Taking a holistic approach to separation anxiety - Part 1

Holistic Healing & Integrative Training

​Do you take a pain killer if you have a headache? And if so, what is its effect? We know its desired effect is to take the pain away but surely that is just a temporary relief. What happens when the pain killer wears off? Does the pain come back? How can we make the pain go away permanently if we only treat the symptom and not the cause?

There’s a saying about looking at the bigger picture and holism is very much about doing so. Holism does not merely address the pain, the illness, the behaviour, it addresses the root cause of the “ailment” and approaches this from a very different perspective to traditional methods.

As a simplistic example, in medicine, a traditional doctor is more likely to hand his patient a pain killer for that headache than seek the root cause, thus failing to address the underlying reason for the illness in the first place. A holistic doctor treats the cause and, by doing so, not only treats the illness but works towards preventing it from reoccurring. A holistic doctor will also talk in detail with the patient about their lifestyle, the food they eat, the stress they are under, even their personality type, so they can look at the minute details of that person’s life and build that big picture.

Why should this be any different to the child diagnosed with ADHD or the dog suffering from separation anxiety? Should we just address the symptoms? How does this in anyway avoid or prevent recurrence?

With dog behaviour issues, how much of the “behaviour modification” only addresses the symptoms? How much takes a deeper dive into the emotions behind the behaviour, what is causing the dog to react the way it does, what does its home environment look like, where does it sleep, what does it eat, what exercise does it receive, what can be done to support it emotionally to help put an end to the unwanted behaviour?
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Should we take the easy road, whack on a prong collar and flood/confront the dog with its “fear” until it submits? Or should we find out why the fear exists and work towards addressing that (and supporting its emotional state)?