Dr. Jill Cooper
and Isabella
I uniquely bring highly trained and practiced psychological skills to animal communication.
I trained in a theory based on empathic listening and understanding from your perspective not just the verbal and emotional but the full range of implicit, nonverbal communication that links us to animals.
As a certified EMDR practitioner, my EFT tapping is far more powerful and effective than it’s taught and practiced by itself.
My 40+ years as a psychologist gives me expert training and experience translating animals to their human guardians.
I joined my first dog pack when I was 5 days old. My grandmother welcomed me home from the hospital by placing me on the ground to be licked, head to toe, by a huge old Boxer, Otto. Otto helped me learn to stand and walk long before I could talk. I remember my hands on his warm solid back covered in sebaceous cysts due to his age. Neither of us was verbal, and I know we communicated and understood each other perfectly. Otto and I lived in our own quiet universe; he was my constant companion.
As I grew older and met many different kinds of animals, I had an innate ability to understand them and provide them with interesting, fulfilling lives. I recognized that I spoke “broken dog.” I attribute this to my early, “silent” relationship with Otto. I was listening to and understanding animals before I even recognized that I had the ability. It was simply observable to all that animals were both drawn to and trusted me.
First Whispers: The Beginnings with Otto
I entered the field of psychology through life experience, as well. In my early 20s, I was in a very intensive therapy group that met twice a week. After a few months in the group, the leader asked to meet with me and I recall her words to this day because they changed the course of my life. She said, “You have a special ability to understand what your peers are saying and then find a way to give difficult feedback to them in a way that they can hear.” They Offered me a Job. That’s when I decided to go to graduate school. I knew I had a talent for the psychological. I enrolled in a training program at The Gestalt Institute because I’d only taken Psych 101 as an undergraduate and had no qualifications to be accepted into a masters’ program. I figured I needed some kind of training or previous experience.
I loved the coursework. I took to it like a fish to water.
As I neared graduation, the three core professors each asked me if I would like to train under their license. They recognized my innate ability and my intellect. I think they recognized another factor; something I still find puzzling all these years later: I was the only student in the program who came to the field from personal experience. I’d learned by then that none of the other students had been in therapy or had any psychology experience. What drew them to the field?
And, by the way, my dog attended lots of the classes with me and it became a joke that she, too, had a masters degree.
Formative Years: The Schooling Chapter
My first jobs were in many of the 30 day hospital substance abuse units in the San Francisco Bay Area. To learn a great deal about addiction early in a psych career is beneficial because substance abuse issues will manifest in any private practice at some point. The highlight for me was that I was soon hired by Antioch where I’d earned my masters degree to teach courses on addiction and adult children of alcoholics. I concurrently taught both at the University of California Extension Division.
In the mid-80s, I participated in a 2-3 year private study group to study the work of Heinz Kohut; a theory called psychoanalytic self psychology. He was the top international psychoanalyst of his day (nicknamed, “Mr. Psychoanalysis) until he caused an intellectual upheaval and asserted that clinicians weren’t listening to their patients but instead, heard anything patients said as a defense mechanism to be analyzed. It was revolutionary to make such a claim and Kohut wrote several books on the necessity of empathic listening vs. defense analysis. The clinician enters the patient’s psychological world instead of listening from their own, and then unweaving symptoms. We studied each of his books, line by line. I did years of consultation to learn the difference because, in a very similar way to addiction treatment, the field is based on defense analysis; ie, helping the patient see how wrong they’ve got it and helping them get it right.
I loved this difficult training; basically unlearning the psychodynamic ways I’d been taught to listen and observe people. I wrote and published academic articles which I also presented at several international conferences. Over the years, I taught psychoanalytic self psychology at all the masters and doctoral level programs but one in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’d gone on to get a Ph.D. so I had the credentials to spread the word about this vastly different way to practice and help people.
Healing Minds: Addiction Psychology Journey
In the 90s, my expertise in addiction and self psychology led me into the music industry. I’d happened upon a Billboard Commentary about Kurt Cobain’s death and the music industry’s knowledge and practices about addiction. I submitted a response which was read by industry executives and I was soon being hired as a consultant for all kinds of things: addiction, record label staff education, band conflicts, and writer’s block.
All my clients were platinum selling, Academy Award or Grammy nominated artists. I had 2 pieces published in Billboard magazine and appeared twice in Rolling Stone magazine and once in Request magazine. I worked with Buddy Arnold at MAP (Musicians Assistance Program) and was a consulting psychologist for MusiCares, the foundation run by The Recording Academy.
Harmony & Healing: The Music Industry Phase
I added another specialty after I attended a conference on trauma at UCLA. Dr. Francine Shapiro lectured on her development of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), a clinical technique I’d heard about but knew little. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk was then the international expert on trauma and he presented functional MRI data to show that EMDR does what it says it does: quiets trauma. His patient would think of the traumatic event and the fMRI showed the back brain lit up. The patient underwent EMDR treatment and then the fMRI showed the back brain dark with the higher brain function areas now lit up. It was scientific evidence of healing. I went home that weekend and enrolled in treatment for myself and in training to learn EMDR. I trained with Dr. Curtis Rouanzoin to become certified in EMDR.
I wanted people to feel better and live the lives they wanted as quickly and as economically as possible; I’m sure we all want that. Self psychology was effective but took years of costly treatment. Addiction was too narrow of a scope. EMDR helped people as quickly and thoroughly as I thought was currently possible. EMDR is ideal for developmental trauma that occurred before age 7 and certainly before we are pre-verbal because due to brain development, memories are stored in “darker” parts of the brain. I had several cases of people who had completed a successful psychoanalysis yet were still symptomatic and struggling. Invariably,we accessed very, very early life experiences; those beyond picture and verbal recall. This work on pre-verbal, pre-visual memory is akin to working with animals.
My many dogs through those years had been my clinical assistants. It was heartwarming to include them with the people who didn’t object and each one (many already older dogs rescued from the shelter) began to stir a few minutes before the time ran out and would gently alert us that we’d reached 50 minutes. Always well-mannered, they escorted people in and out of my office.
Unlocking Change: EMDR Training
Dreaming of working with animals led me on an unexpected adventure that turned my world wonderfully upside down. After shutting the door on my psychology practice, I flirted with the idea of becoming a vet tech. That was until a serendipitous chat veered me towards a path I never knew existed: animal communication. It was as if all my years of being the go-to "auntie" for every four-legged friend and turning around the lives of shelter dogs were just the prelude to my true calling.
I dived headfirst into the world of animal whispers at the Communication With All Life University (CWALU), led by the remarkable Joan Ranquet. Here, I traded in my psychologist's hat for the ability to "read" animals, merging EFT and bio-scalar wave techniques with a pinch of my EMDR expertise to whip up a unique blend of animal communication magic.
The journey was nothing short of a boot camp for the soul, pushing me to learn, unlearn, and reconnect with creatures great and small on a level I never thought possible. By graduation, not only had I aced over 500 readings, but I also became somewhat of a geek in acupressure and an aficionado of The Silva Method of active meditation, all of which now pepper my daily practice and life.
With a tally of over 500 animals and a heart full of stories, my quirky path continues to be a testament to the incredible bond between humans and animals. It's been a wild ride, and guess what? It's only getting started.
Speaking with Souls: Animal Communication Path
