PHOENIX — Healing is happening at a residential rehab facility for men in Phoenix thanks to a unique animal-assisted group therapy program and a rescue dog named Sammy.
"It's not equine therapy. It's not about the animal. It's just having the animal present while these guys do a psycho-educational course,” said Andrea Sierra, BHP LMSW.
Sierra is a clinical supervisor at Crossroads Flower, a residential outpatient program for substance abuse treatment. It was Sierra who came up with the program idea one year ago.
Over the course of four weeks, smaller groups of residents at Crossroads Flower concentrate on psycho-educational topics that include mindfulness, relationship-building skills, trauma, and grief, as well as independent living.
Since September of last year, nearly 60 men at Crossroads Flower have completed an Animal Assisted Therapy program.
"I struggle with my own mental health. I have anxiety, PTSD, and panic attacks. So my biggest thing was incorporating animal therapy into my career someway, somehow, because animals always helped me," Sierra told ABC15 Mornings Anchor Kaley O’Kelley.
That's where a 9-year-old rescue dog named Sampson, better known as Sammy, was brought in to help.
"He's 9 years old. He's a larger dog, he sheds a lot,” Sierra said. “He's a dog that a lot of people didn't want to adopt.”
Sammy’s past, according to Sierra, resonates with the men seeking treatment at Crossroads Flower.
“He's got his own trauma, too,” Sierra said. “They may see a lot of themselves in Sammy. They may think, ‘He has a hard time trusting people; I have a hard time trusting people. He was in the shelter for a year; I was in jail for a year,’ right? There are these kinds of correlations that are made, [and] that really go a long way."
With Sammy by Sierra’s side, or laying under a desk, she works with a small group of men over the course of four weeks to help them open up.
"You'll see that a lot in our third week when we talk about trauma and grief. When there's [an] uncomfortable conversation, Sammy is playing with his ball,” Sierra said. “You'll see eyes go straight to him because it's hard to really talk about those things. They find comfort in just watching him for a moment."
Brandon Edder was one of the first clients at Crossroads Flower to complete the program.
"I actually remember the day that I got my feelings back,” Edder said. “It was just all over the place. I was going from angry to happy to sad, to depressed to you know, just back forth, back forth, back forth."
According to Edder, he went into Andrea's office for support. Sammy's presence, he said, allowed him to break down and cry.
Sammy's support, along with Andrea's guidance, helped Edder leave Crossroads Flower and stay clean, he said.
"It's really hard to open up. You know, we’ve got so much shame, so much guilt, so much remorse that for us being around Sammy, you know, we could kind of relate," Edder said.
One year after launching the program, Sammy and Andrea have helped more than 60 men who have enrolled in their program, including men like George Demosthenes Raptis.
“The class with Andrea is a choice. Why did you choose to take it?" O’Kelley asked.
"At first because I thought it was going to be about animals, I thought it's gonna be easy,” Demosthenes Raptis said, laughing. “But it was a real surprise. I loved it. I would do it all over again. It was great."
According to Demosthenes Raptis, Sierra’s class brought feelings to the surface he said he hadn’t felt in years.
“Even though it was amongst a class full of men, it felt really comforting. It felt great, just allowing yourself to open up and be able to bring that trauma and that grief to the surface and experience the pain. Sober,” he said.
