The day Ollie taught me what a nervous system does.
A therapy session, a parking lot, and a shelter dog who decided I was safe before I did.
The first time I noticed it, we were in the parking lot outside my therapist's office. I had just had the kind of session that leaves you thin — the kind where you spend forty-five minutes learning that something you had assumed was a fact about yourself was actually a wound.
Ollie, who was maybe eight months old and still deciding whether he trusted the world, pushed his head under my hand. Not for attention. For contact. He held it there until my breathing slowed.
That is, I later learned, a well-documented physiological event. Contact with a familiar, affiliative animal modulates the autonomic nervous system in measurable ways — heart rate variability rises, cortisol drops, and the body starts issuing a quiet instruction to stand down.
He held his head under my hand until my breathing slowed. That is, I later learned, a well-documented physiological event.
My therapist had recommended the shelter. She hadn't promised anything. She had said: "It won't fix it. But you might find that the fixing gets a little more bearable."