Seizures and Animal Communication

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.  [Please read more of this arti­cle by click­ing the link after the dona­tion button.]

© Denise Schultz 20o7

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in even a tiny way, can cre­ate big shifts.
So please share Con­sider This …
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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

Dona­tions and con­nec­tions from the many to each other,
in even a tiny way, can cre­ate big shifts.
So please share Con­sider This …
with any­one else whom you want to con­sider these con­nec­tions and insights.