is just that the seizures happened to a seizure-prone dog during an unrelated activity.
~Denise Schultz
* I used the Wikipedia articles on EEG and Static Electricity for my references on voltages.
© Denise Schultz, 2007, 2009
Once I worked with a woman whose dog was having a chiropractic session. After one particular adjustment, the dog became very thirsty. I asked the chiropractor to let the dog get a drink (and she drank a whole bowl of water right away). When I said that, the client was amazed; she said, “I 